One more loss and the collapse is complete. One more loss and Syracuse goes from 5-2 to missing a bowl game, from receiving votes in the polls to missing the postseason altogether.

And the reason for this epic meltdown?

‘That’s one of the greatest questions that I’ve got,’ said senior Chandler Jones. ‘I really don’t know.’

Fair enough. Well, how about just what happened against Cincinnati that led to this 30-13 loss?

‘We had an opportunity to get that sixth win,’ Jones said. ‘And we went out and we played a team that out-executed us.’

None of the players or coaches seems to have an explanation for what has happened during this last month. But game by game, that word ‘execution’ represents a key part of SU’s postgame discussions. Not just during this four-game losing streak either. Even during that 5-2 start, there were plenty of mistakes that needed to be fixed.

That said, what SU has shown in the last four games may just be the team’s true identity. And that 5-2 start was the mirage.

‘Earlier we had a sign of the struggles,’ safety Shamarko Thomas said. ‘But we just have to come out there and try to fix it. It’s on us.’

Take a look at some of those signs Thomas talked about.

In the season-opening overtime win against Wake Forest, Demon Deacons quarterback Tanner Price was knocked out of the game with about 10 minutes left. That happens to be the same time Syracuse’s comeback from 15 points down began, and Wake picked up just 31 yards the rest of the game.

Then came the ugly win against Football Championship Subdivision Rhode Island thanks to a fourth-quarter touchdown drive. The third win over Toledo would have been a loss had the referees realized the ball needed to pass through the uprights to count for points. And the fourth was on a last-second field goal over Tulane, a team that finished this year an inspiring 2-11.

The win over West Virginia was impressive and the Orange deserves credit for that.

But that was the win that blinded everyone. After that, no one wanted to talk about just how fortunate SU was to be 5-2. No one wanted to talk about Price’s injury or one of the worst blown calls in the history of sports.

Now, it’s that win over West Virginia that no one is talking about.

‘That’s in the past,’ Thomas said. ‘We can’t even say nothing about it. That’s in the past. We’ve just got to get better.’

SU head coach Doug Marrone has tried everything he could think of to help the Orange get better. He pitted the first-team offense against the first-team defense in practice leading into the Cincinnati game. Marrone said SU went back to the base part of its offense, using packages it installed on ‘day one.’

But nothing is working.

‘We’ve re-evaluated I think several times how we’ve been doing things,’ linebacker Dan Vaughan said. ‘We’ve tried to take new approaches every week. We’ve been trying to do all the little things. We’ve been doing that, and I guess it just really comes down to executing when it matters.’

And there it is again. Execution. Syracuse really hasn’t executed consistently this season, even when it was winning games. It caught some breaks to start the season and picked up a couple of wins over some bad teams.

But that start masked some deficiencies hiding within a team that may truly be average at best.

And while this collapse that continued Saturday seems to have stunned SU and its fans after such a promising beginning, the true surprise may be that this team had such a good start in the first place.

Zach Brown is a staff writer at The Daily Orange, where his column appears occasionally. He can be reached at zjbrown@syr.edu or on Twitter at @zjbrown13.

Published on November 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm