Even after a blowout loss to Northwestern, Scott Shafer still believes in Drew Allen.

He believes in Terrel Hunt, too, so the quarterback situation, it seems, is one again without clarity as Syracuse prepares for Wagner.

“I still believe in Drew Allen, and I believe in Terrel Hunt, as well,” the head coach said. “And I think both of them have to be ready to play.”

Allen, who’s started each of the Orange’s first two games at quarterback, tossed four interceptions on Saturday after throwing two against Penn State in the season opener.

It’s an obvious issue, and the one that Shafer highlighted as the biggest concern about Allen through two weeks.

“That’s the biggest area that Drew needs to improve upon,” Shafer said. “We challenged him to work on making the right throws and getting better with his completion percentage, which he did — he was 66 percent completion. But four plays giving the ball over isn’t good enough, so we have to keep working in that area.”

Though he didn’t pin all the blame on his quarterback, Shafer reiterated that on half of them Allen was to blame.

“Two of them were really poor on his part,” Shafer said.

Allen did throw his first career touchdown on Saturday, but Hunt also scored his first. The backup came in for SU’s final drive and completed 2-of-4 passes for 22 yards to go with three carries for 30 yards and a touchdown.

He wasn’t perfect, but Shafer was impressed.

“Terrel did a nice job coming in there and he showed his ability to play fairly well with a good attitude and a good approach,” Shafer said. “He had a couple missed assignments in there, but turned them into positive plays.”

Published on September 10, 2013 at 12:56 pm

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2