EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Even on the heels of a loss, Scott Shafer was the same man.

The 30th head coach in Syracuse history stood at the podium Saturday after his first game, a 23-17 loss to Penn State in New York’s College Classic. There was, of course, a tinge of dejection and disappointment that should come with every loss, and he was a bit more revelatory than he was during a summer that ended with practices being closed off to the media. But there was also the same fiery passion that’s marked his first eight months at the helm of the program.

He still cursed and he still uttered his signature “hard-nosed” catchphrase. His visor was on the ground by the end of the first play from scrimmage and a handful of other times as the afternoon turned to evening at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

He was, in other words, the same old Scott Shafer.

“I hate to lose,” Shafer said after the game. “It makes me sick to lose, but I had a blast. Ever since I was a little guy I wanted to do this. I slept well last night, I wasn’t nervous. I couldn’t wait to go and it was fun. The fight was fun.”

The past couple months of intensity and obscenities weren’t an act, but rather a window into the coach that Shafer will be.

Less than 30 seconds into his first-ever postgame press conference as a head coach he said his defense played a “tough-ass football game.” When answering his first postgame question as a head coach he raved about the “tough, hard-nosed football” Drew Allen played in his first game as an SU quarterback. His demeanor was virtually unchanged from the last time he spoke publicly, on the Thursday before kickoff back in the Iocolano-Petty Football Wing of Manley Field House.

A 5-yard completion by the Nittany Lions on the first real snap of the game sent Shafer’s visor hurtling toward the ground. His signature headwear went flying again in the second half after a pass interference call against Keon Lyn.

It wasn’t always pretty — in fact, sometimes the game was downright ugly — but Shafer still guided Syracuse within one score as the Orange took the field for its final possession.

“I thought we were going to win the damn thing,” he said in typical Shafer fashion, “I really did. I thought we were going to win the doggone game.”

The only thing from training camp, it seems, that may have been out of the norm was the tight-lipped secrecy.

He didn’t want to reveal his starting quarterback, and for good reason, and wants to keep up the image he’s created in the months leading up to the season. But after Saturday’s game he was in a sharing mood.

He said he settled on Allen as his quarterback 10 days prior and even admitted that his goal was simply to go into the fourth quarter of the season opener with a chance to win.

“It was where I thought we were going to be,” Shafer said. “I didn’t think we were in a position from a confidence standpoint to go out there and blow them out. They are too good of a football team.”

And that’s just where he had SU as time winded down in the fourth quarter. After the game, running back Jerome Smith called Allen a “sheriff.” Shafer, though, was a general, leading his unwavering men toward the edge of victory.

Shafer’s confidence and enthusiasm has gotten his players to buy in. Even as SU fell short on the first gameday of the Shafer era, there’s a sense of the leader he will be in his years at Syracuse, and it’s the same one he’s been for his first few months.

“I don’t want to win for myself,” Allen said at the podium after Shafer’s press conference, “I want to win for the guy that was just up here talking, and all those guys in the blue and orange.”

Published on September 3, 2013 at 2:53 am

Contact David: dbwilson@syr.edu | @DBWilson2