Dallas Stars and college sports reporter
UNIVERSITY PARK — SMU coaches and players didn’t deny their defense has been a problem.
During last week’s bye week, when the Mustangs sat at 2-2 after nonconference play, defensive coordinator Scott Symons took full responsibility.
“I take the blame, and it starts with me first,” he said. “We’ve got to get better fundamentally. We’ve got to make plays when the ball’s in the air.”
But as much as Symons admitted the defensive rebuild hasn’t gone as SMU would’ve hoped, he also insisted that after a few changes, his Mustangs would look better the next time they took the field.
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He was right.
SMU’s defense played its most complete game of the season in Saturday’s 31-18 win over Syracuse to begin ACC play. The Mustangs shut out Syracuse for almost the entire first half and didn’t allow the Orange to find the end zone until there were under 10 minutes to play. SMU also allowed just 389 yards of total offense and 279 yards passing — significant improvements from its season averages entering the game.
“We got some sacks. We got some pressures. We stopped the run for the most part,” SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee said. “I just thought it was a good group effort of just taking pride over the last two weeks saying, ‘Look, we’re better than this. We played good defensive stretches in those losses, but we didn’t play consistent enough.’ And I thought we did today.”
The Mustangs ranked last — 136th out of 136 FBS teams — in the nation in passing defense before Saturday. They were allowing a whopping 334.5 passing yards per game. The secondary didn’t have the depth to build a two-deep Symons was happy with, and the group wasn’t executing on critical plays.
But after moving a few players around, that unit managed to hold Syracuse under 300 passing yards and no touchdowns. Over 30% of those yards came on two plays in the second quarter — one that went for 52 yards to Justus Ross-Simmons and the other that went for 38 yards to DeSoto product Johntay Cook II.
Beyond improvements in the passing game, SMU made strides on critical downs. SMU’s first four opponents were 9-for-14 (64.3%) on fourth down. On Saturday, SMU held Syracuse to 2-of-5 (40%) on fourth down.
The Mustangs also made two fourth-down stops in the red zone, including one on Syracuse’s opening drive at the 1-yard line. Their other was consecutive stops on third-and-1 and fourth-and-1, which gave SMU’s offense the ball in Syracuse territory and set up a touchdown.
“I thought our defense was really good early and allowed our offense to really get going,” Lashlee said. “To be up 24-3 at half and eventually 31-3 is a big deal.”
SMU’s defense also came up with three timely takeaways. The first was an interception by Brandon Miyazono in the first quarter that set up SMU’s first points of the game. The second came after Syracuse scored its first touchdown, and Kevin Jennings threw an interception on the next drive, which gave Syracuse the ball back on the SMU 29. But Marcellus Barnes Jr. intercepted Syracuse quarterback Rickie Collins to prevent the Orange from scoring once again. The final was with under a minute to play when Collins looked deep, but Ahmaad Moses was there.
In the fourth quarter, SMU allowed Syracuse to creep back into the game with two touchdowns and a safety. The offense didn’t help the defense by turning it over, getting tackled in the end zone and struggling to stay on the field. In SMU’s two losses, it also saw a fourth-quarter lead disappear.
But SMU had built up enough of a cushion, and its defense had done enough work early on to secure the win.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty, but we finished, and we got a win,” Lashlee said.
The Orange are far from the best opponent the Mustangs will face in ACC play. They may have been a bigger challenge a few weeks ago before quarterback Steve Angeli tore his Achilles tendon.
Against Miami, Louisville and even a struggling Clemson team, the defense will have to step up again to give SMU a shot of keeping its 18-game regular-season conference winning streak alive.
But Saturday’s showing was certainly a step in the right direction.
Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Lia Assimakopoulos covers the Dallas Stars, SMU and college sports for The Dallas Morning News. She joined The News in June 2022 as a high school sports reporter and previously contributed to Sports Illustrated, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and NBC Sports. A native of Bethesda, Md., Lia graduated from Northwestern University in 2022.
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How SMU’s defensive rebuild took a step in the right direction vs. Syracuse – Dallas News
