Syracuse football: takeaways from the 2025 season

There’s no reason to go further in-depth into the final game of the 2025 Syracuse Football season so instead I’ll give you three takeaways from this season.

Quarterback health matters a lot at Syracuse

Outside of the Dwight Freeney season, the best Orange seasons since 2000 have come when Syracuse has had strong starting quarterback remain healthy all year. Ryan Nassib, Eric Dungey, and Kyle McCord guided the Orange to 8+ wins and bowl victories. When Steve Angeli went down this year, the offense fell apart and so did the season.

Angeli says he’s returning, but Fran Brown has vowed to be active in the transfer portal, but Syracuse needs to do a better job of finding a transfer to fit the offense and a better job of adjusting the offense to fit the quarterback.

Players remain committed

Over the last two months, we’ve seen countless comments and posts about Brown “losing the team and eventually losing the players.” Now it’s over a month until the transfer portal and things can change, but as of today the following players have publicly committed to staying with Syracuse: Angeli, Yasin Willis, Darrell Gill Jr., Byron Washington, Demetres Samuel, Antoine Deslauriers, and Chris Peal.

That’s a pretty solid core that’s coming back and that group will be expected to be taking on a bigger leadership role heading into 2026.

Five-star commit Calvin Russell reaffirmed his commitment. Kamron Wilson was pursued by Florida State and this week said he’s coming to Syracuse. While three players decommitted, Brown’s top players appear to be signing this week.

Coaching comparison

I’ve seen multiple references to this being “rock bottom” for Syracuse Football and a couple of people have pointed out that Scott Shafer only got three years so Brown should be on a hot seat heading into his third year. Honestly I don’t know how you can convince anyone who watched the Shafer era and thinks this is comparable, but let’s just look at how the Orange head coaches since 1981 have fared in their first three seasons.

Head Coach

Year 1 Record

Best Win

Year 2 Record

Best Win

Year 3 Record

Best Win

Dick MacPherson

4-6-1

#17 WVU

2-9

at Rutgers

6-5

#13 Boston College

Paul Pasqualoni

10-2

#5 Florida

10-2

#10 Colorado

6-4-1

Cincinnati

Greg Robinson

1-10

Buffalo

4-8

at Illinois

2-10

at #18 Louisville

Doug Marrone

4-8

#25 Rutgers

8-5

at #20 WVU

5-7

#11 WVU

Scott Shafer

7-6

Minnesota

3-9

at Wake Forest

4-8

Wake Forest

Dino Babers

4-8

#17 Virginia Tech

4-8

#2 Clemson

10-3

#15 WVU

Fran Brown

10-3

#8 Miami

3-9

at Clemson

??

??

The “Sack Mac Pack” was going strong in those lean early years for Dick MacPherson, but even his teams were able to rise to the occasion to beat ranked opponents. In fact, it was only Shafer who failed to manage a win over a ranked opponent in three seasons. To suggest that Brown is coaching for his job next year is hopefully just frustration and emotion talking because only Pasqualoni got off to a better career start as the leader of the Orange.

Brown has to get better at his handling of quarterbacks and managing in-game situations, but when you look at the complete picture, the positives outweigh the negatives….even after closing 2025 on an 8-game losing streak. For the concerns about the in-game coaching, the Orange are 7-2 in one-score games over the last two seasons. That means that either Brown has a better feel for decision-making than we give him credit for, or his program is relentless and tough. Booth of those are good signs for the future.

Syracuse Football has been pretty miserable for the last 20 years so it would be wise to step back, take a deep breath and see that things aren’t as bad as you seem.