Boston College and then-freshman running back AJ Dillon came to the Carrier Dome and ran all over Syracuse last season.

As the Orange limped to the season’s finish out of bowl contention and without Eric Dungey, Dillon bulldozed them to the tune of 193 yards and three touchdowns at an 8.4 yards-per-carry clip.

“He’s going to be around for hopefully two more years, not three,” Babers said then, referring to Dillon’s NFL potential.

The Eagles’ (7-4, 4-3 Atlantic Coast) recipe on offense hasn’t changed much in the year since, and stopping, or slowing, Dillon is the first priority for No. 20 Syracuse’s (8-3, 5-2) defense which has struggled to stop the run. The Orange have surrendered 150 or more yards on the ground eight times and 200 or more yards four times.

“Everyone knows he’s a great back,” SU linebacker Ryan Guthrie said. “One of the best in the ACC, if not the best.”

Dillon eclipsed the 1000-yard mark for the 2018 season last week against Florida State, rushing for 116 yards and two scores. Dillon has 1052 rushing yards on an average of 4.9 yards per carry and 10 touchdowns. All this has come in only nine games, as he missed games against North Carolina State and Louisville with a left ankle injury.

BC’s next leading rusher is Ben Glines with 388 yards and the Eagles rank 102nd in the country with just 27.3 pass attempts per game.

So, the objective for Syracuse is clear: stop Dillon.

Stopping Dillon means contending with the Eagles’ offensive line, too. Since 1999, Boston College produced 15 NFL lineman draft picks.

With an experienced group of three seniors, a junior and a sophomore on the line, the Eagles run the ball in a multitude of ways: inside runs, outside runs, man, zones, traps and counters.

Dillon won’t run just one way, so there isn’t one way to stop him.

“It’s a mixture of scheme and Dillon just being the kind of running back that he is that makes him dangerous,” Guthrie said.

Back-to-back dreadful outings at then-No. 3 Clemson (293 yards) and the next week in Pittsburgh (265 yards) marked a low point for the run defense.

Poor gap discipline and bad reactions from linebackers coupled with missed tackles all across the field is the cause any time Syracuse has struggled against the run.

The Panthers’ top-two backs combined for 299 net rushing yards running the same schemes BC will use with Dillon.

On Pitt’s first touchdown of the game, Qadree Ollison took a middle handoff and followed his fullback, who took out Kielan Whitner in the hole. Guthrie, SU’s other linebacker on the play, was out of position. Safety Andre Cisco took a bad angle and got run past.

The Eagles have rushed for 125 yards or fewer in each of their four losses. When No. 2 Clemson shut down Dillon (39 yards on 16 touches), the BC offense floundered, only amassing 113 yards.

Clemson has one of, if not the best defense in the country — it’s first in the nation in stop rate, the percentage of time when defensive possessions end in stops (85.2 percent) — and it stopped Dillon, and therefore Boston College, in their tracks, something Syracuse will need to figure out how to do.

“Coach (Brian) Ward does a good job of kind of scheming up,” Guthrie said, “so based on the calls, we’ll be in different situations and we’ll kind of have a feeling of what’s going to be coming, hopefully.”

Published on November 23, 2018 at 7:19 pm

Contact Andrew: aegraham@syr.edu | @A_E_Graham