ORANGE kick OFF HOPES
Program joining FBS ranks gets No. 22 Syracuse to start
Quarterback Tommy Devito leads Syracuse in its season-opener on the road at Liberty.
Hugh Freeze’s first game as Liberty’s head coach is arguably the biggest in the football program’s history.
The Flames will play host to No. 22 Syracuse on Saturday night at Williams Stadium. The Orange are the first team from a Power Five conference to play at Liberty and the first ranked program to make the trip to Lynchburg.
Freeze isn’t sure whether he will be allowed to be on the sidelines for his debut, back surgery and an infection having sidelined him for a few weeks of practice. The school’s IT department set him up with video monitors from numerous camera angles that enable him to watch practice from a hotel room near campus.
Whether Freeze is on the field or not, he knows the stakes are high.
“What I preach to our team and our coaches — great opportunity,” he said. “Enjoy it. There’s no stress. Shouldn’t be any stress with it. I mean look, they’re a top 20 football team. This is our first full season in FBS if you will and so on paper, they have a better roster than we do but that doesn’t always mean that the best roster wins.”
The former coach at Mississippi knows how that goes. Before he was fired at Ole Miss just before preseason practice in 2017 when school officials found a “pattern of personal misconduct” that started with an investigation into a one-minute call to an escort service, Freeze’s team beat Nick Saban and Alabama in back-to-back seasons.
“This is what we live for no matter what the team is, how big they are,” quarterback Stephen Calvert said. “We’ve still got to approach it with the same mindset.”
Syracuse plans on making that as difficult as possible. Calvert threw 18 interceptions last season, and Syracuse intercepted the ball 18 times and forced 31 turnovers, the most among Power Five teams. The Orange also return players that accounted for 34 sacks last season, the most among teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
“It’s extremely important. It’s something that we hang our hat on as a defense, being able to put pressure on the quarterback,” said defensive end Kendall Coleman, who had 10 sacks last year. “It’s what we do up front and helping out the defense and what they do back deep.”
The game will also mark the start of the Tommy Devito era at quarterback for the Orange. The strong-armed redshirt sophomore performed well in several relief efforts last season and makes his first career start.
“It’s been a long time coming. I can’t wait,” he said.