Doug Marrone’s impact on Syracuse still felt despite abrupt departure 10 years ago

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Rob Long still remembers the first time Doug Marrone addressed his new Syracuse team in December 2008. Marrone spoke of how excited he was to be at Syracuse and told the players as an alum, he was one of them. Then a switch flipped. Marrone spent the last 10 minutes chastising the team for their messy locker room, one that wouldn’t be welcoming for former or future players.

Players weren’t used to coaches talking to them like that. After four years of on-field failures under Greg Robinson, it was clear the Orange were going to be held to a higher standard with a new culture.

“A lot of us walked out of that initial team meeting a little shell shocked, surprised because that just wasn’t what we were used to,” Long said. “But what we were used to wasn’t really working, either.”

Marrone’s message was all part of his plan to revive Syracuse’s program. It had been his dream job for years and he was anxious to act quickly. His staff pieced together a recruiting class in less than two months after Marrone rescinded the scholarships of all but three Robinson commits. After going 10-37 under Robinson, the Orange went 25-25 in four years under Marrone, winning two bowl games and regaining national respect.

But then came his abrupt departure for a dream job with the Buffalo Bills and with him went six assistant coaches. Syracuse scrambled under new head coach Scott Shafer. Ten years after leaving, Marrone’s tenure — and exit — still leaves an impact on the Orange, who face Minnesota at Yankee Stadium’s Pinstripe Bowl on Thursday.

“There was a level of respect that he put back on the program, which was needed,” Long said. “It went a long way into helping us get to where we are today as a program.”

Regaining that respect for Syracuse began with recruiting. Robinson hadn’t maintained relationships with local high school coaches, but Marrone did, despite coaching in the NFL at the time. John Anselmo, who coached with Marrone at Syracuse and Georgia Tech, remembered Marrone telling him in the late 1990s that being SU’s head coach was the one job he wanted.

“When I went into coaching, I always prepared myself for this,” Marrone, who wasn’t made available for this story, said after being hired in 2008. “This has been the job I have always wanted.”

It’s why Marrone brought three binders into his interview with then-athletic director Daryl Gross and had a clear plan to rebuild Syracuse. He brought SU’s focus back to recruiting within 5-6 hours, mirroring past head coaches Dick MacPherson and Paul Pasqualoni and emphasizing talent from New York state.

Unimpressed with Robinson’s recruits, Marrone went house to house after accepting the job, pulling scholarships away from player after player. Former SU quarterback Charley Loeb recalled Marrone and then-offensive coordinator Rob Spence visiting his home in 2009 and making him conduct a full workout to “earn” a scholarship. Marrone relaxed after getting to Alec Lemon’s home, only because he wanted to keep the receiver’s scholarship. Lemon was one of just three Robinson commits — along with offensive tackles Justin Pugh and Andrew Phillips — who Marrone kept in his first recruiting class.

A once 30-man recruiting class settled at 16 after Marrone rebuilt it from scratch, adding 10 commitments after his hiring. While Robinson’s recruits landed at mid-major schools, Marrone got players, like future NFL safety Shamarko Thomas, to decommit from Big East rivals and come to Syracuse. The class ranked 92nd nationally, by far the Orange’s worst since 247Sports started ranking teams in 1999. Marrone and his staff were still excited about the class, Loeb said, despite their late recruiting rush.

The theme of changing the culture continued when offseason workouts began in 2009. While the Robinson era was run without repercussions, like an NFL franchise, Marrone brought accountability, Long said. Marrone set the standard from the first day that he wanted a high-achieving, business-like culture, Loeb said. If players fit in and followed Marrone, they would win.

Former offensive guard Zack Chibane said Marrone’s biggest impact on SU was bringing structure and discipline to a program that lacked it. Players had to wear collared shirts when talking to the media, a suit and tie on road trips and couldn’t grow facial hair. There was no more music during practice. Academic advisors checked players’ attendance daily. If one of them wasn’t in class, they would be running the next morning at 6 a.m. before practice. If players didn’t wear their SU-issued sweats to practice, they ran outside in the notorious Syracuse winter.

Lemon recalled hearing about the drills Marrone put the team through — workouts in the snow in January and four-hour practices in the summer — to see who would stay.

“He was OK with being the common enemy if that’s what it took for us to unify and work together and to work towards what we were trying to accomplish,” Long said.

Plenty of players didn’t buy in, though. Some were given an ultimatum by Marrone: stay at Syracuse and sit, or move to another school, Chibane said. A total of 27 underclassmen transferred or quit the team between 2008 and 2009, in addition to the 17 seniors who graduated. Starters weren’t safe — fifth-year quarterback Cameron Dantley, who started 11-of-12 games in 2008, didn’t play at all in 2009.

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“It was definitely a difficult transition,” Chibane said. “But the guys who are willing to put in the work and commit to the new system were the ones who you saw two, three, four years later in the Pinstripe Bowl — and in all our other games — achieve success.”

Marrone was a real stickler on mistakes, Long said. Syracuse continued practice periods — or even restarted them — if players weren’t blocking the right assignments or running into the right gaps. As Long put it, there was no “we’ll get it next time,” like there was with Robinson, who stuck to the practice schedule despite mistakes.

There were important lessons off the field, too. Marrone brought in an etiquette specialist to teach players formal dining etiquette. When Syracuse went to a pre-Pinstripe Bowl dinner at Yankee Stadium in 2012, players showed up in suits and ties, while West Virginia players wore their game-day sweats, Loeb recalled.

Anselmo recalled reading a Sports Illustrated article before the 2009 season that ranked Syracuse 118th out of 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams. The Orange finished 4-8 that season, but were more competitive. Internally, SU players knew things were changing, Long said, and bought into Marrone’s vision.

Then came a breakthrough season in 2010, which featured Syracuse’s first bowl win in nine years. A clear culture shift helped SU go 8-5 and beat Kansas State in the Pinstripe Bowl. The development of quarterback Ryan Nassib and Marrone’s additional time working with the offensive line led to this sharp turnaround.

After a disappointing 5-7 campaign in 2011, Marrone and new offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett went to an up-tempo offense that helped the Orange post record-setting numbers in 2012. The development of Nassib, Pugh and Chandler Jones — all 2-star recruits out of high school — into NFL players exhibited Marrone’s abilities.

Recruiting picked up, too, with Marrone’s focus on New York talent paying dividends. City coaches gravitated toward Marrone, a Bronx native, and Anselmo’s decades of coaching junior college on Long Island helped Syracuse get looks from top prospects. Quarterback Terrel Hunt chose SU after Marrone and Anselmo unexpectedly attended his mother’s funeral and four-star defensive back Wayne Morgan called the Orange “New York City’s team” when he committed in 2012.

Marrone’s work provided a “huge resuscitation” to Syracuse’s program, former quarterback Don McPherson told The D.O. last year. But it’s also what made his exit after the 2012 Pinstripe Bowl not surprising, though still damaging.

Doug Marrone won 25 games in four seasons at SU, including two Pinstripe Bowl wins. Daily Orange File Photo

The Orange won the game convincingly, running the ball for 369 yards and shutting down Geno Smith and West Virginia’s high-powered offense. But few knew it would be Marrone’s last game at Syracuse. There was buzz during the end of the season that NFL teams had reached out to Marrone, but players like Loeb hoped the coach would be a “lifer” at his alma mater.

On January 6, eight days after the bowl game, ESPN reported Marrone had taken the job with the Bills. Many on the team, including Lemon, found out through a team group chat. Most players were surprised, but assistant coaches were not. Marrone enjoyed coaching at Syracuse, so there had to be an exciting opportunity for him, former offensive line coach Greg Adkins said. Coaching in New York with the Bills was just that.

“You gotta understand this: There are only 32 NFL teams. That’s the height of your profession,” Anselmo said. “I don’t think any coach in America turns down an NFL opportunity if he’s coaching in college.”

Players didn’t hear from Marrone until the next day when they received an email from him as he was introduced as the Bills’ new coach. He reiterated that being Syracuse’s head coach was his dream job, but said being an NFL head coach in New York was a dream, too.

“I had said that Syracuse was my dream job,” Marrone said in the press conference. “And I meant that when I said it. Having an opportunity to restore the tradition of Syracuse football made my dream a reality. Today, I’m experiencing another dream come true.”
Marrone met briefly with his team once more the following weekend. From there, Marrone didn’t make things easy on the program. Six assistant coaches, including Hackett and ace recruiters Anselmo and Adkins, followed him to Buffalo.

Adkins was at a coaches’ convention in Nashville, Tennessee, when he got a phone call that Marrone was leaving. Marrone offered him a job in Buffalo on January 8, the day before SU announced Shafer, previously defensive coordinator, as its next head coach. Adkins and Shafer talked about the assistant staying at SU in the same role, but the opportunity to coach in the NFL and an ensuing pay raise, helped Adkins make his decision.

Marrone called Anselmo before taking the job and said he wanted him to follow. Marrone asked Anselmo how many coaches could say they coached high school, junior college, major college and in the NFL. Anselmo followed Marrone, but continued recruiting five players for Syracuse until February’s signing day. Anselmo didn’t bring up the fact that he and several other SU coaches were leaving unless the recruit brought it up.

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Once Marrone finished assembling his staff, only three coaches — Shafer, Rob Moore and Tim Daoust — remained at Syracuse. Loeb said he was happy some continuity remained. But recruits saw the changes and had other thoughts. Texas quarterback Zach Allen flipped his commitment and Staten Island running back Gus Edwards followed suit. Anselmo said it hurt to see players he recruited, like Edwards, decommit and go elsewhere. Shafer, who wasn’t made available for this story, later described the period as a “flurry.”

Syracuse entered the Atlantic Coast Conference the next season, winning seven games and a bowl. Loeb said that season was a reflection of Marrone’s impact on the program. The next two years, though, totaled just seven wins. SU couldn’t mimic the offense it had under Hackett, Adkins and Marrone, Lemon said.

SU fired Shafer in 2015, and hired Dino Babers as his replacement.
“It did kind of suck for the program because of the way (Marrone) was leading it,” Lemon said. “But obviously the impact that he made was one of a kind.”

That impact helped Syracuse move past the Robinson era and gave it the opportunity to compete in the ACC. But Marrone’s departure also left the program with a void and led, in part, to Babers’ hiring and ensuing rebuild. There’s been inconsistency, but there’s also been successful seasons, highlighted by the 10-3 2018 season and this year’s return to the Pinstripe Bowl. Former players agree that without Marrone, those highs may have been tougher to reach.

“It wasn’t always easy, but I’m proud of what we accomplished,” Chibane said. “I know without him, the turnaround of Syracuse football wouldn’t have been possible.”