Syracuse right tackle Michael Hay is one of the bookends to a relatively inexperienced SU offensive line that has gone through some ups and downs this season. The line struggled last week, giving up four sacks to the South Florida defense and committing several penalties that stalled Orange drives. The Daily Orange caught up with the 6-foot-4 junior Hay to talk about the line’s performance last week and the adjustments going into Saturday’s contest with Pittsburgh:

The Daily Orange: Last week, you faced a disruptive front seven at USF, and it got four sacks on Ryan Nassib. It’s a similar situation against Pittsburgh — three players on the Panthers have more than four sacks. How is the offensive line planning to stop Pittsburgh?

Hay: We’re going to approach it the same way. We know both teams are both very physical teams, on defense especially. So we’re just going to go out there and be physical with them. We’re just going to try to play our game. We’re going to do the same thing — we’re going to practice the same way we do every week, the same thing — and see what happens on Saturday. We’ll be out there and ready to play.

Last week, the offensive line had a few penalties that killed SU drives. Why do you think so many little, simple mistakes like that happened, and how do you plan to fix that?

If there weren’t little mistakes, there would be nothing to get better on. There are just things that we have to get better on. Nobody plays a perfect game. There’s no such thing as a perfect game. Those are little things — you’re caught up in the moment. It’s a game of football. The crowd, everything. There’s everything involved. They’re just mistakes. It’s better that they’re mistakes that can be fixed than mistakes that are long gone.

So how do you work to fix those mistakes?

We’ll just concentrate on it a lot more during practice. The people who committed (the penalties), the people who had little mental errors, who had little problems, as a player you’re always going to keep that in the back of your head. And you know that when you step out on that field, that’s something you have to get better at.

Last week, the only drive the offense did not have a penalty was on the last 98-yard drive that won the game. What do you think that says about the need for more drives like that one?

If anything, it says to where we should be. It’s something we have to practice. Every time we go out on that field, we should play like that. And I know it’s not always going to be like that. There is always going to be little stuff — little stuff that we have to get over. False stars, hands to the face, legs are out, offside, whatever, anything like that. But we always have to get better. That (98-yard drive) was one case of us doing what we can. There were still mistakes on that drive, but it was a taste of something we can be doing — as good as that.

How do you try to keep having drives like that, where you have near perfection every single timeout?

That was just everybody on all cylinders clicking right there. The coaches, the players, the running backs, the offensive (line), the guards, the centers — everything. Quarterbacks. It’s something we have to practice. We have to watch the film, watch what we did right and what we did wrong. Again there were still some mistakes on that drive that we could have executed better. But we just have to keep up the intensity and keep up the practice — keep up the practice like it has been the past couple of games.

bplogiur@syr.edu

Published on October 14, 2010 at 12:00 pm