Bruce Williams said it all.

The senior wide receiver and team captain has been front-and-center for all the defeats and disappointments of the last three-plus seasons. But this latest one was different. More distressing than the 29 other losses Williams has been a part of.

‘We’re stunned now. Just like the fans are stunned,’ Williams said after Syracuse’s 42-28 loss to Akron in front of a sparse Carrier Dome crowd.

Williams wasn’t alone in his alarm. Curtis Brinkley struggled for words when trying to convey his frustration. Greg Robinson looked weathered as he took the podium, his upbeat faade eroded away by his 30th and perhaps most devastating loss in 37 games.

They all had a good reason to be distressed.

Because this was rock bottom. The lowest of the low. Certainly there have been plenty of nadirs during these last three-plus seasons. Plenty of times when it looked like things couldn’t any worse for Greg Robinson and Syracuse football.

But they did Saturday. Syracuse wasn’t just beaten by Akron. It was outclassed. The Zips were faster, more efficient and better-coached. By the Vegas books this was an upset, but the evidence Saturday intimated Akron was simply the better team.

Think about that. This is Akron. A middling team from the Mid-American Conference. A program that had one win against a Bowl Championship Series team prior to Saturday. A team that went 4-8 last year and lost to Buffalo and Temple.

That same Zips squad had little trouble dissecting the Syracuse defense with ruthless efficiency. Forty-two points and nearly 500 Akron yards later, the Orange was 0-2 and Greg Robinson’s grip as Syracuse head coach was even more slippery.

How pitiful was Robinson’s defense? On a third-and-25 in the first quarter, the Orange allowed Akron tailback Dennis Kennedy to slash up the middle on a draw and scamper 35 yards for a touchdown.

That made it 14-0, the first of many gut-punch moments for the Dome crowd.

Those 31,808 – the smallest crowd for a home opener since 1985 – already knew it was bad. But Akron?

‘The fans have every right to be upset and be disappointed,’ Robinson said after the game. ‘What can I say other than I’ve got to go and get these guys playing?

‘That was not a good showing today and everyone knows it. That’s the bottom line.’

But this was more than just ‘not a good showing.’ This was embarrassment, served straight up, without a chaser. Syracuse’s second-half comeback – led by freshly installed quarterback Cameron Dantley – couldn’t apply enough makeup to this loss.

The Zips could barely believe it, either. They gave head coach J.D. Brookhart an ice-water bath as time expired, while the smattering of blue and gold fans in the corner of the stadium cavorted around in disbelief. The mood couldn’t have been more different for the orange-clad contingent.

Sure, the loss against Iowa two years ago – when SU had seven tries inside the two-yard line – was bad. But at least the Hawkeyes were a proud program and a double-digit favorite that day.

Sure, Miami (Ohio) last year was bad. But at least that game was away, and the Orange could use its hangover from the previous week’s upset at Louisville as a crutch.

There have been plenty of other lowlights in these last 37 games – losses that should have qualified as rock bottom. But they weren’t. This was. Even if Robinson wouldn’t say so afterward.

‘I don’t know. I just came off the field,’ he said when asked if this was his toughest loss in four seasons. ‘This was a tough loss, a very tough loss. We have to respond, that’s the bottom line.’

There are still 10 games to do that. But it’s getting hard to imagine Robinson turning this ship around. Remember, he almost didn’t have this fourth season, another chance to lift this program out of the depths. But after two games, indications are the Orange has only sunk further.

Robinson assigned himself the blame afterward. He blamed himself for the blown coverages, the lack of preparation and utter inability to execute on defense.

He was even more somber Sunday at his weekly post-game press conference, as if the magnitude of Saturday’s debacle had truly sunk in. He spoke softly most of the time, his words carefully measured. He is human, after all. He understands that the calls for his job will be louder than ever now.

‘If I spent a lot of time dwelling on it, it’s terrible,’ Robinson said in reference to the fans’ calls for his head. ‘I really have to be strong about it and not dwell on it because, really, I can’t control it. I understand it. But I can’t control it.’

But it will be hard not to dwell on this one for a while. This is rock bottom, after all. It can’t get any lower than this loss.

Can it?

John Clayton is the sports editor of The Daily Orange, where his columns appear occasionally. He can be reached at jsclayto@syr.edu.

Published on September 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm