It started as a rumor, circulating through the press box.

‘Did you hear?’ one would say to another. ‘Drew Tate is out.’

It caused an immediate double take, complete with raised eyebrows and the mind wandering about what it meant to the game’s outcome.

The answer, as evident in SU’s 20-13 double-overtime loss to No. 14 Iowa, is a quite a bit.

Tate, Iowa’s senior quarterback and a bona fide Heisman Trophy candidate, missed Saturday’s game with an abdominal strain. Everyone except Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, in typical Belichick-ian fashion, kept the injury under wraps all week. No one knew until game day.

‘The first snap of the game, I ran to come down and (backup quarterback Jason Manson) had a rollout pass and I noticed it wasn’t a Caucasian player,’ senior linebacker Jerry Mackey said. ‘I asked (linebacker Kelvin Smith), what’s going on? I thought (Tate) was going to play the game.’

Smith heard about Tate’s injury in the locker room before the game. He immediately researched the backup quarterback, Jason Manson, and noticed Manson was a senior. For Smith, who’s also a senior, his class was worth something.

But no matter how long he’s been in that offense, he wasn’t Tate, whose 46 career touchdown passes are second most in Iowa history.

‘We had to make some changes,’ Syracuse head coach Greg Robinson said. ‘We didn’t know about it until kickoff.’

The Orange was left to play against an inferior quarterback, but also a different quarterback. Manson, who doubles as a receiver, is more athletic than Tate and hence more mobile. He moved around in the pocket and created plays with his feet.

‘We’ve played against mobile, we’ve played against drop-back,’ Smith said. ‘We just play.’

What Manson couldn’t do, though, was make many plays with his arms. In fact, he ended up making a lot of plays for Syracuse.

The Iowa backup was 16-of-32 for 202 yards and a touchdown, but his performance was marred by four costly interceptions. SU cornerback Terrell Lemon intercepted two, safety A. J. Brown picked off one and linebacker Jerry Mackey grabbed the other.

Lemon’s interceptions came on back-to-back drives in the third quarter. His first interception, though, was perhaps the most important for the Orange.

After a failed fake punt, the Orange turned over the ball on its own 40-yard line. With the game tied, 7-7, the botched fake seemed like it would immediately shift the momentum SU generated in the first half.

Iowa did as most teams would do and tried to capitalize on the turnover, throwing a deep pass to the end zone. But it was Lemon who ended up making the play, and the pendulum swung back in SU’s direction.

‘I think the second quarterback probably got caught off disguise,’ Lemon said. ‘I just made a play, point-blank.’

There’s no way of knowing whether the fate would have been different had Tate played. But whenever a team loses its starting quarterback-especially a senior who’s started since his sophomore season-the game changes.

‘It’s motivation,’ Lemon said. ‘You can get away with more things, not as far as play, but disguises. Manson didn’t play the first game. So coming from that perspective, it was a big thing for us.’

Published on September 9, 2006 at 12:00 pm