Earlier this season, Syracuse head coach Scott Shafer told the story of Durell Eskridge’s recruitment.

The SU coaches took a trip down to Miami to watch Eskridge’s Miami Central (Fla.) High School squad play, but they were there for another player. And when Eskridge impressed, the Syracuse coaches couldn’t sign him. They had already filled their quota for wide receivers — a fact that seems mind-boggling given the team’s current crop of wideouts.

So Eskridge switched to safety. And with the group of wideouts that originally kept Eskridge from SU either banged-up or unreliable, the starting SU strong safety lined up out wide a handful of times during SU’s (5-6, 3-4 Atlantic Coast) 17-16 loss to Pittsburgh (6-5, 3-4) on Saturday.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve been mentioning wide receiver,” Eskridge said. “I always come up and ask the wide receiver coach (Rob Moore), ‘When you going to put me in? When you going to put me in?’

“He gave me my shot today and I tried to make the best of it.”

But Eskridge fared no better than the rest of the receiving group. Most notably, he was unable to haul in a difficult touchdown grab just before halftime.

With 17 seconds left in the second quarter and SU facing a third-and-10 from the Pittsburgh 24, Hunt heaved the ball up for Eskridge down the left sideline. Eskridge leapt forward and caught the ball in the end zone, but as he came to the ground, the ball slid down his chest — his fingers scrambling to keep hold — and down toward his waist as he hit the ground on his side and slid out of bounds.

“I felt like I made the catch,” Eskridge said. “I kind of bobbled it a little bit, but I felt like I brought it in at the end and kept my feet in.”

While his return to wide receiver did not result in a fairy-tale ending for the Orange, Eskridge did lead the team with 12 total tackles, including one for a loss, and a forced fumble that rolled out of bounds after Cameron Lynch was unable to scoop it up. In a game filled with missed opportunities, Eskridge stabilized the defense that kept Syracuse in the game down to the final seconds.

But it’s the near touchdown that’ll be remembered from this game. Even SU head coach Scott Shafer thought it was good on first glimpse.

“I thought he made a nice move on the guy and he had it,” Shafer said. “Doggonit that was close. Did you guys see the replay? Was it as close as I thought it was?”

Published on November 23, 2013 at 8:10 pm

Contact Stephen: sebail01@syr.edu | @Stephen_Bailey1