Syracuse, N.Y. — Garrett Shrader kept it low-key when talking about two of the best fakes that college football has seen this season, but his teammates called the two highlights against Purdue “magic.”
While Shrader’s 195 rushing yards on 25 carries boosted Syracuse over Purdue last Saturday, it was the smoothness in which he delivered a pair of fakes that got the most national attention and led head coach Dino Babers to call Syracuse “the faking capital of the world.”
“He just makes magic happen,” Syracuse wide receiver D’Marcus Adams said. “He’s a magician. He does what Garrett does.”
Babers said that the Syracuse coaching staff has been preaching the importance of perfectly-executed fakes for years, stressing it with such urgency that Babers performs an unspecified physical punishment when he’s fooled by his quarterbacks in practice.
“They’ve been doing that for years and they’re really good at it,” Babers said. “It’s like a lost art. Faking is big-time. Faking takes two people working together. … To think I’m sitting right there behind them and I can’t tell, that’s how good they are. True story.”
Shrader, meanwhile, said he’s long admired Aaron Rodgers’ ability to make the ball disappear and he has been working on his football fakery since high school.
“I watched a lot of Aaron Rodgers,” Shrader said. “I started doing it in high school. That was the first time I started doing stuff like that. Mainly on naked (bootlegs) and outside zone stuff. For our case it’s more goal-line stuff. There’s a time and place for it. I won’t do it often. But if there’s a time and place and for it.”
Shrader’s teammates said his ability to deliver the fakes so well was a testament to his attention to detail and feel for the game more than anything else.
During both plays against Purdue, Shrader did more than just tuck the ball into the chest of his running back and pull it.
He delivered an Oscar-worthy acting…
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