The arm was never a problem. Cameron Dantley always had a big arm, a right cannon attached to his 6-foot-1, 218-pound frame. That arm got him out of jams as a high school quarterback. That arm helped him earn a scholarship after walking on to the Syracuse football team in 2005.

When people talk about Cameron Dantley – when they’re not talking about his father Adrian, inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame last Friday – they usually talk about his arm strength. Which is fair: Dantley, a redshirt junior, said he fired a ball 75 to 80 yards, one day last year.

But his arm didn’t get him where he is now, starting again for the Orange (0-2), on Saturday, as it rekindles a rivalry with No. 17 Penn State (2-0) at 3:30 p.m. at the Carrier Dome. It helped, for sure. But it didn’t put him over the top. That was something else.

‘The thing about him is,’ said quarterbacks coach Phil Earley, ‘he’s really done a nice job with his feet.’

Not running with them. But footwork and coordination: Earley preaches the basics to his quarterback pupils. Dantley just needed to polish them.

See, the arm was always fine. So was his agility. So was his field sense. The problem was his feet. Dantley was off-balance when he dropped back to pass, when he ran the Syracuse offense in practice. He wasn’t consistent.

Dantley understood. That’s why he pounded his way through a consistent jump rope routine to refine his feet. It’s what he needed to do to displace Andrew Robinson, the incumbent starter behind center.

‘This is what I’ve been pushing myself to since I’ve been young,’ Dantley said. ‘I always expect to start. That’s just the confidence I have in myself.’

Doug Boswell, his coach at the St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., used to see that confidence every day – he first coached Dantley in sixth grade. Boswell knew his strengths. He knew his weaknesses too. ‘For his arm,’ Boswell said, ‘his feet are average.’

So Dantley stayed late after practice, walking through plays, adjusting his feet to Boswell’s hybrid Wing-T offense. The Bulldogs had receivers who could stretch the field and a quarterback who could find them with ease: Dantley threw for 2,850 and 28 touchdowns as a senior.

Dantley walked on to the Orange, spurning scholarship offers from Mid-American Conference schools such as Kent State and Miami (Ohio). He earned a scholarship at Syracuse coming into the 2007 season. He backed up Robinson that year, starting against South Florida while Robinson recovered from a cracked rib. Dantley struggled at times against the Bulls (two interceptions, two sacks), but thrived at others (276 yards, one touchdown).

It was enough to give him hope heading into the 2008 season. And so did something else. Head coach Greg Robinson doesn’t designate starters during training camp: there’s a first-string and a second-string. For most of camp, Andrew Robinson was first team, Dantley second.

Except Dantley, the former walk-on with the famous father, kept outplaying Robinson, who was coming off a solid season as a harried and often hit quarterback. So Greg Robinson gave Andrew the nod for what he endured last year, for dealing with the two wins, 10 losses and 54 sacks.

But Robinson struggled in the season-opener against Northwestern, and Robinson made the call. Dantley would start.

‘I felt like it was the right thing to do to go to Cam,’ Robinson said after Dantley started Saturday, a 42-28 loss to Akron. ‘Because he had fought through it and gotten his game to a level where I felt he deserved to be the starter this week.’

It wasn’t much of a transition for the rest of the offense when the he took over. Dantley had worked with them all training camp, enough to establish a rapport with the line (‘A snap’s a snap,’ said starting center Jim McKenzie. ‘Different quarterbacks have different ways of putting their hands down, but it’s basically the same.’) and the receiving corps (‘It was a surprise at first,’ said leading receiver Donte Davis. ‘But Cam did a great job, made a bunch of plays.)

Dantley threw three touchdowns, last Saturday. He audibled at the line on the first score, then found tight end Mike Owen wide open for a 32-yard touchdown. He threw while being hit. He was accurate, completing 65 percent of his passes.

Not all was roses, of course. The Orange lost, for one. Dantley fumbled, for another. And he regressed late in the game, Earley said. His fundamentals deserted him – Earley blamed himself for that.

‘He had a decent game going,’ Earley said. ‘At the end, he missed two, three passes that were easy completions that he should have had.’

Those mistakes can be corrected with time. With experience. With more footwork practice.

And he still has that arm.

‘I always want to get better and better, to see myself progress,’ Dantley said. ‘And to see myself starting right now is a great accomplishment for me.’

ramccull@syr.edu

Published on September 11, 2008 at 12:00 pm