The game of football promotes the element of instant reaction.

Last weekend, the instant reaction was triumphant. It was, literally, tears of joy. This week, it was back to before. This week, it was a far cry from last, if you will.

This week, it was apologetic.

‘If you want me to apologize, I apologize,’ Syracuse head coach Doug Marrone said after his team’s lackluster showing in a 45-14 blowout loss to Pittsburgh. ‘I do, and I mean that.’

The instant reaction and the instant analysis to take away from this game is there are still many questions for this version of the Syracuse football team.

Don’t get caught up in the moment. This team isn’t as bad as it played Saturday. It also isn’t as good as it played at parts in last weekend’s victory at South Florida. The reality is, simply, the Orange still has a bunch of questions to answer.

‘We are ready to ride and get to work,’ SU running back Delone Carter said after the game. ‘Correct the wrongs that we made, and do what we need to do to prove it next week and win.’

The reality is this: There are still a lot of wrongs. And they start on offense, a group that has had two effective drives in Big East play — the 14-play, 98-yard touchdown drive to win at USF and the 10-play, 83-yard drive to answer Pittsburgh’s first touchdown Saturday.

From there, it was more of the same. Three-and-outs, silly penalties and big mistakes.

‘They were who they say they are on film,’ said Antwon Bailey, channeling his inner Dennis Green at the podium (albeit a much less angry version). ‘Like I said, we just had a few mental errors and some things we didn’t capitalize on.’

After that SU drive to tie the score, it went like this:

Three plays, seven yards.

Three plays, minus-four yards.

Three plays, nine yards.

Three plays, eight yards.

All of that happened as the Panthers built a 28-7 lead, a deficit from which Syracuse had no real shot to recover. Not with drives like those four.

Some of the players said the problems stemmed from mental errors and a lack of execution. Marrone said, on one of the drives, at least, his play calling should have been better. But whatever it was, it left an instant reaction of disappointment.

‘I told the players, ‘I’m big on the little things,” Marrone said. ‘Doing the little things better. … We just have to tighten up the ship, get everybody focused on the task at hand, and go back to work and work harder. And I think we’ve worked quite hard up to this point.’

And on defense, there are wrongs to right in a unit that has played this season about as consistently and as steadily as Ron and Sammi’s relationship on ‘Jersey Shore.’

One week, the unit is giving up 230 yards on the ground to lowly Colgate. The next, it is running B.J. Daniels around the field, giving up fewer total yards to USF than it did on the ground to Colgate (219).

And the next, the defense is dominated from the start, propelled by a 79-yard touchdown on Pittsburgh’s first offensive drive. The defense failed to adjust to the Panthers’ pass-heavy attack. That led, once again, to an instant reaction of disappointment.

‘A lot of disappointment,’ SU defensive end Chandler Jones said. ‘I personally feel that there were a lot of plays that I left out on the field, and we made a few mistakes.’

So that’s the instant reaction. The bigger picture, past tears of joy and past apologies, is that Syracuse is 4-2 and 1-1 in the Big East with half its season left to play. The long-term goals are still very much in focus.

Marrone’s team had its moment against USF, and he wanted there to be another one Saturday. He said as much after the game. But he also has a sense of the bigger picture.

‘It feels, for the moment, that the sky is falling down and everything is bad,’ Marrone said. ‘But that’s why you have to keep an even keel.’

For the moment, there are questions. And how Syracuse answers those questions will determine the instant reaction of its season.

Brett LoGiurato is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear occasionally. He can be reached at bplogiur@syr.edu.

Published on October 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm