Let’s talk about the spike, even though Kyle McCord wants to put it behind him. The spike is the core of who McCord is now at Syracuse: himself. Not some image of who Kyle McCord should be. Not some image of what his coaches want him to be. Kyle McCord plays fast and free, and all the emotion he played with as a Little Leaguer has burst out of him.

Like the spike. It happened two Saturdays ago against Georgia Tech. Third and two in the third quarter. Syracuse leads 24-14 at its own 16-yard line. McCord takes the snap and is chased out of the pocket. He runs left toward the sideline and tiptoes down the field as a Georgia Tech defender tries to tackle him from behind.

McCord loses his balance and as he leaves the field he slams the ball into the ground – partly out of anger because he thought he could have gained more yards, and partly out of excitement because while he’s not a “mobile quarterback,” he can certainly gain a lot of yards with his legs when needed. The crowd stood and roared in approval. On the sideline itself, Syracuse safety Justin Barron began jumping up and down and high-stepping toward McCord.

Up in the press box, quarterback coach Nunzio Campanile scanned the field for flags, expecting a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. None came. “I don’t think he’ll do that again, but I also think it spurred our guys on,” Campanile said.

It was spontaneous and emotional and completely unexpected. It was the perfect reintroduction for McCord.

Syracuse is 2-0 heading into Friday night’s game against Stanford (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN App), thanks in large part to the Ohio State transfer quarterback, who has thrown for 735 yards, eight touchdowns and an interception and is completing 69% of his passes. Two games is a small sample size, but McCord told ESPN in a recent interview that he’s having more fun now than at any other point in his college career.

“It feels like high school football again, just having fun with my friends,” McCord said. “I think when you have that mindset, you have a lot of confidence and you can just play, almost subconsciously. You don’t think too much. You just react to what you see.”

That’s exactly what Syracuse coach Fran Brown had in mind when he boarded a plane to Columbus the day McCord entered the transfer portal, trying to convince him that they could win right away, but only if he said yes. Brown had the entire speech in his head. He rehearsed it on the plane.

The two had known each other since they were young. As the story goes, McCord’s father, Derek, worked for a healthcare company and was conducting an evaluation at one of its hospitals when he met Brown’s wife, Teara, who was completing a fellowship to become a head nurse anesthetist. Teara Brown mentioned her husband, Fran, who was an assistant coach at Temple at the time.

Derek McCord played at Rutgers and knew Fran, who is from Camden, New Jersey, about a half hour from Mount Laurel, New Jersey, where the McCords lived. Like any proud father, McCord pulled out his phone and started showing Teara videos of 13-year-old Kyle playing on his youth soccer team. Teara told Fran. Fran came to watch practice, and so began a casual relationship that, as fate would have it, brought the two back together last December.

After one season as a starter at Ohio State, McCord entered the transfer portal. By all measures, McCord had a highly successful season with the Buckeyes, throwing for 3,170 yards – the seventh-highest single-season total in school history – while completing 66% of his passes and throwing 24 touchdowns.

But when Ohio State loses to Michigan, like it did last year, 30-24, sometimes stats are meaningless. McCord was told it was best to move on, and he did so with his head held high. He had many suitors, but Brown was the first.

The Syracuse coach expected there would be skepticism at first – Brown, a new head coach who had previously worked as defensive backs coach at Georgia, was trying to sell one of the best quarterbacks in the country to a school that last won an outright conference title in 1998.

But Brown also knew he had that connection to Jersey and was deeply convinced that he – and only he – could give McCord everything he needed to become the best version of himself.

“I told him the truth,” Brown said. “I said, ‘Kyle, you’ve got to play for me.’ I’m not going to have as much NIL money as everybody else. I’m not going to have all those things, but I’m going to take care of you more than any football coach has ever taken care of you. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you successful. I’m not going to sleep unless I have to sleep. If you play for me and we win, that’s going to be bigger than anything you’ve ever done before.”

The hometown ties didn’t end with Brown. McCord knew offensive coordinator Jeff Nixon from the youth football team. Derek McCord coached Kyle and Jeff’s son Will on the same youth football team for three years, starting when Kyle was 5 and Will was 6. Will Nixon eventually transferred to Syracuse as well.

Brown also retained Campanile, promoting him from tight ends coach to quarterbacks coach. Campanile spent nearly two decades as a football coach for high school football teams in New Jersey – including Matt Simms, who eventually worked with Kyle McCord as a private coach.

From the moment McCord arrived on campus in January, he felt at home. Not only because he was surrounded by so many people from his childhood, but because they all believed in him, that he would go back out there and be the little Kyle of the league. Brown told him, “I’m the head coach. You’re the alternate.”

“He’s behind me 100 percent,” McCord said. “When you know the head coach thinks that way about you, you can just go out there and play freely and have fun. A lot of the guys on the team think that way too.”

Indeed, Syracuse has embraced the personalities of its two leaders – tireless workers, highly competitive, tough Jersey guys who are overlooked in some ways. But perhaps most of all, Brown and McCord know how to win over those around them.

“It’s that inner drive: ‘I know I can do it, and I’m going to show you and make you believe,'” Brown said. “That’s what Kyle has inside of him.”

McCord spent hours studying the playbook to familiarize himself with the system Nixon brought with him from the NFL so that playing the game would become second nature to him. He spent hours getting to know and working with his receivers and tight ends to not only build the right chemistry with them, but to make sure they were as invested in learning the playbook as he was.

It helped that Syracuse brought back one of the best hybrid tight ends/receivers in the country in Oronde Gadsden II, who returned to the Orange largely because of McCord. Trebor Pena also returned from a hamstring injury that limited him to one game last season, and Syracuse signed Zeed Haynes and Jackson Meeks from the transfer portal.

The relationship with Campanile blossomed, too. When Campanile suggested an improvement in footwork or technique, McCord understood it immediately because he had learned it from Simms. Nixon made sure McCord was included in meetings to discuss the offense, what he liked, what he thought he and the receivers could do well, and helped build a relationship that got them both on the same page.

These meetings take place every Thursday of game week, and they appear to be effective: Syracuse ranks 3rd in the ACC in total offense, 2nd in passing offense, and McCord ranks 1st in passing yards per game.

“He shoots, he gets the ball out on time and he plays with an aggressiveness that you really have to feel comfortable with and be confident in your performance to be able to shoot the ball like he did the first couple of games,” Campanile said. “That’s the guy we thought we were getting.”

McCord cites his relationship with Nixon as one reason for this. He said that between 10 and 15 times in the first two games, he was in a crucial situation and wanted to make a certain play that Nixon ultimately called into his helmet.

“That’s how you know you’re on the same page with the offensive coordinator, you see things the same way and have the same feel for the game,” McCord said. “That’s what I wanted to get to, to get to a point where I have a feel for what he would say and why he would say it.”

For Derek McCord, it was especially gratifying to see his son playing with fire and determination again, and doing so alongside Brown.

“I’ve been telling people I’ve got to pinch myself for the first two weeks,” he said. “I want this dream to continue to come true because he’s exceeded my expectations. It’s just great to see him play at such a high level as I knew he had the potential to. The team is doing so well and everything has come together so quickly. It’s pretty amazing.”

Especially considering how seamlessly many portal players have integrated with players like Gadsden, LeQuint Allen, Pena and the offensive line returners. It looks like they’ve been playing together for years, not just two games. Campanile and Brown say it all goes back to McCord and the way he worked in the offseason to make sure the rhythm and chemistry was there from the start.

“If he continues to play like this, which I firmly believe he will, everyone will see that he has always been this player,” Campanile said. “He just needed to be given the chance and put in a situation where everyone fully believes in him. Everyone here definitely believes in him.”

Kyle McCord says Syracuse’s offense hasn’t even “scratched the surface.” Bigger challenges are yet to come. But the feeling he has — having his old friend Will Nixon next to him, Jeff Nixon calling the plays, Brown and Campanile urging him to just be himself, play with emotion and everything else will fall into place — is ultimately why he came to Syracuse.

So you can hardly blame him if he gets angry after a big game. But the spikes? Maybe he should save those for the practice field.

“I don’t know if ‘reintroducing myself’ is the right way to put it, but I definitely feel like I played with a grudge, just given the way everything played out last year,” McCord said.

“I think a lot of people thought my motivation was to go out and prove people wrong. But really, I was just trying to prove myself right.”