| 26 September 2011
Once Todd Graham was eventually announced as Pitt's head coach, the positive reviews were almost immediate. After Dave Wannstedt's field position offense, the fast-talking Texan's "High Octane" was a breath of fresh air. Now the Panthers are 2-2 and have blown two fourth quarter leads. Pitt is 82nd among FBS teams in total offense and 97th in total defense. And the buzzards are prematurely circling Todd Graham:
Too bad the Pitt coach wasn't good enough.
Graham said Pitt is a "disciplined" team. It's hard to see it. A disciplined team doesn't take five false-start penalties, including three on guard Lucas Nix, one on a first-and-10 play at the Notre Dame 11.
....
But Graham's play-call on the 2-point try was really annoying. Pitt usually lines up in a muddle huddle before shifting to a standard formation to kick an extra point. This time, the ball was snapped early to backup quarterback Trey Anderson, who tried to run for the score but was swarmed by the Notre Dame defense.
Graham was dismissive of a question about the play. "I thought it gave us a better chance to score." He could have pointed out that Pitt used similar trickery to score two points twice against Maine. I would counter that by saying this was Notre Dame, not Maine. I assume Notre Dame can afford video equipment and probably studied Pitt on tape. It sure looked like it knew that play was coming.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Pitt's offense had just gone 80 yards in 19 plays to score the go-ahead touchdown, its only good drive of the day. If you want to go for 2, is it really so wrong to use your regular offense instead of a gadget play?
I'm much more willing to criticize for the penalties than the two-point conversion play. Being aggressive? Fine by me. College football is about scoring points - not defense, not field position, not controlling the clock. Score as many points as humanly possible and hope to have the ball at the end of the game. Yeah, you can win with defense in college football, but that defense better be elite. So going for two in order to be up by seven rather than six in the second half isn't a big deal to me. Was it a bad play? It's not what I would have called, but with the offense being what it is right now, can't say I blame him for not having faith in the "regular" O to get it done.
The penalties were way too much though. Especially among the offensive line, which had six. Only one was by new starter Cory King, who can be excused for a penalty here and there as he gets his feet wet. Three false starts on Lucas Nix? Way too many. That's coaching. The line clearly wasn't prepared to play.
Joe Starkey has a similar piece to Cook, but it's so bleh I don't even feel like linking it.
Clearly, things have to get better soon or 2011 is in danger of becoming a lost season. With South Florida already a few days away, Pitt could help themselves a ton by starting Big East play 1-0. Whether they can do that on a short week remains to be seen.
But don't tell that to players. They still seem pretty "bought in" to the system, or at least the captains are:
"We're so close we can touch it," Sunseri said. "That's the big thing and that's the thing that's so frustrating in the locker room: we feel like we are inches away from really busting this open and really being in that tempo offense and understanding it and really being able to put points on the board."
Still, the offense has shown signs of improvement, even if those signs aren't quite as pronounced as those on defense. While Sunseri is still working to make quicker decisions and get rid of the ball within the rhythm of the offense, he has steadily gotten better at making reads in each game. His statistics may not bear that out - 65.1% completion, 823 yards, four touchdowns, four interceptions - but Sunseri is confident that improvement is happening.
"It's a new system and new everything, and we feel like we're getting better and better at it each week. We feel like we're getting more comfortable at it each week. I know that I'm getting more comfortable in it each and every week. We just have to keep on rolling and get better."
Crushing South Florida at home on ESPN would certainly do the trick. For the Pitt players, they could certainly use a pick me up after losing two fourth quarter leads in the past two weeks. The local media would once again get to dust off their "Pitt may not be good, but the Big East is just bad enough that they have a shot" article from 2008 2009 2010. And I get to be happy and drunk on a weeknight.
Everybody wins.
Except South Florida, of course.
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