Really Late, I know. I expect tomorrow will have the real recriminations. The game was too late for the deep articles. So articles tended to have a rushed, beat the deadline feel.

Graessele suffered his concussion making a tackle on that return at the end of the half that set up UConn’s field goal for a 13-10 lead. Punt returns with Allen Richardson was another disaster; and punt and kick coverage was horrible. The O-line took more injuries as Pettiti — who was not playing particularly well in the game — was hurt.

Even in Connecticut, they know Walt Harris’ days are likely numbered, and know that the decisions at the end of the 1st half are a crystallizing moment.

When a program isn’t meeting expectations and a coach is under pressure, the little things become magnified.

Such was the case with one play call made by Pittsburgh coach Walt Harris and his Panthers in the second quarter of their 29-17 loss to UConn at Rentschler Field Thursday night. Trailing UConn 10-7 with 57 seconds left before halftime, Pitt faced a third-and-12 at the UConn 12.

Pitt called timeout to set up a play. Instead of taking one shot at the end zone, quarterback Tyler Palko rushed to the middle of the field for a loss of 1 yard. Josh Cummings then came on and tied the score with a 30-yard field goal.

“I decided to go for the field goal,” Harris said. “It was third down and 12 from there and we’ve got a young quarterback. We tried to run the ball over and get it in perfect position for our field goal kicker. We thought going in at halftime 10-10 would be the intelligent way to play this game on the road. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way. It didn’t end that way.”
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Despite all that, expectations heading into this season were lower and a 41-38 overtime victory over Furman, the No. 2 team in Division I-AA, last Saturday had put Harris in a defensive mood. Things started going downhill last season when the Panthers didn’t live up to preseason expectations with a talented team that included Heisman Trophy candidate Larry Fitzgerald. Pitt lost five games, including a 23-16 setback to Virginia in the Continental Tire Bowl.

That increased the pressure on Harris, 57, who has taken the Panthers to four consecutive bowls. His contract expires after the 2006 season and there is no indication that a new one is in the works.

Arguably, Harris has held a new contract in his own hands with this season. At least show that he understood what needed to improve and take steps towards remedying them. Of course, last year’s Miami game showed what happens when you let a Walt Harris Pitt team have control of its own destiny.

Actually, one columnist managed to get his blast out early on the game. Gene Collier with something of a must read.

While it was easy enough to determine what Connecticut was trying to do on the damp New England lawn, it was impossible to know what Pitt was attempting at the manic behest of Walt Harris.

These are difficult times for the Panthers’ coach. It is the dawn of the Tyler Palko Era, and it is the twilight of Harris’ tenure, and the odd light thrown by unnaturally conflicting career rotations is getting harder and harder to describe.

Harris doesn’t seem to have any trouble putting Palko in situations that are ridiculously high risk, such as throwing from his own end zone into the flat on the road, but can’t seem to bring himself to let the talented sophomore flash his skills and build on his modest successes.

While it is not exactly news that the relationship between Harris, alleged passing game mastermind, and his inevitably skittish quarterbacks is an issue best left to the psychotherapists, the symptoms last night reached absolutely bizarre proportions.

When a Connecticut punt rolled dead at the 2 in a scoreless first quarter, Harris flirted with sanity and sent tailback Raymond Kirkley up the middle for a yard of oxygen. On second down, insanity returned. Palko dropped back into his own end zone and fired into the left flat for Greg Lee.

Connecticut cornerback Justin Perkins stepped in front of it and was in the Panthers’ end zone before he even had to accelerate.

Harris must consider being compelled to punt some kind of school-yard humiliation, which is curious in that sometimes a punt is his best offensive play. Adam Graessle bombed a 74-yard punt out of the Pitt end zone just three possessions after the interception, bailing the Panthers out of a contorted spell in which the offense would commit four pre-snap penalties in six plays.

Late in the first half, with Pitt trailing, 10-7, Harris had Palko execute a series of maneuvers I’d be tempted to call unprecedented if only I’d been watching football for a little more than 44 years. So I’ll just call them preposterous.
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Before third-and-goal at the 12, Pitt called a timeout to think things over. Unless you’re Walt, there isn’t much to think about. This is what Palko is at Pitt for, to sizzle third-and-goal passes into the end zone from the 12, because ostensibly he can. But he won’t if Harris keeps dealing in the kind of brainstorm he was about to display.

Palko took the snap on the left hash, ran two steps to his right … and … slid.

He slid. I believe he was safe. He lost a yard, but centered the spot of the ball so Josh Cummings could kick a 30-yard field goal for a 10-10 tie that would last 19 seconds.

“No,” Harris said when asked if he considered going to the end zone on third-and-12. “I decided to go for the field goal on third-and-12 with a young quarterback. I thought that going in at half tied, 10-10, would be the intelligent way to play this game when you’re on the road.”

If you can get past the spectacle of a quarterback intentionally sliding to a stop in his own backfield on third down, you can write this off to Harris’ penchant for outsmarting himself. But if you’re Tyler Palko, what are you thinking — this guy will let me throw it from my own end zone, but not into theirs?

If Harris thought there was negativity before, this week should be brutal.

Bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter feelings still. Not feeling any better about this game the next morning. It’s time to vent.

Sat down for the game with a beer, pad and pen. Turned to ESPN2 a couple minutes before 7pm. For amusement, I tabbed the info key on the remote about the game. This is, and I am quoting directly, how the Northeast Ohio Comcast program guide described it:

Pittsburgh at Connectitcut in Big East action at Rentschler Field. Senior RB Raymond Kirkley carries the load for the Panthers in their first-ever meeting with UConn.

Okay, interesting description. The crew for the game is Sean McDonough with play-by-play, Craig James doing color and Heather Cox on the sideline. They kick it back to the studio for a few minutes with Rece Davis and Mark May. Rece brings up Pitt’s D giving up 38 points to Furman, and you could see May dip his head and visibly wince.

You know what, I took some 14 pages of longhand notes and scribbles during this game and even stopped with some 5 minutes left in the game. Looking them over makes me see red once more, so I’ll spare everyone the details and summarize briefly. I still haven’t looked at the dailies or any mainstream write-ups. Just looked at the box score, drive chart and play-by-play.

So let’s start with some depressing facts. The O-line, once more killed this team. Pitt committed 8 penalties. I think the O-line was responsible for all but one. Mostly false starts, because they were so undisciplined and jittery. Pathetic. It is so hard to tell how good or bad the Running Backs are when they have no holes to hit. Kirkley, Furman and Mason all plowed straight ahead, but there was nothing to run through. Craig James kept pointing out that the only running game Pitt had was when Palko had to take off — and Palko really needs to learn to slide at the end of a run.

Same for Palko, the QB. He was only 11 for 31 with 267 yards, but he had absolutely no time to pass. He was their only offense. Pitt had 349 total yards, and Palko accounted for 316 of them (49 yards running, 267 passing). That might be normal if Pitt ran Nebraska’s old option offense, but not for this team.

Pitt’s first 2 offensive series were 3-and-out. They had a total of 7 for the game. Plus 3 drives that were for only for 4 plays. I’m amazed the offense managed to stay out there for 27:05 of the game.

The fact that the defense was out for nearly 33 minutes doesn’t excuse them. It especially doesn’t excuse the coaches who didn’t make adjustments to the pass coverage. The corners played 7-12 yards off the receivers the entire game. It was no wonder someone was always wide open across the middle. Just run a simple slant and there’s an easy pick-up. The defense got lazy or tired further into the game. Once more, they forgot to tackle and just tried to hit the receiver — allowing more yards after the catch. Orlovsky was not sharp early in the game. About half way through the 2nd quarter he was only 6-17. His receivers dropped several balls. After that point, though, he went 17-26 as UConn kept exploiting the middle of the field. There was no excuse not to make the adjustments. James and McDonough were even talking about the need to make adjustments for the second half — which resulted in a harsh, loud, barking laugh from me at that statement. And do I really need to mention the fact that the Josh Lay and Darrelle Revis both let interceptions they could have easily taken in for a touchdown bounce off their hands?

And the run defense. It just kept getting worse further into the game. It actually looked respectable in the first half. At one point in the first half, Brockington had 57 yards on 11 carries. 26 of the yards, though, came on one carry, so the run defense seemed decent enough. In the second half, however, he ran wild and ended up finishing with 185 yards on 31 carries! Way to keep him under 200 guys.

As far as I was concerned, though, the game was lost just before the half. Pitt puts together a nice drive sparked by a solid kickoff return by Furman. They get to the 10 yard line for first and goal. Palko misses DelSardo in the corner. Kirkley gets taken down for a 2 yard loss and Pitt takes a time out with 57 seconds left. I made a note next to that that said “they’ll run to preserve position.” So I expected a running play. But I didn’t expect Palko to just go sideways a couple yards. To not even try to run for any gain. All Pitt wanted to do was tie the game. Not to lose playing.

UConn was playing a different game. An aggressive one. They took a timeout so that after Cummings made the FG, they still had a little time on the clock. UConn had a solid return that brought the ball to midfield with 10 seconds left. A good throw along the sidelines for 18 yards (why was Henry so open over there?) allowing the receiver to get out of bounds with 2 seconds left. They take a crack at a 49 yard field goal and naturally make it. It was like the football gods were rewarding UConn for playing aggressive and punishing Pitt for not.

I don’t think there was a Pitt fan watching who just didn’t lose faith in the game at that point even with UConn only up by 3 at the half.

I honestly think, Harris may have lost just about all support amongst the fans in this game. He’s skirted close a couple times. The 2001 first half of the season with the spread. In 2002, the BC game — where many of us actually gave up and went out to the lot to drink. Last year he lost a lot of support, but you had to give him at least this year to see if he could turn it around. But now? Same mistakes. Same problems. Alienating the WPIAL coaches the way he has is virtually suicidal. For Harris and the team, it’s a good thing to have an away game next week. And by god they better beat Temple.

There were a couple positives in the game. If Palko ever gets protection, I really think he will be a great QB. Greg Lee showed moments of living up to his potential — including a point where he actually fought for a ball, and ripped it back from the corner covering him. DelSardo has been fantastic. This 5’8″ kid is playing so well. Graessle keeps improving on his punting — hopefully the concussion wasn’t bad.

Sorry I took forever to get this out. Had a lot of things to do this morning and afternoon.

Like Chas, I’m a little too frustrated to do a decent post on the UConn fiasco yet. However, I can’t help but mention what I thought was the clear highlight of the game: Mark May practically calling Walt Harris a pussy for not going for the end zone on third down just before halftime. For those of you who didn’t see it, May made his commentary from the ESPN studio just after the teams left the field. I guess what I liked about May so much was the look of genuine embarrassment and anger in his eyes. For a moment, he wasn’t just another allegedly impartial analyst. He was a frustrated Pitt alumnus and Panther fan, just like me.

Despite our allegedly having much better talent than UConn, we deservedly got crushed last night. We had no presence on the line on either side of the ball. Palko ran for his life for most of the night, while we got literally no pressure on Orlovsky. Our receivers rarely fought for balls, and often just tried to avoid getting hit. Sooner or later all of this is Harris’s responsibility. At the very least, there ARE plays out there for offenses with weak lines. I mean, has Harris ever heard of play action? Even though the refs did repeatedly hose us, enough real penalties were committed to question our team discipline. Our game preparation was wanting. Our in-game adjustments were non-existent. Based on his comments from last Saturday’s College Gameday Final show on ESPN, I’m pretty sure that Mark May has about had it with Walt. I’m starting to agree…

…not that “JFC” didn’t make some good points in the comments under this post from earlier this week…

“I still get back to the issue of who are you going to replace harris
with??? Its easy to run the guy out of town but not so easy to find a better
replacement. Granted most of us probably dont buy into Harris being an offensive
genius but it is a reputation thats out there… His reputation still works
for him. We are not getting people like Urban Myer. So who does that leave? Who
is going to bring a reptation for something to Pitt??”

Good point. Harris does have that reputation on the national level (although I doubt he’ll keep it for much longer), and it has kind of worked for him in the past. And although Pitt has allegedly great facilities, it clearly isn’t the best job in the country either. We’re not going to get Bob Stoops sniffing around Oakland. I guess my only response to JFC’s point would be to ask how much longer we can afford to have our program wondering aimlessly — losing like it did last night — with a coach at the helm who has alienated his recruiting base, refused to take responsibility for anything that’s gone wrong, repeatedly attacked his players in public, and shown no ability to call plays, make any halftime adjustments, or worst of all, improve. At this point, a decent coach from the WPIAL might even be an improvement.

This is a tough (and very serious) issue. Hail to some decent discussion on this.

Bitter. Angry. Frustrated. Not yet ready to put my game notes in a semi-coherent manner. This was a bad loss. I’m now starting to believe that Walt Harris wants to be fired. Going to try and sleep this off.