… Much like Darius Walk– no, nevermind. Too painful.

In no particular order…

Ditka speaks, and nobody should be listening.

“He’s a young guy with a lot of enthusiasm and he’s really proud to be a Pittsburgh guy. And you have to have a Pittsburgh guy here. You don’t need any more California guys here, gang. We don’t need any of that crap. They come and go like the flies.”

He does know that Walt Harris is all of 5 years older than Coach Wannstedt. 7 years was like flies? Then I guess that time in New Orleans as head coach for Ditka was the lifespan of a fruit fly? Or was that just the amount of time it took before all 3 Saints fans realized that hire was up there with the Arizona Cardinals hiring Buddy Ryan?

Last I checked the kind of coaches from Pitt’s past everyone wants to see Wannstedt emulating in success were not exactly Pittsburghers — Majors and Sherrill.

I guess he’s quotable, and that’s what makes him popular. Though, when he was announced during halftime, most of us just started breaking into SNL “Superfan” routines — I never claimed we were original or that funny.

The only good thing from that story, is that Dan Marino has apparently made some peace with Dave Wannstedt following what happened in Miami.

“I’m excited for him and the entire university,” Marino said. “I think he’ll do a terrific job. As far as recruiting goes, I think he’ll do a great job because he is from this area.”

There was plenty of blame from this game.

As I feared, it was line play, line play, line play.

A lot of the blame went to former Coach Harris for not getting the talent on the lines. I suppose, then, that Harris was also to blame for the expectations that the lines would be better; because, up until the game was actually played, the majority of fans seemed willing to believe that the talent was good enough and the new coaches would make a huge difference.

I don’t want to have to keep defending Harris, but the bashing the former coach is rather useless at this point. Not to mention, petty.

And who knows, maybe by the end of the season, it will be far better. Will anyone give any credit to Harris then, or just the coaches and players?

I know, this is just to make excuses for Coach Wannstedt not meeting our expectations. Honestly, he and the players can handle it.

“I am disappointed,” Wannstedt said. “I must have not done a good enough job myself of not letting our guys read newspapers and magazines and think that we were probably a little better football team and a little further along then what we are today. I, really, from a fundamental standpoint, particularly on defense, did not do a good enough job of getting these guys prepared.

“We also did not deal with adversity the way championship teams deal with adversity. We just didn’t handle it well.”

Pitt linebacker H.B. Blades added, “Football is a game of will, and they wanted it more than we did. There are no excuses, there are no fingers to point — they just beat us in every aspect of the game.”

Personally, I like to hope that a little biased reading between the lines means the clock is ticking on Defensive Coordinator Paul Rhoads.

More coming.

One loss does not wreck the season. Even a disappointing, lopsided one like this.

I’d say the most frustrating thing about this kind of loss is how it deflated the excitement.

With a night game to kick off the season, that meant an opportunity for a lot of people to get to campus, before any tailgating or going to the game. This included me. I left for Pitt from Cleveland a little early so I could meet some friends on campus and just soak it in a bit.

It’s one of the perks of the first game of the season being an evening start. I’d been down on campus a couple years before the season opener, and I know some of the guys had been to Oakland the year before. Since Pitt has started playing their games over at Heinz Field, I have never seen the Campus so alive on game day.

I got in about 1, and the place was teeming. The Pitt Stop — the outdoor street vendors were looking mobbed. The Pitt Shop had a line of people out the door — I have never seen that. All the restaurants were packed. People made the pilgrimage. It was amazing.

There was such excitement and anticipation.

Following that kind of loss… I don’t want to say lost yet. But it’s going to take something special to get it back this year.

This is nothing against Coach Wannstedt, the team, anything like that. This is about energy and fandom.

At the moment, it is back down to “show me” levels. Pitt has its next 2 games on the road. Both games will be nationally televised. As down as I’ve been feeling, it’s not too late to get it back.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t feel like talking about the game.

I didn’t get home until the early afternoon, and owed it to the wife and kid to spend time with them for allowing me to indulge in the trip and everything else. So you can expect on home games where I’m spending the night in the ‘Burgh that I won’t be posting right away.

The nice thing about this blog — no deadline.

I still haven’t read anything on the game at this writing. Even managed to miss discussions about Pitt in the College GameDay Final. Just the box score to confirm some stuff.

Well, wow did that suck. I did not see that coming. Not that we lost — even when picking Pitt to win, I could see us losing. I just didn’t expect to see Pitt dominated like that.

After the game we just found ourselves in the lot just kind of looking at each other and cursing, trying to figure out where Pitt looked good. We didn’t find much.

The lines were absolutely dominated.

No pass protection or room to run up the middle for the offense. It was hard to tell whether it was by a bad game plan or the lack of time for Tyler Palko — and at the moment I’m favoring the latter — that kept Pitt from trying to get the ball to Greg Lee more.

On defense, the pass coverage had to play soft — in no small part because a lot of help was needed for the line. This allowed short, underneath passes all night long. And Quinn had all day for someone to get open with his O-line. To Quinn’s credit, he was also a lot faster than I expected at escaping when he did face pressure or on a roll-out.

Darius Walker, the ND RB, looked very, very impressive. The way he changed directions and hit the holes with a real burst was something.

Pitt couldn’t make ND punt until early in the 4th quarter. Special teams looked bad. Furman had that costly fumble mid-way through the 2nd quarter on a kick-off, and when ND capitalized to make it 28-10 that just took the crowd completely out of it. It was completely deflated.

The one bright side I could find, was that our corners defended rather well. ND wisely discarded any pass over 10-15 yards after the Revis interception in the 1st quarter. There’s a reason that their receivers only caught 8 of the 18 passes from Quinn. Over half the passing yards from ND came on the run after the catch.

Well, I expected ND to run a lot, and they did. At nearly 2-1.

I’m starting to drift. I’ll have more later.