Got back from in-laws late this evening, and it’s dial-up down there (hence the lack of any links for the early post) so posting and surveying the news was limited.
Early last week, I mentioned how many sportswriters were falling over themselves to jump off the Wannstedt/Pitt bandwagon. Most have no shame, and will act as if they knew it all along. While there are some at least willing to concede to on the bandwagon even as they jump.
We admit it: We were sucked in by Dave Wannstedt.
When he first was named coach at Pittsburgh, we didn’t like the hire. But as the months went by and Wannstedt — a Pitt alum — talked about adding toughness on both sides of the ball, restoring the tradition and hitting the recruiting trail with a vengeance (17 oral commitments already), we changed our minds.
Man, why did we do that?
The Panthers, who tied for the Big East title and went to a BCS bowl last season, are 0-2 under Wannstedt after a loss to Ohio U. – Ohio U. – on Friday night.
Ohio was coming off a stomping at the hands of Northwestern, but the Bobcats played good defense and parlayed two interception returns for touchdowns – including one in OT – into the upset.
Pitt QB Tyler Palko certainly used to be better. He and WR Greg Lee should be one of the most lethal pass-catch combinations in the nation. Instead, Palko looks lost in Pitt’s new “offense”; he is 33-of-60 (55 percent) for 340 yards, with one TD and four picks. He was 13-of-25 for just 120 yards against Ohio, and next faces a tough Nebraska defense.
Wannstedt can talk all he wants about adding toughness and making sure Pitt can run the ball. What he has done, though, is take away the offensive identity the Panthers had established under former coach Walt Harris – who basically was run off by the current administration.
Wannstedt has made it a point to say Pitt can win the national title by cleaning up in recruiting within 300 miles of the city. Maybe that’s so. But Wannstedt ain’t the coach to lead anybody to a title.
Maybe it’s mindless optimism. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking it’s too soon to decide anything. Maybe it’s because I know Coach Wannstedt isn’t going anywhere for a few seasons so I better brace myself, but I’m just not ready to pass judgment on Wannstedt the college coach after two- admittedly disheartening — games.
The Pitt team doesn’t exactly know what has happened, but they aren’t giving up. Unsurprisingly, the players are finding the positives. Talking about how the defense played well and that it is just a matter of putting things together. That the offensive line, that hasn’t exactly been playing well, was hurting. Though, no one is exactly able to explain the poor play of the wide receivers.
Now Pitt faces Nebraska. A team, not exactly inspiring the fans or columnists.
Sure, NU, fueled by three defensive touchdowns, put a 31-3 bruise on the Demon Deacons to move its record to 2-0. But having done almost nothing to make one forget about last week’s 25-7 tussle with Division I-AA Maine, Nebraska’s record feels more like 2-and uh-oh. Or more precisely, 2-and no O.
Eight quarters into the season, it’s one sustained touchdown drive for the offense and four TDs for the defense. Kevin Cosgrove and his crew deserve to take bows, but they’d better make sure when they ask for a little help from above in that pre-game huddle — they ask for help from the other side of the ball, too.
You know it’s not good when TBS names Wake Forest quarterback Ben Mauk the Huskers’ Offensive Player of the Game.
OK, so that really didn’t happen. But I bet he got serious consideration.
One week ago we watched Nebraska, with 16 full offensive possessions, settle for four field goals. The only”drive” to reach the end zone came after a punt return to the Maine 1.
On Saturday, the Huskers went 1-for-15 trying to march to pay dirt. So much for that big jump teams expect to make from Week 1 to Week 2.
Of course, Pitt losing on Friday to Ohio under former Nebraska Coach Frank Solich is an interesting subject to the Nebraska faithful — or at least an emotional one.
It was a storybook script that began with Pittsburgh scoring on the opening kickoff. It ended with Ohio U. claiming the winning touchdown on a pass interception. In overtime.
The final: Ohio 16, Pittsburgh 10.
And guess what? Pittsburgh, the defending Big East champ with an 0-2 record this season, plays Nebraska next Saturday.
You know what that means. Right? Of course you do.
The entire Husker Nation knows what it means. No one knows it better than Steve Pederson, the NU athletic director who exhibited the tact of a prairie rattler when he fired Solich a couple of years ago. [More on that, later.]
…
Let us recall the time when Solich was fired by Pederson.Pederson’s first choice to replace him was him Dave Wannstedt, the guy who then coached the Miami Dolphins and now coaches Pittsburgh. (Remember, Pederson returned to Nebraska after serving as athletic director for — Pittsburgh.) Wannstedt is in his first year at Pittsburgh, and the Panthers are 0-2 for the first time since 1984. That is particularly annoying since they opened the season ranked No. 23 in the nation.
After going through a rolodex of guys who said “No!” Pederson eventually signed Bill Callahan to lead Nebraska. B.C. had recently been fired by the Oakland Raiders.
When Pederson fired Solich after the 2003 regular season, he said NU was headed in the wrong direction. The Huskers were 9-3 and won a bowl game; but those three losses were blowouts at the hands of the three best teams NU played. Solich had a large army of detractors among Husker fans.
It’s an interesting read.
Of course, Pitt had it’s own former coach making his debut this weekend. The Pittsburgh dailies both sent columnists to report on it. It varied in coverage from backhanded compliments:
The game was like so many that Harris coached at Pitt. His team did plenty of wonderful things, and he made a lot of brilliant play calls. But there also were a couple of idiotic decisions on his part that left you shaking your head and thinking that his critics at Pitt were right, that he really wasn’t the coach to make the program a national championship contender.
Not that Wannstedt looks much like that guy at the moment, but, hey, it’s just two games.
There’s nothing wrong with Harris’ offense. Stanford quarterback Trent Edwards looked a lot like Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko, at least the Palko of last season. If last night is any indication, he’s going to turn into a great leader, too. He completed 21 of 33 passes for 235 yards and a touchdown, his biggest throw coming on third-and-20 at the Stanford 45 midway through the fourth quarter. Justin McCullum’s 20-yard catch set up a field goal that gave Stanford a 41-31 lead with 7:13 left.
This next Harris positive might surprise you. Known as a pass-happy coach at Pitt, he came into the game insisting Stanford would run the ball after ranking 114th out of 117 Division I-A teams in rushing last season when it went 4-7 and got coach Buddy Teevens fired. Darned if the Cardinal didn’t do it. They finished with 181 yards, exactly 100 more than they averaged on the ground a year ago.
Even Harris’ one trick play worked perfectly. Wide receiver Gerren Crochet scored a 46-yard touchdown on a reverse late in the third quarter to give Stanford a 35-24 lead.
But there also were Harris’ blunders.
What?
You expected one of his games to be controversy-free?
To the condescending.
You won’t be reading here — ever — that Pitt made a mistake by pushing Walt out the door. Whether they made the right hire in Wannstedt is an entirely separate matter. That won’t be known for quite some time, although it keeps popping into my mind that Wannstedt initially refused what he later termed a dream job.
If it was a dream job, why’d he turn it down?
It’s looking like Walt is the one with the dream job. He wanted to stay at Pitt, of course, oblivious to the groundswell of disenchantment that had grown around his program, but you can mark this down: Stanford will be his football nirvana — and not just because he grew up in northern California and began his coaching career there.
More to the point, they love wide-open football out there and don’t seem particularly concerned about whether it results in wins or losses. They do not have lofty expectations. They are not expecting to challenge for national championships, and Walt has a guru-in-residence working in the same building in Bill Walsh, who’s a consultant to Stanford athletic director Ted Leland and a regular visitor to Cardinal practices.
[Emphasis added.]
Let’s see, Stanford’s rival is Cal. These days, given the level Cal is playing, that’s kind of lofty.
