Well, I mowed the lawn, did grocery shopping, cleaned the garage up just a bit. Generally just wanted to put this off. I mean, what can be said? Pitt looked, played and was absolutely pathetic and incompetent. I only got about halfway through the Dave Wannstedt press conference on video before clicking it off in disgust. I don’t know what I was expecting him to say that would make me feel better about things, but that wasn’t it.
Oh, hell, let’s get to the Virginia side of this.
Fan and media dissatisfaction with Al Groh was rising after last season and the season opening loss to Wyoming really raised it. Now, UVa is 4-1 and the complaints are a little more muted. Yet, there is noting that the opposition hasn’t exactly made it difficult.
Pliable Pitt did its best to render those questions all but moot. So inept were the Panthers in the first half, the visitors gave away the ball as easily as they gave in to U.Va.’s offense.
Against Pitt, Jameel Sewell, who was so clueless against Wyoming, looked like a left-handed Vince Young, standing poised in the pocket and adroitly moving around rushers to carry the ball on foot.
It was the biggest crowd at Scott Stadium this season, but Shayne Hale and Cameron Saddler from Gateway didn’t make it to the game for their recruiting trip. Small comfort, since they Hale already had Pitt off his list. More useless information, this was the third straight game for Groh and Virginia against teams with former NFL HCs (Butch Davis — UNC and Chan Gailey — GT).
Virginia QB Jameel Sewell obviously looked good against Pitt. Imagine that, a mobile QB looking good against Pitt.
Aside from that fumbled punt return, Vic Hall for Virginia had a good night.
Virginia fans were able to return to their tailgates early and in a good mood last night.
A half-filled Scott Stadium with four minutes to play means one of two things.
The late-game reaction of Virginia’s players, some that coincided with handshakes, hugs and high-fives, proved the reasoning without forcing a fan to peek into the night toward the stadium’s scoreboard.
Of course, many of those seats were still vacant when Virginia raced out to an insurmountable lead during the first 14 minutes of the game.
The quick start – Virginia scored 27 in the first quarter – coupled with a fourth-quarter resurgence, lifted the Cavaliers to an expected win over Pittsburgh by an improbable margin, 44-14, in front of a season-best crowd of 60,888.
…
“They were ready to jump in with both feet. This isn’t a stick-your-toe-in-the-water team,†Virginia coach Al Groh said. “They were very ready to go tonight.â€
The game was over quickly, even to Virginia fans.
Here’s how bad it is for Pitt, the game isn’t being taken for a deep meaning in Virginia.
Sometimes you don’t ask questions or explore too deeply. You simply take what the football gods and a generous opponent provide and say, “Gracias.”
Virginia had one of those nights. How else to explain a game in which the Cavaliers essentially delivered the knockout blow before the first north end zone, hillside human tumbleweed.
To be sure, there were a few anxious moments in the second half of the Cavaliers’ 44-14 victory against Pittsburgh. After all, this is Virginia we’re talking about, not Southern Cal or LSU.
And U.Va. coach Al Groh’s decision to execute a fake field goal for a touchdown with less than six minutes remaining in a 23-point game sure didn’t appear professionally courteous, especially for a couple of ex-NFL paisans. But we’ll leave that for Chairman Al and Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt to hash out behind the snack bar.
You know what, I don’t care about that. It may have been a bit bush, but so what? It was up to Pitt to stop them.
Moving to the Pittsburgh media, with the Steelers playing in Arizona, the columnists won’t be getting to this until maybe Wednesday. That’s okay, the beat writers jumped in for the deserved criticism of this team.
When Pitt hired coach Dave Wannstedt after the 2004 season, he promised to take the Panthers back to the Johnny Majors Era. So far, it looks as if he has delivered on that promise.
The only problem is these Panthers are starting to look a lot more like the 1990’s version during Majors’ second stint as Pitt’s head coach than the team that won the national championship in 1976.
That’s not a good thing as that second Majors stint marked one of the darkest periods in the university’s 117-year football history.
Yet for the second consecutive game, the Panthers (2-3) did their best imitation of those dead-teams walking…
Hard to really disagree.
Gorman went with the white flag from the opening play position.
Just when its 20-point loss to visiting Connecticut last week appeared to be a low for the Pitt football program, the Panthers (2-3) plummeted even further with its third consecutive loss and second in embarrassing fashion.
“The way we played does not mesh with how I feel, but I don’t believe we’re as bad a football team as what we’ve showed in the last two weeks,” Wannstedt said. “But – and that’s a big but – we are where we are right now. We haven’t given ourselves a chance, in my opinion, to show what type of team we are or what type of team we can be.
“I have been on one-win teams in college and the National Football League. I have been on undefeated teams in college and Super Bowl teams. We are doing everything in practice and preparation that championship teams do. Our kids are working as hard as any team I’ve been on.”
Well, then it is on the coaches.
This one wasn’t about being overmatched. Pitt was simply sloppy, committing costly turnovers and 11 penalties for 139 yards, which has become a recurring theme this year.
Worse, the Cavaliers (4-1) came in allowing more points (19.8) than they were scoring (19.2), but managed to score four touchdowns in the first 21:08 on drives consisting of only 39, 51 and 26 yards.
That rendered the debut of quarterback Pat Bostick and tailback LeSean McCoy in same starting backfield essentially meaningless. Virginia led 27-0 before Bostick, making his first career start, even attempted his first pass.
Gorman has some more stuff on his blog.
“They were executing. That was what they were doing all game. All the credit goes to them. They picked us apart,†McKillop said. “On our end, we’ve got to step up. When we go to the sideline, we’ve got to listen to coach Rhoads’ adjustments and we’ve got to go out there and apply them to the field.â€
It’s not that Pitt has a poor game plan, just that the Panthers aren’t executing. At this point, the Panthers coaches ought to distance themselves from the word, especially with talk of putting them on the firing line.
Wait, someone is claiming that Rhoads understands the concept of adjustments?
And, based on McKillop’s comments, it already sounds like the Panthers are tuning out their coaches. Or, at least, they are starting to wonder if this season is a lost cause.
“There’s definitely going to be some doubt with our team, but the most important is we have leaders on our team who are going to have to step up and not have separation on our team, people forming groups and having a mutiny against everybody,†McKillop said. “We’ve got to stick together as a team. Everyone’s got to come in and push through this adversity.
“Right now, there’s been no finger-pointing with this team. We’re sticking together. Coach Wannstedt is preaching what he’s always preaching: ‘Trust. Accountability. Desire.’ We’re sticking to that.â€
Well the players may be wondering. The fans pretty much have accepted this has become a lost season.
ESPN Radio 1250 said Pinkston needs shoulder surgery and he’s done for the year.
The injuries don’t explain the lack of discipline on the field. The penalties are just indefensible, especially when some of them are coming from veteran players.
The injuries also don’t explain the overall lack of organization. You read Wannstedt’s quotes and it just feels like these guys are flying by the seats of their pants way too much. Communication seems to be lacking in many facets. It seems like everyone is panicked and like you said, they don’t seem to be responding well to pressure.
Again, though, the thing I have the hardest trouble with is Wannstedt coming out and remaining insistent on running the ball to set up the pass. Maybe he’s just paying it lip service to make it look as if they’re staying the course and they have a grip on things. He has no obligation to tell the fans that they may be reworking the offensive scheme (for instance, when they unveiled the Wildcat package at MSU, I had no idea it was coming). But it’s clear to see that opposing teams know what they are going to do and they’re going to continue to stack eight and nine to take Shady out of the game as much as possible until Pitt proves that they can throw.
And I cannot believe that Cavanaugh didn’t feel it necessary to throw the ball at all until they were already down more than 20 points in the first quarter. To explain that away with some half-assed excuse that they were trying to protect Bostick, give me a break. Don’t insult the intelligence of the fans like that.
Yeah, McCoy is a great talent and should get a lot of touches – more than he has been. Yeah, Bostick is a true freshman who missed important camp time and is very raw.
So, don’t fly off the handle and complain that we are running it too much and instead should have our freshman QB in his first-ever start, in front of 60,000 on the road open up the passing game – after throwing 3 INT’s in one half last week.
Anyone who ever argued that they needed to hand it to McCoy 50 times a game is kidding themselves.
McCoy is a fantastic talent, but he can’t possibly be expected to make up for the complete lack of a passing game AND a substandard offensive line. No running back could, and no running back can take that kind of abuse, particularly a kid who is just playing his first real competitive football in two years.
I know Kinder’s out, but they still have wideouts who presented themselves as threats last year. They’ve got Turner, Pestano and McGee. They’ve got Porter. They’ve got Mo Williams. As I said in another thread, they supposedly have Aundre Wright somewhere but he’s apparently fallen off the face of the earth because he hasn’t been heard from since camp (when Wannstedt couldn’t praise him enough).
On top of that, they’ve got Byham – a wideout in a tight end’s body – and Strong, who is fast enough and big enough to present some significant matchup problems. On top of THAT, they’ve got McCoy, Stephens-Howling and Collins, all backs capable of catching the ball out of the backfield. And they’ve got linemen who have pass-blocked relatively well this year and are all fairly athletic.
You can’t tell me that Cavanaugh isn’t seeing this kind of personnel and not thinking of some sort of basic spread package. Spread the linemen out to make it tougher to get to the QB. Go four wide…five wide if you have to. Put LSH, McCoy or Byham in the slot. Give them SOMETHING else to look at. Even if all you do is run short to intermediate routes…it doesn’t have to be the run-and-shoot…it doesn’t have to be anything complicated. Just give them something else to look at other than a pro-style formation and McCoy or Stephens-Howling off-tackle all the time.
I’m arguing that utilizing a spread formation can open things up for him because it forces the defense off the line. McCoy can’t beat four, five or six guys by himself, but he can beat one or two. If you put him in the backfield in most of these spread sets and get him the ball out of it, it should give you more chances to get him out in space. He may find himself in a one-on-one or even a one-on-two, but he can beat those kinds of matchups from time to time. This is part of the reason the Wildcat worked…it forced the defense to back off and gave him room to find those more even matchups.
Like I said, I can’t believe they haven’t seen the capabilities for something like this in their personnel. I realize they’re trying to build a particular system here, but sometimes, you need to tailor your system to fit your personnel a bit.
The lack of creativity on the part of the offensive coaches is mind-numbing.
i know a bad offense puts a defense in alot of bad spots, but until paul rhoades gets fired, WE WILL NOT IMPROVE ON DEFENSE.
You bring up a good point about Bostick possibly being too raw and thus they feel the need to protect him by relying more on the running game. That wouldn’t be as big an issue if the offensive line could actually establish some sort of surge and move the ball on the ground. As it is right now, the opposition knows what’s coming and they stack to stop it. Not as big a problem against the Eastern Michigans and Gramblings. Against the likes of Rutgers, Cincy (very quick defense) and USF…not so much.
I can see how a spread offense package – even a basic one – may overwhelm Bostick a little bit (lots of checkdowns, lots of timing throws), but I’m not sure exactly how much because I’m pretty sure he ran a spread offense in high school.
At this point, I think it’s worth a shot to try to open things up a bit. They aren’t creating mismatches right now. They’re too predictable…too vanilla, and it seems as if they think it’ll come around if they keep forcing it.
I knew this was going to be a tough year. This was going to be a 7-5 season only if a lot of things broke the right way for Pitt, and things haven’t broken the right way since Bostick left and Kinder got hurt. And I understand the effect that injuries have had. As I said to some friends and fellow Pitt fans yesterday, imagine the Steelers losing Hines Ward (Kinder), Casey Hampton (Mustakas), Ryan Clark/Anthony Smith (Fields), and Davenport (Collier). And imagine them losing Roethlisberger (Stull) and then having to replace him with St. Pierre (Smith) because Batch for some reason wasn’t ready to play (Bostick). And this isn’t even addressing the o-line injuries (McGlynn, Pinkston, Jacobson, Matha, etc). Jacobson might very well have taken over for either CJ Davis or Joe Thomas by now.
It’s not just one injury but the cummulative effect that all those injuries may have that has set this team back to a point this year.
But even still, you read Wannstedt’s comments in Gorman’s blog and it just makes you shake your head. The sideline seems almost chaotic at times. Communication between coaches and players seems lacking; communication between coaches and coaches seems lacking.
Most disconcerting to me was this from Gorman’s blog…
“What’s disturbing is that Virginia’s secondary was suspect, the Cavaliers were allowing 241 passing yards per game and Pitt elected to rely on the run when that was exactly what everyone expected the Panthers to do.
Where was the balance Wannstedt promised?
‘For us to win with a true freshman quarterback that missed some of training camp, you’re going to have to run the ball and play defense and special teams,’ Wannstedt said. ‘He’s doing everything he can. I’m pleased with Pat.'”
Translation: Expect more of the same.