That seems to be the growing question being asked. The media is even wondering about it.

Q: Do you really believe this team can even win four games, and if that is all, how can you justify keeping this pair of coaches – Wannstedt and Cavanaugh, who are trying to play 1950’s football — for another year?

Zeise: Four games, I just don’t know if they can win even another game unless a few things change dramatically. Take the Navy game for instance: Does anything you have seen from this defense over the past six seasons lead you to believe it has any prayer of consistently stopping an option team? And further, do you think the offense will attempt to score against Navy — a team it should be athletically superior too — or will we see more of the same passive game plans of the past two weeks in an attempt to win 3-0? I would hope the coaches are at the point where they understand that desperate times call for desperate measures, and make no mistake, these are desperate times.

And it isn’t as some half-hearted joke.

The scary thing is, things might not get better this season. It’s hard to call anything a guaranteed win with this team.

The Panthers have a week off to regroup before Navy visits in one of the two remaining games they have any kind of chance of winning. A Nov. 3 game with Syracuse is the only other contest in which they seem to have any shot. The rest of the schedule includes home dates with Cincinnati and South Florida as well as road trips to Louisville, Rutgers and West Virginia. Each of those teams is either currently ranked in the top 25 or has spent most of the season there.

In September I did a few brief taped Q&As with a Louisville radio station (1570 the Zone) about Pitt. They were doing weekly bits on each Big East teams and would talk to the team appropriate blogger. (Strangely, the bits stopped happening right after Louisville lost to Kentucky.) During the last interview with them, I was recounting the injury list and how unsure basically Pitt fans were about this team after the patsies and shaky play at times. I tried to put it in a positive way at the end by saying, “at least Pitt isn’t Syracuse.”

Yeah. Not so funny now with the realization that Syracuse is essentially going to be a toss-up. In 2004, I called the Pitt-‘Cuse game the “Lame Duck Bowl,” because the losing coach was sure to be fired. Turns out both were. This year’s game is still a month away. Is it too early to wonder if we will be looking at Part 2?