Once more, I’m at the game so I just left everyone a place to comment. Hopefully there will be some other people at the game. I don’t know what to say. I really don’t know what to expect.
The good news, one way or another, I’m drinking afterwards.
Total and utter domination by Buffalo…Pitt has run only 6 plays in the first quarter, funbled, kicked off out of bounds….you have to see this to believe it@!
Hail to PITT!
-al-
//Ducks for cover
Taking my wife to dinner and drinking heavily..
DW may be the worst head coach in the history of football….doesn;t matter if they win or not…
a horribly coached team performing way under their level of talent….
BB starts soon…
It looks like our react, not attack, style of D is once again being employed….at least we held them to a FG.
Hail to PITT!
-al-
I’m watching this from my dorm in State College so I’m trying to be as discrete as possible…
Can’t wait for the “halftime adjustments” from the Pitt coaching staff.
Still a fan, but this is not pretty thus far today.
Hail to PITT!
-al-
Anyway, we look horrible, as usual. I guess we can’t really open up the offense without having the ball. Where the hell is the pressure from our D-line?
Why didn’t UB go for two?
Halfway through the 3rd quarter, Pitt has given up over 300 yards to Buffalo. SUNY Buffalo.
Glad I didn’t waste my time watching this nonsense in person.
Strange…
Not pretty, but it counts and I’m happy. On to being a UCF fan
The D is not going to be able to stand up to WVU or even Cinci if they played like today. They can’t rely on Thatcher to clean up the mess in the back. Pat White was running all over ECU when he was able to hold onto the ball and Cinci certainly showed their speed against OK.
We beat Buffalo!
Bad win but we will take it.
Defense -
D line struggled today.
Pitt continues to have a problem defending the spread offense and short out routes. WVU will kills us on this. Very little to know blitz packages all game until the end. Need to blitz more and play more man coverage.
MckIllops looked good but he sat at the linebacker position and waited for the runner to get to him. Perhaps this way by design but we need more penetration from D line and linebackers.
Offense
same predictable offense. Very little creativity until the end of game with Dickerson. Nice change. Would try to get him in the flow a little more. He is a play maker and needs to get his hands on the ball. O line is terrible. Just plain terrible.
Where was Baldwin again. Get him in the game.
Very poor pass protection by the backs. Didnt pick up the blitz well. It is obvious that teams are going to blitz. We need to go 4 wides with TE blocking and release to get quick pass. Not enough quick out passes to deter the blitz.
Overall a win so I am happy. Tough two weeks preparation ahead. Iowa beat someone by 40 plus again. They could put an imbarrassing whooping on us if we arent careful.
Wanny and Matt C still to conservative. Lack creativity with offense and defensive blitz pattern.
It was good to see some fight and effort tonight. They’re not going to be able to do it all on talent alone.
PittinFt.Lauderdale, First, Buffalo has a good team and should do well this year. As far as your being ashamed to “admit your degree”, you graduated from a quality school whose players usully comport themselves well off the field. Give me a quality school first and players that act like gentlemen. Wins then become a bonus.
Hail to Pitt
Hail to PITT!
-al-
Negatives: It is a small TV market. They really couldn’t bring their BB team into the league. (Not competive; no room in the league.) However, I believe they would be a plus.
I was impressed with the turnout. It looked pretty good on TV, just the upper deck seats were barren, but after the debacle last week I was happy with it.
And I reiterate what I said earlier this week, Bill Stull isn’t that bad. He’s not going to remind anyone of Dan Marino or anything, but I don’t think he deserves too much crap from us.
Anyways, my expectations were lowered this week and therefor I wasn’t let down by an unimpressive win against a mid-major opponent.
a couple things I need to mention before I forget them.
(1) Makes you wonder about our judgment of Rhodes, doesn’t it?
(2) I don’t know if anyone else saw it, but it looked like Tommy Duhart was going to get into a fist fight with someone (anyone) on the Pitt sidelines after Buffalo scored that ridiculous no-one-within-20-yards pass over the middle from about 40 yards out. I don’t know if it was directed at coach Gattuso, or it was just a heated discussion between the two of them, but it was interesting.
(3) Only time Baldwin saw the field it was a fly pattern down the sideline that Stull overthrew by 10 yards. Even though we all (and Buffalo) knew it was coming, Baldwin still had the guy beat- coulda been a TD.
(4) The end around to Dickerson near the end of the game was a great call- there were a lot of bad play calls in that game, but it’s nice to see something at least a little off the beaten path. (it went for 9 yards on a first and 10)
(5) Luke Nix got in for at least one series that I noticed, and it looked like he did his job damn well for 3 plays before being replaced by Thomas.
(6) Nice to have a win, regardless of how ugly.
One more thing: less Oderick Turner, more Jonathan Baldwin. And where the hell were Elijah Fields and Lucas Nix?
1. Lucas Nix did play today. He came in for at least three plays. He seemed to do fine in that very small sample. Thomas was okay at best.
2. Fields played a lot in the second half. This includes time in the base defense, along with time in a nickel package with Thatcher and DeCicco. He played very well for the most part; however, the one touchdown looked to be a mental breakdown on his behalf. It was very nice to see him on a slot receiver rather than Austin Ransom.
3. Stull looked a lot better today. Still missed a few passes; but was much more composed than last week.
4. We had very little success on the ground again today. McCoy did have success on a few counters late in the game. Other than that, he has to break a tackle just to get back to the line of scrimmage.
5. Nate Byham reminds me of Heath Miller more and more. The guy is just a great talent.
I am too tired to continue…
I guess Minnesota didn’t have problems with BG’s different looks! This just makes that L look worse.
1. Offense
2. Defense
Aside from these minor things, everything seems to be shaping up nicely.
Granted, those services are wrong about certain guys from time to time, but no 3 whole entire classes worth of guys.
Face it, the talent’s there, Wanny can’t coach.
the crowd was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe 45,000, but very vocal and by far the best student section turnout and participation in at least a decade. Way to go students! And in the 3rd to 4th quarter break, a singalong to Sweet Caroline—”Sweet Caroline (Let’s Go Pitt)” — that was really cool.
Baldwin got 2-3 plays a quarter, I remember him throwing a real nice downfield block once, only thrown to once I think. Likewise, Dickerson got in a bunch but didn’t see the ball till the end. And I felt bad for Conredge, all he did was block all night - he got one play, and Stull led him too long with a pass. No carries. But a much, much better game from Cavanaugh.
Stull made good decisions every pass and actually hit the receiver in stride on a couple. A number were inaccurate, though.
Thomas was beat all night. Why even run to the right? Nix played 3 plays when Thomas came off the field.
The D-line was outplayed by their O-line. Too much base defense, also.
Thatcher bit on a double pump fake that left the tight end wide open over the middle.
Best game overall by the wide receivers in a long time.
An imrovement,at least. Let’s keep getting better and maybe the week off will help Murray heal and Nix and Baldwin learn some more plays.
1. Be careful about jumping to conclusions based solely on scores. If you use that method you can probably determine that the worst team in the country would be able to beat the best team–we have all played that dumb game. The reality is that Pitt won the statistical battle vs BG and lost by 10 (instead of probably winning by 10) primarily due to a -3 turnover margin. Give Pitt a “do-over” and I am pretty certain Pitt beats BG by at least 10. This week it is “wow! look how badly Minnesota hammered BG” with the conclusion that it means that BG is a really bad team and that makes Pitt even worse. That conclusion is not supportable. BG and Minnesota had virtually identical yardage satistics (and BG generated 150 yds more total offense than it did vs Pitt) and the score was BG 17-Minn 21 with 10:41 left in the game. The real story of that game was BG losing 4 fumbles and throwing 1 interception (5 turnovers) to zero turnovers for Minnesota. Had BG turned it over 5 times to Pitt and Pitt not had any turnovers Pitt would have probably put 50 or more on the board vs BG. No, the Minn-BG result result had little or nothing to do with one team dominating things–it was clearly two fairly evenly matched teams with a game decided by turnovers.
2. IMO, way too much being read into Wanny-Bennett interactions. Folks on this board and others are at least a little paranoid. Reality, is that probably both just were talking heatedly because they were both angry because a player or players failed to execut a defensive assignment properly. There was little or nothing wrong with the defensive strategy overall against Buffalo. IMO, execution was a problem–particularly outside linebackers pursuit to the sideline on plays that went wide (getting there late plus not tackling with force to drive the ballcarrier out of bounds which resulted in 2-3 yard gains becoming 5-7 yard gains). This undoubtedly explains why the young OLBs weren’t ahead of Murray and Gunn before their injuries.
2) Jonathan Baldwin was in the game for 3 plays. Four, if you count the play that was negated for a penalty.
3) Elijah Fields was in the game quite a bit, but he also blew the coverage on UB’s wide-open touchdown. I’m not sure if he thought there was a safety playing a deep zone to pick that guy up, but he peeled off after about 10 yards.
4. Stull had a better game but he still makes some absolutely awful throws on short balls- putting balls over the wrong shoulder, throwing WAY too high on a little dump pass to Shady. Eventually, those will lead to interceptions.
5. Our defensive line is not getting any push, but our LBs played a lot better, especially McKillop. He had a much more composed game.
6. Shady is finally looking like Shady again. Good cuts, great open field moves, and would have had another 100-yard game if he’d gotten the carries.
Thanks for posting both of those items.
I was listening to the first half of the game on the radio and I got the overwhelming sense from comments by Foge and Fralic that the main thing separating the two teams through the first half was execution. In its most simple terms, Buffalo executed their plays and Pitt did not.
Fralic said there were other issues - Buffalo was exploiting the slot receiver in the flats and Bennett wasn’t making the adjustments. By the second half - which I was unable to hear on the radio - it sounds as if Pitt started executing plays the way they’re capable of doing.
Your comments about judging performance based on final scores was dead-on. In fact, I was watching ESPNU late last night and they recapped the Minnesota-BGU game. After the game, one of the anchors said, “Well, what does this say about Pitt?” The response from the other anchor was simply, “If Bowling Green had turned the ball over five times against Pitt and Pitt hadn’t turned the ball over at all, there’s probably no way Bowling Green beats Pitt.”
Pitt’s problems so far as probably due in part to substandard gameplanning, but that is compounded further when the execution has not been good.
We still need to open up the offense. I would like to see some play action early in the game. You would think that work like a charm since we run so often early on.
We did pass to the middle of the field (a holy SH-T moment for me) and it worked and Stull lead receivers (great!).
Turner drops balls. He can’t be out there.
Maybe it’s a mental thing with him and we only see during the games but he drops passes.
Our D is back to sit and wait instead of attacking.
Iowa will be a good measuring stick .
Wanny and 2 weeks to prepare historically have been a bad deal. Hopefully this time it’s different.
