This is the kind of game that makes me feel wishy-washy. Plenty to love. Plenty to hate. Things that are promising. Things that look ominous. You get the picture.
Ultimately it was a win and it was not a true nail-biter (moments of angst, but not the same). That makes it more of a half-full view over half-empty.
The offense looked great. New OC Cignetti has grasped what he has in Dorin Dickerson and the best way to use him. It’s about getting him touches and giving him a chance with the ball. Dion Lewis has been a revelation so far. Bill Stull has done his job. The O-line has been solid.
Yes, there are things that can be improved — an intermediate passing game, using the middle of the field occasionally. Can Lewis take this kind of load?
There are things of outright concern — like the entire secondary. Or what is going on with the snaps for extra points?
The really bad news, Andrew Taglianetti is out for the season with a torn ACL.
Pitt starting free safety Andrew Taglianetti is out for the season because he has a torn ACL in his left knee. Taglianetti injured his knee in the Panthers 54-27 win over Buffalo yesterday.
It was initially diagnosed as a sprain but an MRI this morning revealed the ligament was torn and will require surgery.
Taglianetti will get a medical redshirt, so he keeps his eligibility. The loss, though, is of the smartest and most aggressive safety on the the team. Dom DeCicco has struggled with the physical play, while Elijah Fields just struggles to think about what he should do. Still relying only on his physical talents.
The offense was the story as they not only piled up the rushing yards, but took advantage of the turnovers handed to them by Buffalo.
The difference, however, was turnovers as Buffalo committed four and the Panthers had none.
Not only did the Bulls turn the ball over four times, the Panthers capitalized on them, turning them into 27 points.
“I wanted to see how we would operate on the road, coming into an environment like this, against a good football team,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “When we created some turnovers early and were able to capitalize on them and score, that was huge.”
Those turnovers were vital as the defensive line never could get pressure on Buffalo’s QB with the Bulls using a quick drop. The secondary. Wow. Just a miserable day.
The Pitt defense allowed 500 total yards — 433 passing — as Buffalo rewrote much of its Division I-A record book at UB Stadium.
“We didn’t play good at all in the secondary,” junior strong safety Dom DeCicco said. “We can’t play like that every week and expect to win.”
Because Pitt scored 54 points, the most by the Panthers since rolling up 55 against Temple in 1999, the defensive breakdowns weren’t as glaring.
Still, the missed tackles and gaudy passing numbers by a sophomore making his second career start were a point of concern outside the Panthers’ locker room. It was the fourth-highest yardage total allowed in coach Dave Wannstedt’s four-plus seasons.
Shades of the Rutgers game from last year, only this time a win and no concussions.
At least Greg Williams had a good day on defense.
Williams redeemed himself Saturday. He had five tackles and returned a fumble 50 yards to give Pitt a 40-20 lead with 8:42 left in the third quarter.
Said Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, “[Williams] needed that. He was real serious all week. He didn’t play well last week and bounced back.”
The big thing is that the defense is so geared to stop the run. The games where the defense was at its worst last year was against teams that could throw the ball — Cinci, Rutgers, and even ND. That remains disturbingly unchanged.
Unfortunately, there are two sides to the ball and the defense was putrid. That is especially true for the secondary, which I wrote about after last week’s game because I didn’t think it played particularly well, but the missed tackles, blown assignments and bad angles added up to a very, very long day for that unit.
You cannot give up 500 yards to Buffalo, a team which has not had 500 yards in a game since 2001. The secondary missed a lot of tackles today but much like last week, it really didn’t cover very well at all the entire game.
The defense got bailed out a few times by turnovers and also by some errant throws by Buffalo quarterback Zach Maynard, who was making his second career start.
In fact, with about five minutes to play and Pitt leading only 40-27, Maynard missed an easy touchdown pass to a wide open Terrel Jackson in the corner of the endzone. As soon as Maynard let it go, you could see he was upset with himself becuase he knew it should have been seven. And if those two connect, then it becomes a 40-34 game and things get much, much more interesting for everyone involved.
This is something that needs to be fixed and immediately because the Panthers won’t survive many more games with their back four missing tackles, falling down and missing assignments.
The turnovers will haunt Buffalo, as they can wonder what might have been if they had taken better care of the ball.
Before the offense even took the field, UB was down, 14-0. That made for a long day in a game where the Bulls were clearly under the spotlight, hoping to shock the Panthers from the Big East.
Pitt (2-0) is the lone Bowl Championship Series program on the Bulls’ schedule and a win over the Panthers could have propelled the program closer to the Top 25. Instead, with the spotlight glaring, the Bulls (1-1) forgot their lines.
“It hurts, it really hurts because we thought we had a shot to go out here and beat a BCS school and that was one of our goals this year,” said senior free safety Mike Newton, who led the Bulls with 10 tackles. “We have to come back and rebound from this.”
The good news for Buffalo, is that their future looks bright. At least at the QB spot.
Really surprised at how the secondary let us down so badly. The d line was getting a good rush but the short drops and quick throws were a killer.
Terrible to see Tag out for the year. He has consistently improved game to game and earned his way out there. Hopefully the D learns from this and improves like they did last year after Rutgers.
The pass defense against Buffalo looked like the Paul Rhodes specials of 2003 & 2004 where a 4 yard pass became a 15 yard gain because of poor fundamentals. No defense can stop QB’s that take 3 step drops – but you can tackle that receiver immediately so the gain stays at 3 yards.
Safety is clearly the big issue of concern. DeCicco is constantly flat-footed and can’t bring someone down unless they weigh 110 pounds, and even then he might try to run them out of bounds. Fields has no idea what is going on. The hope is that he sees himself as a starter and begins to figure things out fast. Then again, he has had 3 years to figure things out and he can’t even figure out how to stay upright.
Face it: since Ramon Walker left, we haven’t had a safety make a big hit. It is absolutely shameful, and Elijah Fields is not the answer. I remember talking to one of the reserves on the 2000 team about Ramon Walker and he said: “Ramon’s a bad dude, man. He just a bad dude.” Eloquence aside, you all know what he meant. Sadly, the best I can say for Fields is that “He just a bad attitude.” From the looks of it, that isn’t going to change.
Think most of it is fixable!
Lou, I agree, Fields has all of the athletic ability in the world, but he does not understand the fundamentals of positioning and pursuit angles.
As for being physical, our corners are somewhat undersized and DeCicco seems to have problems bringing anyone down.
Look at the Rutgers game last year, that exposed the secondary for what it is, out of position and not able to cover consistently.
Pitt should beat Navy, but if they do not play a better game on the defensive side of the ball it could be a very close game.
The offense played very well, hats off to them. Stull looked good and confident, the OC called a good game for the most part.
I will try to put my dislike for Stull aside, ignore all statistical jargon, and give you an “eye test” opinion of him… others feel free… mine is purely unscientific… Overall, it is important to note that most of us have been generally positive of how Cigs is “handling” Stull.
From a good standpoint:
1) Some passing plays, you can see him making reads with his eyes/helmet– with a result of often checking down to a back
From a bad standpoint:
2) Some passing plays, you can see him locking on one receiver and just “heaving it” into them
From a good standpoint:
3) He does deliver the ball to the running back in an effective fashion (hand off, quick screens)
From a bad standpoint:
4) All passes, even screens, seem to flutter? I’m not sure if it is mechanics or simply arm/hand strength (a lot of times it is a hand size thing with QBs). Flutter throws– eventually– lead to pick 6’s
From a good standpoint:
5) He does seem to have the team’s confidence and support (players showing love, his emotions are high, genuine signs of camaraderie). You can tell him and Dorin are buds, and they both have a lot of support for each other.
From a bad standpoint:
6) His ability to deliver a long ball (like play action bombs or sideline toss-ups for receivers) are horribly inaccurate. They are either long or short or way off target. Many of the throws are fluttering and not a “nice catch” from a receivers perspective. I know people say, “Who cares?”…and that may be the case if you’re throwing to NFL caliber receivers, but a pretty pass does make it easier to catch at the collegiate level…and it certainly doesn’t hurt.
From a good standpoint:
7) His intermediate throws in the middle (when allowed) seemed to fall in line with the receiver’s path (allowing the receivers to catch in stride). This is usually a recipe for more YAC.
From a bad standpoint:
8) His screen throws (bubble and sideline), are not clean; meaning, they are not in stride. Balls go low, the passes are high or behind the receiver. Once again, drive killers when you use as many screens as we do.
From a good standpoint:
9) His ability to shrug off all of our negativity and go to Buffalo with focus and desire.
From a bad standpoint:
10) The coaching staff seems to baby him and make him out to be a bit of a sensitive baby (BooGate)
Others, please feel free to expand or add…
As per the secondary… if we don’t have the players to keep up with a mac team… teams like nd and cinci will kill us. Why do we turn all our athletic players into d ends and linebackers.. we need to keep some these guys in the secondary..
Just some quick observations on Stull I saw in the Buffalo game:
The deep balls and long sideline routes are shots in the dark – its clear he has no idea where its going and he’s just hoping it finds the receiver.
The short passing game seems to be his comfort zone, although none of his passes seem to have that tight spiral or zip.
I havent seen stull throw the in between passes 15 to 30 yeards. Every pass seems to be a screen or hail mary bomb – obviously the coaching staff isnt comfortable with his ability to hit these passes.
Bottom line, accuracy and arm strength seem to be his two biggest problems.
HTscriptP
Two passes that he apparently has trouble with are: (1) the quick throw to the wideout — one of the few correct observations from the color announer the other day was that Stull needs to throw the pass directly to the receiver and not lead him, and (2) he throws the long pass to Baldwin much too flat, not allowing Baldwin to outleap the DB — you may remember the air under the ball that Tino threw (perhaps too much) that resulted in a long completion vs YSU.
Thanks for the great breakdown. The only way I get to “see” the games is through this sites updates from fans and on espn looking at the score tracker so it is hard for me to keep tabs on how Stull really looks. Luckily, I have tickets to NC State game. Hopefully, the NC State fans aren’t as gassy as the Notre Dame fans. I about died one year during Pitt Notre Dame game got stuck in visiting section and that was freakin awful! A lady dressed in Pitt gear actually stood up and said, “Who ever is farting please stop!” Hail to Pitt.
The problem is that the better teams are going to take away the screens and sideline routes unless Stull can complete a few of those over the middle routes a game. Heck, even Buffalo made that adjustment in the second half. If I remember correctly, Pitt only had 1 first down in the second half prior to Lewis’ big run. When Stull has time, he seems to be able to hit those intermediate passes…I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
One person who apparently can complete the over-the middle 20 yarder is the Buffalo QB (although he did throw a pick in the 4th quarter)
I’m not implying that Pitt will the national championship or even the BE … but if the stars align, Pitt can be pretty good.
Fact is, there is more evidence of winning with weak-arm QBs …. than short people (just to rile up the masses!)
Great point, I remember Pitt losing to SMU in the Cotton Bowl Jan 1, 1983.
Can anyone name the starting QB for SMU?
Our starting QB was Dan Marino.
On second thought, SMU had Eric Dickerson and Craig James running the ball.
Take Pitt and the 7 points this weekend!
I’m saying good because our crowd should be pumped, confidence should be high with the players, and we are due to wash the bad taste of Navy at night (at home) out of out mouths…
One game at a time…
Pitt wins in an ugly game.
Pirate Suck, who cares, let pitt have the parking!
What’s the limitations on parking? I’m in the Red Lot 2…can I get into the parking lot after 3PM?
I’ll go a step further and say we’d might see even less of them if we had Sunseri in there as DW is extremely nervous about his QB throwing turnovers. For all his limitations Stull doesn’t throw picks too often, actually his pass:INT ratio has been extremely good over the last two years, and Sunseri is an untested quality in that regard.
you can park at 3 if there are spots open at that time. they will only let you in as people for the pirate game leave.
As for Sunseri, you are correct that we have no idea how he would perform. The one thing he does have going for him is a stronger and apparently more accurate arm, which certainly helps when you are throwing to the middle of the field. On the downside, his height (or lack thereof) might cause problems in seeing the receivers and defenders in the middle. I did find it interesting that when he played in the YSU game, the passing game seemed to open up a bit. In any case, we’ll probably find out more about that next year (or the year after).
Gotta look at the positives. Stull looked *cough* good *cough* and how exciting is it to watch Lewis? Here’s to not repeating history against Navy and putting the ball in his hands at the goal line, with the game on the line, instead of a fade to the tight end.
HTscriptP