“Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with change, both from the perspective of an organization and on the individual level.”

That wraps up what the PITT administration has been dealing with since Pearl Harbor Day of 2010.  It is hard to look back over the course of recent PITT football history after WWII, and find another time when this type of purposeful change has happened. Perhaps 1973 with the hiring of Johnny Majors is up there with our 2011 shift.

We didn’t just see a change of Head Coaches and their staffs back over December and January, although that would have been a big enough task to deal with.  We also saw the PITT administration mandate the new Head Coach institute cultural changes in the football program to deal with what PITT recognized were real and continuing problems.

Some of these changes were enacted on the players right away by Todd Graham – clothing and jewelry standards, language usage and workout times to name a few.  Some of the changes were physical.  As Pat Bostick writes:

“Even the indoor field looked different – the old surface was replaced with a lush new turf, which changes shades of green every five yards. There’s also a Pitt logo in the one end zone, which I must say, looks pretty cool.  It doesn’t stop there. After 10 minutes of watching the guys in the white jerseys, wondering why there wasn’t anyone throwing or catching a football,  I realized that the defense was now wearing white and the offense had switched to blue”.

Note: That fact that it took an ex-PITT starting QB ten minutes to realize he wasn’t watching the offense is a whole different story line and rather disconcerting, wouldn’t you say?

Graham apparently also instituted a “Zero Tolerance” disciplinary approach but we’ll wait what that actually means and how long it lasts. But perhaps the biggest difference we PITT fans are feeling is the level of excitement that Graham and his staff exude every time they are interviewed or cut a video.  It’s palpable and centers on his approach to coaching football.  He wants a fast paced no-huddle offense and attacking speed, speed, speed on the defense.  To go along with that he has a nickname for them and probably for everything in the clubhouse and locker room. The “Big Fridge Water Cooler” or the “Roundy-Round Whirlpool Bath”

But where the real change has to happen is between the player’s ears with getting their buy-in on all the differences, they had to have been shaken pretty far out of their comfort zones over the winter with all the firing and hirings, and the controversy that went along with it.  Then Graham has to get those changes put into action by the kids on the practice fields and on gameday.  That will be much harder to accomplish.  Early reports are that the kids are buying into the new staff – and why not?  It looks like it would actually be more fun for them than what we saw for the last six years.

So, what might be the most visible harbingers of change at this point in Spring Practice for us fans?  That would probably be how Graham is using his personnel in working toward a semi-firm two deep lineup.  Semi-firm because we may well see some true freshman recruits work their way into that lineup in summer camp.

So, let’s look at the offense and see what we may have in store.  This preseason isn’t like anything we have seen over the last six years where you could just assume that if a player started the previous year he’d be in the lineup come September.  The overarching feel is that Graham is going to start with clean slates as far as the lineup goes and make his own decisions on who will be executing his new systems.  This is where it could get interesting although we may see that play out more on the defensive side than on offense, and we’ll discuss that in another article.  But we have some changes coming on offense also.

Going into the 2011 season we lost a large percentage of our offensive starters from 2010,  Lewis at RB, Baldwin WR, Hynoski FB, Pinkston LG, Karabin C and Cruz at TE.  Seven out of 11 starters gone is pretty big shoes to fill.

We do have some talent returning; QB has been discussed at length on this blog,  that is up in the air hopefully, we need the best we have at that position.  RB will have Ray Graham returning then Dom Deluise backing him up apparently.  Seriously – this is a major area of concern.  Derrick Burns is there now as is Des Brown, a walk-on.  This is one position that we have to keep our fingers crossed for both no injuries and that Graham has recruited someone who can step right in if needed.  But it wouldn’t be too surprising if Burns held onto that spot, success stories like that happen every year in college ball.  He had a good career as a RB in HS and maybe he adapts well to his new position.  However, it also wouldn’t be surprising if we saw a brand new face in the two-deep at RB come opening game. Perhaps recruit Malcolm Crockett out of the DC area is that guy.

WR looks to be pretty set with Shanahan and Street as starters with Cam Saddler being mentioned time and again by the staff as the slot receiver. Salath Williams and Ed Tinker have been getting 2^nd team reps there. Drew Carswell has been injured so far but he’ll be one to watch when he can get back on the field.  We lost a good one in Baldwin declaring early, but there was a real problem between Baldwin and Sunseri as far as execution goes, and apparently in their professional relationship also,  which resulted in negating our deep passing game.  One has to think that at least some of that will be alleviated with Baldwin’s departure.

TE will be interesting to watch as Hubie Graham, a HS Super-Prep All-American and transfer from Illinois, is eligible to play this season and Brock DeCicco has shown some flashes in limited play already. However, it may be that the TE position is downplayed by Graham so we’ll see what transpires there.  The FB position appears to have caught the last train to nowhere under this staff so we may see a hybrid usage out of an H-Back… what that will do for the TE, who knows?  The heir apparent at FB, Chris Mike, has been shifted to TE… which is like out of the frying pan and into the fire I suppose.

One offensive position that may be assumed to be an upgrade is at Center where rsFR Brandon Sacco has been practicing with the 1^st string.  Both Greg Gaskins and Jack Lippert are being tried there also.  A key requisite is that the Center is able to shotgun snap accurately and consistently which is a change from previous years. Nothing is etched in stone but that whoever ends up in that position won’t have to go far to equal what we had last year.

There have been a lot of shuffling around of OL guys trying to find the right combinations and that will probably go on well into August so it’s not really worth following at this point.

All in all there are some real questions that have to be answered on offense.  At the same time we have some good and solid players returning – most notably Graham at RB, and our WRs.  Sunseri has experience as a starter at QB also.  This unit may impress in the long run but I can’t help but think that there may be a big gap in what we have now and what Graham wants to have to run the High Octane offense at this point in time.  It is very early but IMO we need to see new faces step up and challenge if we are going to have the scoring machine everyone is so confident PITT will have.  They are some real reasons to be concerned here – especially if we get hit by the injury bug.

I’ll post an article about defensive changes after I get out the Spring Practice #4 report this afternoon.