Thanks to Reed for the post-game review. I hurt my back the week before and go figure — extra driving to and from Pittsburgh and crashing on a friend’s couch Saturday night along with everything else did not help it feel better. So I’ve been trying to give it some extra rest on Sunday and Monday to at least remove the constipated look on my face everytime I take a step and feel the pain in my back. I’m sure plenty of you have experience to varying degrees of back pain. The most frustrating thing, is that there is very little you can do about it. You just have to try and rest it and let it heal at its own pace.
In a rare variance from the usual, my group of friends ended up in one of the luxury boxes for the game. It was one of those convoluted, multiple degrees of separation of friends, family and work that put us in that situation. They are definitely plush, and with good food, several TV monitors and an open bar. Was a little creeped out for some reason with the framed and signed Joe Namath jersey in the bathroom, but that was about the worst of it. I wouldn’t do it on a regular basis, though. Much like being in a press box, you can’t help but feel a bit disconnected to the atmosphere in the stands and on the field — even with the windows slid out of the way and being able to cheer.
The open bar and food meant we cut short our outside tailgating in favor of going into the stadium around 4pm.
So we could watch the pace of the crowd filing into Heinz Field. The student section really did a great job of filling up and showing up early. That was impressive. The rest of the stadium struggled a bit — kind of like the team itself.
The defense started out rather strong. In the first quarter, Buffalo had four possessions and went 3-and-out on three of them. Then that side of the ball began to struggle. It wasn’t helped by the amount of time it had to spend out on the field — but that was more of a second half issue. In the first half, Pitt actually held the ball for 15:16 yet only came away with 7 points. Leaving a good 13-20 points behind with missing receivers and missed field goals.
Yes, the defense got gashed in the second half, and had to be out there for over 24 minutes. More worrying was the defense struggling in the 2nd quarter. But for Buffalo’s own miscues in that quarter, there would have been a lot more grumbling at the half.
The defense, after the 1st quarter, gave up 375 yards (35, 107, 189, 74). As much as it had to deal with the Pitt offense finding a rhythm and scoring quickly, did itself no favors in the game. Pitt’s defense could not get off the field with Buffalo being able to go 9-16 on 3d downs after the 1st quarter (and 2-4 on 4th down in the 4th quarter).
The linebackers continue to be an exploitable weakness especially against the pass. K’Wuan Williams was burned by playing too soft in his coverage too often. Things that Coach Graham did acknowledge.
Graham said part of the issue is that the Panthers aren’t used to playing such an aggressive style of defense. That enabled the Bulls to complete a lot of short passes underneath coverage.
“It was more just nickle and diming us,” Graham said. “One thing is, they ran 93 plays and we only gave up 16 points, so that’s pretty good. If you have 93 plays you are supposed to get about 50 points scored on you. But the one thing I noticed was we were playing a little too conservative on defense.
“We’re supposed to be right up on them and we’re backed off of them. And that is kind of what happens, [the cornerbacks] are used to playing off. But as you can see we pressure, we blitz a lot, but we were not effective with our blitzes, we had a lot of mental errors.
“The good thing is a lot [of that] we can correct, but I thought we were too soft and too far off the receivers.”
Williams showed flashes, and he was sure in his tackling. But playing off his man led him to be attacked a lot.
On the offensive side. Well, I have to start with Tino Sunseri. He showed off some improved arm strength in the first half. Rather than missing open receivers deep downfield with underthrown passes, he overthrew his targets in the first half. The coaches and Sunseri chalked it up to Sunseri being too excited in the first half. I would like to believe it, but what makes me hesitate is that in the second half when Sunseri was very accurate — it was all short to medium passes, and let the receivers pick up the yards after the catch.
I’m not in any hurry to pull Sunseri from the starter spot, but it is hard to ignore the evidence against his ability to consistently and accurately throw the ball beyond 15 yards. Hopefully Pitt’s offensive coaches will keep to the second-half approach and let the receivers pick up the big yardage on passing plays.
The Pitt receiving corps looks solid. I am happy with them. The addition of Hubie Graham as the H-back/TE is a definite upgrade at the spot compared to last year.
I don’t know what needs to be said about Ray Graham — the Big East offensive player of the week — except that Pitt is well on its way to having the best running back in the Big East for the third time in four years.
The offensive line was a mostly positive thing to me. Maybe it was just lowered expectations, but I wasn’t too worked up from them in the first game. Ryan Turnley snapped the ball cleanly and handled the center spot in his first start well. Coach Graham, though, sees room for improvement.
One area Graham said left a lot of room for improvement was the offensive line, particularly the tackles. That’s not a surprise given that Juantez Hollins made his first start and inexperienced Greg Gaskins had to play most of the game because starter Jordan Gibbs had breathing issues.
Graham said the good news is the mistakes that Hollins and Gaskins made consistently are correctable and a matter of some further film study and practice.
He praised the work of center Ryan Turnley from the standpoint that Turnley was perfect with his snaps, but the coach said he, like Hollins, has a lot of work to do on technique.
“Turnley was perfect, his snaps were all perfect,” Graham said. “Fundamentally, it was his first game, so there are lots of things for him to get better on, but I thought he was solid. We did a lot of things fundamentally and technique-wise up front that, when we get [them] corrected are really going to open up things up for us.
Now if the technique issues on the O-line after game 1 were regarding Jacobson or Nix, I’d be worried. As unnerved as I am by coaches talking about “correctable mistakes,” I can handle that in game one in a new regime a lot easier than at the end of a season after 6 years with one system.
On the return game, it is really nice to be able to see punts returns generating excitement rather than fear. Ronald Jones looks great back there. Heck, Buddy Jackson got the excitement going with a big kickoff return for 52 yards to start the action.
I can’t speak to the missed field goals, other than “ugh,” since my seat gave me no angle on the misses. I don’t know how close or far off they were. Hopefully just a hiccup and not something to haunt Pitt this season.
In the post-game comments, Graham was naturally positive about having the win. But he also made it very clear that the team needs plenty of improvement.
“We should have dominated a lot more than we did,” Graham said, accurately. “Every player in that locker room knows we have to get a lot better.”
As far as Tino is concerned, we have no other option but to wait and see. He missed some throws to wide open guys I know, but he didn’t throw any picks. He was mediocre, but if he can calm it down, study film, and make the necessary adjustments I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t be effective. That being said I hope Pitt runs up 30 on Maine in the first half so we can at least test out the young guys in game situations, but if Pitt throws 30 pts in a half it is likely Tino isn’t doing so bad after all.
We came out with the win when we should have, which wasn’t always the case in recent years. Let’s try and fix those “correctable mistakes” against the Black Bears and get this team ready to really compete!
Email from Todd Graham.
Thank you for making Saturday’s home opener at Heinz Field so great for our football team. Throughout the entire offseason, we had been anticipating the excitement of walking down the tunnel and taking the field for first time in 2011. Your support made that moment every bit as special as we dreamed it would be.
I am very proud of your football team and their winning efforts on Saturday. This special group of student-athletes is also excited to work hard in practice and build on our first victory.
We look forward to seeing you back at Heinz Field this Saturday when we take on Maine. Thank you.
Hail to Pitt!
Todd Graham
Head Football Coach
Congrats.
The term you used, “exploitable” fits BOTH the linebackers as well as the secondary. With a couple passes caught rather than dropped by Buffalo, that game could have been a nail biter. Then watch how soft the defense plays after they already got beat for a couple TDs earlier. It could have been real ugly.
I was surprised by the lack of domination by the Pitt defensive front, I expected the problems with the backers and secondary but I thought at least we would benefit by causing all kinds of havoc in their backfield with at least a few sacks against a Buffalo O line starting 3 freshman. Worrisome that that didn’t happen.
I agree with your assessment of the Pitt QB situation. As far as this season goes, Tino is our basket in which we have placed all of our eggs. His success or failure will directly relate to the success or failure of the entire offense.
I sincerely hope however that Graham has the luxury to get Trey Anderson into the game against Maine this week. Anderson hopefully will only play a back up roll this season to a successful Sunseri campaigne but Trey is only one play away from getting thrown into a game if Tino goes down hurt.
If I were Coach Graham, I sure would like to see how a true freshman QB performed in a live game situation prior to that kind of disaster happening. If Coach watches him sh*t himself first time out, I’d much rather find that out in the second half of the Maine game, hopefully up by say 3 TD’s rather than against ND, or the like, when we’re getting a bloddy nose and in the midst of mortal combat.
Who knows he could surprise everyone and perform really well and then all of a sudden Tino has somebody breathing down his neck eyeing his starting QB position. Wouldn’t that be a pleasant occurance?
This is just another ‘correctable’ error.
Just improve, baby!
Swisher also mentioned that T. Boone Pickens was on a BB scholarship at the U. Texas and they pulled it from him. Oakie St. gave him another ship and you know how that turned out.
The funny thing about all of that speculation and the hundreds of blogs and the thousands of ensuing comments was that the only scenario NOT discussed an any of them was the one where the B10 would take only Nebraska.
Pitt could evolve into a 3-4 after a couple of recruiting classes with talent that matches the prerequiste of a 3-4.
Offense the jury is out for a couple of weeks yet.
They covered Al Golden, Randy Edsall, Bray Hoke, Dana Holgerson, and someone else (can’t remember the name right now).
But they did not include Todd Graham at Pitt.
Perhaps I am overly sensitive to Pitt’s situation but it irritated the hell out of me. The first thing that popped into my head is how the media perceives the irrelevance of Pitt when it comes to football.
Am I being overly defensive about everything Pitt?
DaveD
No, you’re right on target. If given the opportunity the National Media usually will opt to slight PITT. If you watch the big games being broadcast on a large regional broadcast or on a national broadcast(like an ESPN Thurs. night game), this is how it usually plays out:
When Pitt is on offense, they talk about the OTHER team’s defense. When Pitt is on defense, they talk about the OTHER team’s offense. They usually wait till very late in the game to mention (if it all) all the great players that have played at PITT. Since we have A LOT of their names in LARGE BLOCK ALL over the Stadium. Check it out and see if it doesn’t work that way, the next time Pitt is on ESPN like on a weeknight.
My take on the LB problem:
Against Maine I would sit Gruder, Williams & Roberts. For we all know to well their limitations, which are many. If you must play them to get some reps, make it extremely limited.
We need to get Todd Thomas, Ejuan Price, Shane Gordon and whoever else, lots of reps to get them up to speed. Speaking of speed, these guys have the speed to cover in pass defense, we know the ones listed above do not. Well in William’s case he has the speed, he’s just not real good.
Brandon Lindsay should be rushing the passer on 85% of the snaps:
1) He’s our best pass rusher
2) If you don’ rush him, they can double team maybe 2 of the 3 down linemen. Which is probably why they were a non-factor against Buff. I don’t care how good Caragein or Donald or Alexcih are:
if they’re double teamed, they’re play is going to be muted. Thoughts.
@ Dr. Tom: I have several dentists as patients… like you suffering from biomechanic issues related to the occuppation.
I personally do not have much hope of the Big East surviving the coming shakeup as a football conference. It was born a basketball conference and will survive as one afterward. The twenty team conference with a twelve team football conference scattered half way across the U.S. is not going to cut it long term.
East:
Pitt
WVU
South Florida
Louisville
Syracuse
UConn
Cincinnati
Rutgers
West:
TCU
Houston
Baylor
Missouri
Iowa State
Boise State
Kansas
Kansas State
Missouri seems front runner for SEC. Like someone said above or previous post, whatever happens, more than likely we won’t see it coming.
Kansas and KSU are probably waiting to see what Mizzou is going to do.
Frank, I hope Marinatto is that involved with what is going on.
Would like BE to stay together, but if someone seriously offered Nordy something, he has got to look out for Pitt 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
Back room nods and winks don’t cut it. Like I mentioned a few days ago, if it comes down eventually to 4 16 team conferences, bottom line is, there are only so many slots available, want to make sure we are in one of those slots, not holding someones hand as the ships go down.
I know, money, money, money.
Was thrilled to hear %95 of the callers on the Fan today bombing Marylands uniforms. What a disgrace. Thought they were being so clever. Totally took away from the kids and the win, no one talking about that.
Yes, it’s minor, but, I’ll tell you, I could hardly watch Oregon play the other night.
Georgia’s were sacrilege!!!!
I’m 45, don’t consider myself a fuddy-duddy, was a traditionalist when I was 12!!!!
Can’t be to recruit kids, Alabama, Oklahoma, Auburn, Notre Dame, Ohio St. Michigan on and on seem to recruit just fine without the nonsense.
My nephews are 21 and 26, thought Georgia’s were really ridiculous.
Who are they going after, 10 year olds, just to sell a jersey??
The most ridiculous thing, is wearing that bizarre get up, then losing. If Georgia didn’t look absolutely pathetic after getting their tail handed to them in those uni’s walking off of the field.
Ok, sorry for the rant, but, no, not being funny, must be a childhood thing, can’t stand that crap.
Cranky tonight!!!
It has been reported that the SEC commissioners are meeting or have met this evening. It is time to sit back and enjoy the fireworks.
Hearing the SEC vote to admit Texas A&M was 10-2 and that West Virginia is squarely on the SEC radar as a potential 14th member.
However, it’s a two way street. The schools we want in the Big East have to want to be in the Big East. As Dan said, it looks like Missouri has options, so they’re going to wait to see who comes courting.
Missouri, Kansas and Iowa St. are all AAU members, supposedly a prerequisite for joining the Big Ten, and again like Dan said, they’re being awfully quiet.
I think the Big East certainly needs to keep the channels open, wine and dine, send chocolates and flowers, and whatever else you do to court a new conference member with all of them, but I wouldn’t be making any ultimatums at this point.
wbb said he read or heard that the Under Armour CEO designed them himself because he’s a Maryland grad. If that’s the case it has to be about ego and upstaging Phil Knight @ Nike.
I was kind of half watching but didn’t the announcers try to explain that they symbolized Maryland tradition? If so, America missed the point based on the fan reaction.
I drool over the basketball implications!!!
On ESPN, we never get respect.
WVU’s win proves they’re the team to beat in the Big East. USF wins their bi-yearly big game and it’s all “LOOOGIT DAT!! They’re from Florida, and they’ve got speed…. maybe even S-E-C SPEED!!” (espn never passes up a chance to talk about esss-eeee-seee footbawwwwl, even when talking about a Big East team. You see, outside of the SEC, only teams from Florida are allowed to be fast, the rest are just slow, fat white guys).
BUT Pitt’s gotta have a running back half-way to 2000 yards, and a game against Notre Dame when they’re on the verge of firing a coach in order to get any attention at all (this basically happened 2 years ago).
I guess we’re a boring, northeastern program that’s been past its prime for 25 years.
One running back…..29 carries…..210 yds….
Two pooch punts inside the opponents 40
A plethora of fast and talented wide receivers and two deep balls the whole game…..
Hmmmm….sounds eerily familiar doesn’t it.
High Octane? Better throw some Gumout in this baby……about 5 gallons…..quick!
If Todd starts growing a stache, Im cutting my wrists!
ESPN is also in love with Notre Dame. I was ready to puke after they fired Weis with all the coverage they gave to the coaching search. You would have thought the coach would also serve as President of the US in his spare time.
However, I hear the same about ESPNs coverage of Big East basketball from my SEC buddies, so I guess it works both ways.
And, yes, Kansas would make it an even more awesome bball league.
Anybody ever think TG’s play calling might be somewhat limited due to the QB’s inability to throw deep or even hit intermediate passes to moving target WR’s??
Latest on Big 12/SEC news:
Apparently the SEC presidents voted to accept TAMU, with one caveat. haha
Each Big 12 remaining university must sign off on a statement saying they will not sue the SEC or A&M. Apparently the Big 12 conference entity(ie. the Big 12 Conf.) already signed off on it.
Oh, yes don’t you all love living in the world of legality.
Why you ask; well they’re all still making close to $20 Million a team in the Big 12, they come East, they’re all going to get a haircut (at least for now) down to about less than $8 million per team,er I mean school.
“”Trey’s going to play, he’s not going to redshirt this year,” Graham said. “He just showed up in August, we’ve only had a couple weeks with him. What has set Mark behind is that he’s had some tendinitis in his elbow, he hasn’t been able to throw all the time. Trey sits at the number 2, with Mark right there. I think they’re pretty close together I’m kind of the personnel director, but I’m also listening to Coach Dodge and I’m listening to Coach Magee. We would like for a guy to get some experience, but in that first game, unless we had a substantial lead, we didn’t feel like we’d be willing to put another guy in there. Hopefully we will have a chance to do that.”
Depending on how the chips fall I think it could be either conference going down, perhaps the remaining teams merging into their own conference.
If the BE loses WVU/Louisville/Pitt off the bat, then the conference is done. If the ACC loses VT/FSU/UNC then they are done. Think about it…if the ACC is down three of their biggest programs, then maybe the Clemson’s, BC’s, and Maryland’s of the world scurry to the Big East to make sure they aren’t the ones left out…and vice-versa
I also like the comments in the paper about Graham trying to get the right combination of linebackers in there for his 3-4 system. This week’s game would also serve as a springboard for those youngsters like Grigsby and others to acquire some playing time and press for starting rights.
If everybody is learning their assignments in the new 3-4 system I think that dilutes the experience factor of the veterans at the linebacker position. In Graham’s 3-4 system, reaction time and speed trumps experience in Wanny’s old 4-3 defense. Give the starting role to the guys who are the fastest and catching on to their assignments the quickest and let the cards fall where they may. We need to step it up at the linebacker positon in any case or we are going to get exposed badly when we are up against an effective spread offense. Might as well play the future defensive stars now and get the systems installed ASAP even if it means a couple losses along the way during the learning curve for the youngsters put in there.
Also, I think those early downfield shots were to get the Buffalo DBs and LBs off the line of scrimmage to open up the running game. While they’ll continue to take downfield shots from time to time, I think you’ll see more of the short passing game like in the 2nd half, because it plays more to Tino’s strengths. And, from Graham’s statements, it appears Tino is the QB whether we like it or not.
Remember, Pitt played Buffalo not Alabama, so once players broke past the first defender, they turned in big gains. Against a team with better overall talent and speed, those 10 and 20 yard gains will be reduced to 5 and 10 yard gains making drives a bit more methodical.
Ya, Tampa, I know it’s minor, childish, small potatoes, but those outlandish uniforms really bug me. To the point, it doesn’t even look like college football sometimes to me. I don’t mind a few adjustments, or a throwback day, but some of that garbage is……garbage.
One thing I’ll say, as a big Pitt script guy, I know it’s a dead issue, but, I have to say, Pitt’s uniforms are very nice, and the Pitt block letters are very collegiate looking. Stripes on the pants. If I can’t have Pitt script, I do think we look pretty good right now.
Heard Coach Graham’s presser yesterday, I’ll give the guy one thing, blatantly honest!!! Actually said, “well, I thought we’d score about 45-50, and probably hold them to 10 or so”. Ha ha I’ve never heard a coach say anything like that.
My initial thought was that the team looked like a bunch of automobile crash dummies. Actually not a bad effect. Would you want to be impacting a crash dummy coming at you at full speed with that blank stare on it’s face if you were the opposition??
The only thing that saves that flag and those uniforms is the Black & Gold. Go, Stillers!
Actually the NCAA should step in here before it gets even more ridiculous. What next uniforms made by Lady Gaga or Pink. haha
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thanks
Stay off this blog. It is for civilized people who want to eat their pancakes in peace.
Oh, and by the way, Edsall was bold with the MD unis. Graham wasn’t with the Pitt unis.
SI I kind of stole it……
Obviously, the first big measuring stick will be at Ames on the 17th. The first road game in a hostile environment is always a test. Even though Iowa may not be as good as they were a couple of years ago, I certainly can foresee a loss .. although I would expect Pitt to be competitive.
Like our favorite BB coach always says .. we have to keep improving every game.