Chas has put together a nice post with some news and links in it in anticipation of tomorrow’s match against Rutgers, “The USC of the East” according to some of their fans.

First off let’s get this out of the way.  Rutgers’s football team has had some of the strangest nicknames of any team I’m familiar with.  My two favorites are “The Queensmen” and later on their mascot was Chanticleer or “The Fighting Rooster”.  This last led to a great quote from their football coach Harvey Harman, “You can call it the Chanticleer, you can call it a fighting cock, you can call it any damn thing you want, but everybody knows it’s a chicken.”  He had his sexes mixed up a little there but you get his drift. 

Harman later is said to have bought the first “Scarlet Knight” mascot costume for the 1955 season, which was to be his final season as football coach at Rutgers.  Interesting, the first guy who actually does something to take the gayety out of the RU football program gets fired.  They should have just compromised and called themselves “The Fighting Queens” or “The Queens Cocks”, both of which would fit perfectly today also.  Oh, and Ozzie Nelson of Ozzie and Harriett TV fame was QB for the Fighting Cocks from 1924-26.  Anyway, we should kick their asses based on the above alone.

So, let’s take a minute to look at things from the PITT perspective and talk about what we need to see from the Panthers tomorrow to 1) get us another Big East win and 2) make us feel more comfortable about the direction Todd Graham has the team headed at the mid-point of the 2011 season.

Can our offense keep the progress it’s made from the USF game going?  Obviously we fans were ecstatic that we finally put up big numbers against a BCS team, but Rutgers’ defense is head and shoulders above USF’s. They are stingy giving up points at 16.5 ppg (17^th nationally); great rushing defense with 91.5 per game (20^th) and their pass efficiency defense isn’t too shabby either at 28^th nationally.  The latter stems from their impressive turnover ratio of +2.17 which leads the country.

All that said you have to take into account their opponents so far this season:

Two cupcakes, a semi-cupcake then Syracuse, not exactly Murder’s Row.  PITT should be able to open their eyes to what constitutes a BCS caliber offense in the form of Ray Graham running the ball and Sunseri getting the ball out quickly and, building on his work against ND and USF, using his run option to freeze the LBs.

One thing to note: when deciding to run with the ball over the last two games Sunseri has 15 carries for 93 yards which is averages out 6.2 ypc.  That can’t be overestimated as to what that does for the offense.  We’ll see more of it tomorrow I think.  However, RU has been a sack machine with 3.5 per game (4^th) but that again may be a result of inferior offensive lines.  If we can replicate the work our young OL did last week and Sunseri can continue to get the ball out quickly then we may dodge this bullet.

I expect Shanahan and Street to shake off the willies they had last Thursday with the dropped passes and, hopefully, they will do it when Sunseri throws one of his better deep balls.  Cam Saddler can continue to be a go-to guy in the Slot position.  We should be able to match our scoring average of 30 ppg.

How will our defense fare against RU’s offense, specifically the passing attack?  There should be no problem with our defense against the run.  We are holding teams to a respectable 125 ypg so far and I don’t see that changing much.  After all, as Chas pointed out in his last post – you can measure RU’s rushing gains in inches rather than yards “…the running game ranked 117th nationally and averaging 84 inches per carry.”

But, WR Mohammed “Sanu Believe It!” Sanu is going to try to make sure RU can get yardage through the air.  He’ll be on the receiving end of passes thrown by either Chas Dodd or Gary Nova, two QBs who just don’t engender fear in the hearts of defenses.  We’ll do what we did with ND’s great receiver Floyd, less the totally forgetting about the TE this time, but he’ll make some plays and score at least once.

Other than that I don’t see RU being able to move the ball much against us.  They’ll have some offense but we’ll hold them out of the endzone most of the game and limit their points.  I also expect us to finally break the turnover drought, we had two against USF but we’ve been missing on INTs hitting the defense’s hands all season and some of those would have been easy pick-sixes.  I see Todd Thomas following up his great effort last week with another big game as he starts ‘getting’ his assignments and responsibilities.

Who wins the Special Teams battle?  RU’s special teams pretty much suck with them being 88^th or below in the major categories of punting yardage and returns.  We are just a bit better than them but nothing to write home about.  RU’s kicker, San San Te is pretty good having made 10 of 14 attempts and leads the nation with 2.5 per game. ; Pitt’s Kevin Harper has turned his slide around and has hit his last seven attempts.  He now 9 of 12 on the season and that ain’t bad.  Graham won’t hesitate to go to him especially if we are in a close game.

Our punters are pretty good now with Mark Myers doing some of the punting – which sets up nicely for a fake and a pass down the road.  To lots of fans’ relief Graham has done away with the pooch punt… which was a bit surprising as it was actually effective in pining the opponents down inside their 20.  I can’t help but wonder if this decision was helped along by Graham’s renewed faith in our offense to do what he wants it to do.  Maybe we’ll see more conversion attempts on fourth down.

OK.  Prediction time.  I think we start off somewhat slowly until the OL gets adjusted to the speed on Rutgers’s defense, which is impressive especially in the LB corps.  But talent will out and Ray Graham kicks in another 150 rushing and 35+ receiving.  Sunseri continues his progress and throws some decent deep passes which are caught for nice gains.  We score 35 points.

Rutgers gets some turnovers that lead to points but we harass their QBs endlessly and shut down their already poor running game. Sanu gets the ball more than we like and puts up some points but RU leaves the stadium with 21 total.

PITT 35  RUTGERS 21