Pitt will be having kids visit for football recruiting this weekend and next. One of the visitors this weekend, defensive lineman Ryan Watson. The DL from Maryland is expecting after the Pitt visit to make a choice at some point in the near future.

The 6-foot-3, 275-pound Watson visited Purdue this past weekend and plans to visit Pittsburgh this weekend.

“Just those two [official visits] right now,” Watson said. “It’s probably going to be between those two.”

Watson is being recruited to play on defense by both schools.

Purdue “was really good, I especially like the people there and everyone was nice, including the coaching staff,” Watson said. “I really like the opportunity [at Pittsburgh] and Coach [Paul] Randolph, the defensive line coach and the head coach [Todd Graham]. When I went there for an unofficial, it was a really nice campus.”

Watson is nearly a consensus 4-star recruit. Rivals.com, Scout.com and 24/7 all list him at 4-star. ESPN (Insider subs.) says 3-star, but they also list him as an offensive lineman. He plays both ways, but all other reports say his future is most likely at defensive end or tackle — and indeed Pitt is recruiting him for the defensive side.

Here’s the situation. No one is happy with Tino Sunseri as Pitt’s starting QB. The thought of a third year of brain locks. Of holding the ball too long. Of staring down receivers. Of not setting feet. Of not being able to make accurate throws of more than 10-15 yards down field. Well, no one wants that. Not the fans. Not the coaches. To quote a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings, “The prospect of doing it all over again… quite frankly gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, you know what I mean?”

Unfortunately, at the present the options on the roster are limited. That means Pitt needs another QB for 2012 who can play right away.

First up, Deon Anthony.

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Here’s the situation. No one is happy with Tino Sunseri as Pitt’s starting QB. The thought of a third year of brain locks. Of holding the ball too long. Of staring down receivers. Of not setting feet. Of not being able to make accurate throws of more than 10-15 yards down field. Well, no one wants that. Not the fans. Not the coaches. To quote a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings, “The prospect of doing it all over again… quite frankly gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, you know what I mean?”

Unfortunately, at the present the options on the roster are limited. That means Pitt needs another QB for 2012 who can play right away.

There’s incoming freshmen (and hopefully stud) QB Chad Voytik. There’s Trey Anderson. There’s Anthony Gonzalez. And possibly Mike Myers. In other words, Pitt needs another QB who can compete immediately for the starting QB job.

The belief is that Chad Voytik will be Pitt’s QB in another year, but as much as Coaches Todd Graham and Dodge seem to believe that, they are also rational enough to know you don’t place all your eggs in one place by putting all the pressure immediately on a freshman. Ideally, they would love to give him a redshirt year and bridge 2012 before really being ready to truly having him compete for the job.

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After developing ulcers from watching our QB play over the regular season, and with all the current talk about Todd Graham advertising for an alternative at QB for next year, let’s take a look back and see how we got into the fix we are in now.

Early on in the 2010 preseason Dave Wannstedt announced that Tino Sunseri was going to be the starting QB in 2010.  He did this by telling us “Its Tino’s time’ in August of 2010 when he set the QB depth chart in stone by cutting out the competition.  From August 7^th on what we saw was what we got.

Sunseri’s 2010 season was much like the one we just watched him finish.  Listed below are his stats throughout his career – his 2010 year is bolded and you can see that, on paper, he looked pretty decent for a first year starter.

That’s on paper mind you.  What skews this is that mid-season Sunseri had two monster games against two of the more porous pass defenses in the nation in Syracuse and Rutgers.  Take away those two games and Sunseri played stone cold average at best in compiling these stats:

He was 172 of 308 (56%) for 1984 yards with 9 TDs and 8 INTs in the other 11 games.  Spread that out as an average per game and he averaged 16 of 28 (57%) for 180 yards with .81 TDs and .72 INTs per start.  Combined with much the same type infuriating inconsistency that we’ve seen this season from Sunseri and you can see why we ended up 7-5 even with loads of other talented players on offense.

(Edit: as pointed out by a commenter, Syracuse did have a good pass defense and I was mistaken to call it porous… RU on the other hand pretty much sucked.)

I’m not sure that PITT fans realize just how ineffective he was for the vast majority of 2010. (more…)