We PITT fans were in the habit of biting our collective nails when Dave Wannstedt was coaching the team going into games coming off a bye week. Because we are in that time period now and awaiting our game against Syracuse next Friday evening I thought I’d take a look back to see if that nervousness was justified and compare it to the results Paul Chryst had at his last job.
Since the 2005 season until his last year in 2010 Wannstedt had eight bye weeks over six seasons and compiled a 3-5 record in the games played after the bye. Not very good all told and the image of his being poor at preparing the team over that long layoff is pretty accurate.
The breakdown of those games is as follows: one home loss; one home win; one away win and five away losses. We kind of got screwed with the scheduling there as six of eight games were on the road. One weird note is that in 2008 we had three bye week games that resulted in a win over Iowa at home; a win over Navy at home and a loss to Cincinnati at their place.
Fast forward up to today and let’s look at what kind of track record our current coach Paul Chryst, as the Offensive Coordinator at Wisconsin, had in getting his offense ready to play after an enforced layoff time. Well, as it turns out Wisconsin was 4-3 overall. They were good lately but very poor a few years ago. Here is how it shook out (I used the offensive output as Chryst wasn’t the head coach):
