Yesterday was rough. We learned a lot about the team. Some fears were realized, some new questions arose, and overall we saw how good FSU is. I knew Jameis Winston was good, but I didn’t expect him to have the best game of any BCS QB. Winston had a better game than Marcus Mariota, Teddy Bridgewater, Johnny Manziel, and Tajh Boyd. Only Boyd played a BCS opponent in Week 1 so he arguably had a better game since he beat Georgia. Even still, Winston leads FBS in passer rating after Week 1. He’s also top 11 in yards, touchdowns, and yards per attempt. Insane.

There are a lot of justifiable complaints about the defense yesterday. Something you can’t account for is a QB who does not miss a single throw. Were guys open? Yes. But never in a million years did I expect to see a freshman QB starting his first game to play like that. Winston replaced EJ Manuel, a 1st round pick. Go ahead, look through Manuel’s game logs. I challenge you to find a better game than Winston just had. That includes opponents like Savannah State, Murray State, etc. The defense sucked yesterday, but they weren’t Savannah State bad.

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I’m going to skip the self-pity over “same old Pitt.” And the tired stuff about how once more on the big stage at home, Pitt was a mess. Even if I hadn’t decided that when I got up this morning, Ron Cook writing that column clinched it for me.

My ire and disappointment is mostly reserved for the defense. I expected issues on the offense, but the defense was a wreck. From the TV perspective, the coverage was incredibly soft. DBs playing far off the receivers and giving them a cushion that gave Jameis Winston easy throws. During the game, writers up in the press box kept noting that the issue was that the linebackers were not in position.

That does seem to be a large part of it.

The defense, especially the secondary, played very passively tonight. They allowed Seminole receivers to get plenty of separation in the middle of the field, particularly on medium routes. Cornerback K’Waun Williams said after the game that the plan was to play off because Florida State ran a lot of crossing routes, but that puts pressure on the linebackers to pick up in coverage, and that unit struggled with its coverage.

Teams like Duke, Virginia and Syracuse don’t have the same athletic ability as Florida State, so maybe we’ll see a change there with a more aggressive approach. But I thought one of Pitt’s strengths last season (maybe their biggest strength) was Williams and Lafayette Pitts playing physical man-to-man coverage, and we saw very little of that tonight. A few guys talked in training camp about new coordinator Matt House‘s defense being simpler and allowing the players to “play faster,” but tonight it looked like a lot of guys got caught out of position and Florida State took advantage of that.

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