A common theme among PITT fans when discussing the football program, at least over the last two years, has been our defense and how poorly it has played. There really can be no denying that opinion, especially with the taste of last season’s bowl game and Houston’s Sherman to PITT’s Georgia rampage. This is so very obvious it wouldn’t even be worthy of any long discussion save for one fact.
PITT hired one of the best defensive minds in college ball when they pried Pat Narduzzi from his Michigan State Defensive Coordinator position. His defenses were in the Top 25 in many major categories whereas we had one, our pass defense which is mind-blowing considering the last two quarters of our season last year:
| TEAM | Total | Rush | Pass | Pass Eff. | Scoring | 3rd Down | 1st Down | INTs | TDs | Sacks |
| MSU | 8th | 1st | 60th | 21st | 22nd 21.5 ppg | 8th | 8th | 10th | 29th | 8th |
| PITT | 33rd | 55th | 24th | 43rd | 55th 26.3 ppg | 40th | 37th | 82nd | None | 102nd |
Yea us!! We beat them in passing defense!! But that was it. The table above and the graphic and convincing numerical rank superiority that MSU had over PITT is the reason we fans are chomping at the bit to see Narduzzi and Conklin’s defense out on the field of play.
So to answer the question of the title I believe yes, it was as bad as we believed it to be in our guts. Of course they played well in some games and made some nice plays here and there but overall we were what we looked like – bad.
