Well, here is a subject whose time has obviously come to be ‘talked about’… and that is the horrible back up QB situation we have at Pitt this spring and maybe, if our bad luck holds, will have going into fall camp.  As readers of the Blather well know I have been harping on this almost continually since Chad Voytik departed.

As a matter of fact just this morning I posted an article on here that in no small measure addressed this subject yet again.

In conversations with other Pitt fans I find it interesting that there was so much blowback on Peterman transferring in to usurp Voytik … but there has been virtually no fan noise made about the fact that we’ll drop in quality rather surprisingly if we have to replace Peterman for any length of time.

Many fans have stated ‘Well, this is a normal thing to have the QB2 be a kid with no real game time experience.’ and I will beg to strongly differ.  Almost always a D1 head coach will get his back up QBs at least a few snaps to get somewhat acclimated to true game conditions.  But that didn’t happen last season because we had the Nate Peterman / Chad Voytik tandem… so the assumption at the time was that going into 2016 we’d have the same level of talent at both the QB1 and QB2 spots.

Obviously that can’t happen and Narduzzi has been caught with their personnel planning coming up short in that area.  Matt Canada is inheriting this situation and can’t be all that happy about it.

Again, fans counter with ‘Hey, we have no idea if Bertke and DiNucci can play in a game pressure and neither do you.’ And that is true also.  But there is a twist with those guys.  Because of the two senior guys at QB neither Bertke nor DiNucci has ever taken any QB2 snaps in any practices and certainly not during game weeks when the practices revolve around the offensive game planning.

Maybe you are sick of hearing me talk about it.  But the reason I bring this up now is that Rival’s Chris Peak has been the first person in the local media to come out and agree with my assessment almost 100%.  Believe me – when Chris Peak states there is “…a real problem…” he truly  means it especially because he is mostly much milder in his choice of words and subjects.

But he’s correct even though I think he still soft pedals the severity a bit.   Listen starting at the 36:27 mark and you get almost a full half hour of Chris waxing poetically about the QB situation – and I agree with every word… although I would add that if Narduzzi and Canada aren’t beating the bushes for a transfer they well should be.

(Guys – listen to the first part of that podcast also as Chris has excellent insights into what is happening to the BB program right now.)

Jerry DiPaola followed suit with his morning article today (referenced above) and I think he also is being gentle with his approach to the problem.

I used to go on the message boards everyday and comment on them for years before I started writing for The Pitt Blather and I still go on once in a while to check things being discussed.  The Rivals pay board had a thread titled “What is the Plan if Peterman… goes down for an extended period of time”

Further down in the thread I commented (replied) to comments other readers had posted which stated ‘no one knows what they (Bertke and DiNucci) can do’:

“I think if we press MacVittie into playing as a true FR we are doing him a big disservice in the long run. Aside from the fact that Bertke and DiNucci have at least some time in college ball practices and scrimmages and actually enrolled in college itself (a bigger deal than most fans think and we never seem to factor that lack of experience in).

We really should be looking at MacVittie as a last resort for playing in 2016 to try to get him as ready as possible to take over the starting job.  Unless of course 2007 happens all over again as we watched multiple QBs go down early and saw that Bostick had to play way too early.

As to none of us ever seeing Bertke or DiNucci actually under center in a real game that is true… but as one wise poster on here once wrote “Speculation is what we do on message boards” and so we speculate certain kids will be good – and sometimes they are – and then we speculate that other kids won’t cut the mustard and sometimes that is true also.

Personally, I think we are up a creek if we lose Peterman and that is why I really don’t like the fact that Chad Voytik left the team. We badly need him on the roster this season but instead we are looking at a marked drop in talent from Peterman to anyone else who is on the roster as QBs.

That was on Wednesday…  DiPaola and Peak addressed the subject on Thursday… but before that it was like some dirty little secret no one wanted to talk about publicly but us fans on this website. Know why?  Because it probably pisses the coaching staff off. But hell, fans will talk about every and all aspects of Pitt football and so will blog writers.

OK – yeah, I’m tooting my horn a bit here but my main point is that finally the local media writers are starting to realize and talk about this serious issue. I very well believe our season could tank like we did back in 2007.

If we remember we were coming of a 6-6 season but we had been the 3^rd best scoring team in the BE and 14^th nationally. We had some very good talent returning, especially on the offensive line and in the receiving corps, and a highly ranked recruit in LeSean McCoy.

Pitt fans and national sports outlets were talking about it being DW’s breakout year where we would rack up wins and land in the Top 25. Bill Stull had seen some action as a rsFR under Palko in ’06 and did well so he was the heir apparent at QB and was welcomed.

Then BOOM! Stull gets hurt, Kevan Smith gets hurt and we were down to a true freshman… and barely squeaked out a five win season.  It will be worse for us if Peterman goes down as early as Stull and Smith did – I really believe that. “Nuff said for tonight.

Here is something funny from DiPaola about the Iron Curtain Narduzzi has dropped on the media during his camps since he was hired…

 “Parrish, by the way, suffered an injury recently and will miss the rest of spring, coach Pat Narduzzi said. Narduzzi refused to reveal the nature or extent of Parrish’s injury. “That’s a personal thing, I think,” Narduzzi said.

Narduzzi is not unlike most coaches (probably closer to all coaches) when it comes to releasing injury information. They hate doing it.  One thing I learned from the NFL — and Todd Graham backed this up to me one day five years ago — is that opposing teams will target a player’s body part if they think it’s weak or injured.

If player X has a shoulder injury, for example, and he plays, anyway, and is involved in blitz protection, do you think the defense might try to test that shoulder with repeated blitzes? Of course, it will. Then, all of a sudden, you might have another injured player — your quarterback.

 But there are flaws in that theory:   Keeping information secret these days, even from the other team, is difficult. Players talk amongst themselves, their friends and family members, and are constantly on social media. So, in many cases, it gets out, anyway, even without telling reporters. (So, Pat, you might as well tell us and eliminate the middle man.)”

 Love that last part!