Well, hello again!

Chas has been gracious in his allowing me to get back to where it began as far as my writing about Pitt football and I’ll be posting some articles here on The Pitt Blather every so often.  So, here goes…

After a pretty dismal opening loss to ACC opponent Virginia Pitt hosted Mid-Atlantic Conference (MAC) Ohio at Heinz last Saturday. It wasn’t Ohio State mind you but Ohio…who actually isn’t all that bad of a team for a MAC school. Let’s set the stage a bit:

Against Virginia Pitt looked pretty shabby in just about every aspect of play. After VA moved out to a 13-0 lead Pitt had its only two decent drives, both in the 2nd quarter, to go ahead by one point, 14-13 at the half.  After that…nothing at all… while VA scored 17 unanswered points. Fans will have different opinions about how Pitt actually played in that game but regardless of how you break the game down it was a disappointment to those who thought we had a chance to start off the 2019 season on the right foot.

But that foot tripped over its other foot and we started 0-1 in ACC play.

Then last Saturday we seemed to play better. In many aspects we took a big leap ahead, especially in the passing game by our QB Kenny Pickett. What he did against VA was pretty horrid with 21/41 for 185 yards @ 4.5 yards per attempt & an 87.4 passer rating… and watching it unfold felt even worse. But he rebounded against Ohio in a big way by throwing for 26/37 for 321 yards @ 8.6 ypa and a 151.0 rating in a 20-10 victory.

Was that a big step in the direction of what our new OC Mark Whipple thinks we’ll see each week out of the passing game or was that a result of playing a MAC defense that was 99th in Passing Yards Allowed (3300 yards and 24 TDs) in 2018? Who knows, but it was better passing and receiving play and less sacks allowed by our Offensive Line then the week before so that bodes well. Our talented WRs didn’t drop as many passes in Week 2 as in Week 1 and that helped account for the big yardage jump also.

I don’t buy into the belief that we’ll see that same level of passing play we did last week as the norm for the rest of the season save for maybe against Delaware and a poorer ACC team. I certainly believe that our next opponent, Penn State, will put so much defensive pressure on Pickett we’ll see more of a reprise of the VA game then of what we saw in the Ohio match. I’m not taking Pickett’s accomplishment away from him, but hell folks, throwing for 321 yards and yet only one (1!) TD? He has to do better than that if we are to win Saturday and our conference games later in the season.

Regardless of if our passing game was effective or not we have kept up the poor work in the second half of our ball games scoring 0 points against VA and then only 3 points against Ohio.  This trend has been a killer for us – in our last five matches we have scored a total of nine points in the second half.  Nine points in 10 quarters of play.

Here’s how that broke down as far as points scored after the half going back and including the last three games (all losses) of 2018: Miami – 3 points; Clemson – 0; Stanford – 3; VA – 0 and Ohio – 3. Nice pattern but totally crap late and needed offensive play and a scoring difference of 49-9 2nd half points overall.

That is actually horrid and as a result we are 1-4 in those five games with the only win being against a lesser foe. That really bothers me for a variety of reasons but what jumps out most is the continued absence of effective halftime offensive adjustments by Narduzzi and his staff.

Our run game was a bit better against Ohio than it was against VA. In that first game the VA defense held us to 30 carries for 78 yards (2.6 ypc) and 1 TD. Ugh. We rebounded against the Bobcats with a better showing of 37 carries for 160 yards (4.3) and 1 TD also. Still not what we’d like to see against an FCS school, but better.

Looking at this season’s rushing so far at 67-238 @ 3.6 ypc and 2 TDs I very much doubt we’ll see anything like the rushing game we had last season this year – far from it maybe.

Penn State currently sits at 30th nationally in rushing defense giving up only 2.19 ypc and zero TDs. That said the Nitters haven’t played the schedule we have so far with their Idaho (79-7 win) and Buffalo (45-13 win) games.

What jumps out to me is that regardless of who PSU played they outscored their opponents 79-20 in averaging 62 ppg. I think they will score a bunch against us on Saturday also. The question therefore is ‘are we going to be able to keep pace with them?’ I don’t think we can enough to win the ballgame in Happy Valley with 106+ crazy fans screaming their lungs out. It will be our first away game and one that signifies which major PA team gets the last win in what may be a very long time before these two teams play again. Pitt dined out on our  2000 win until 2017 when we lost to the Bad Guys up in Blinders-on, PA.

Look at our record in the last three games against PSU; we are 1-2 and have been outscored 123-62 with a humiliating 51-6 loss last year. And we had a semi-decent team last season – better than the current 2019 version in my opinion, albeit with different approach offensively this go-round.

But Penn State is Penn State and when we won that last match against them we were fielding talent like QB Nate Peterman (3 TD passes), WR Q. Henderson (7 touches for 107 yards @ 15.0 ypt and 1 TD) and RB James Conner (146 yards total at 5.6 ypt and 2 TDs) on offense and an offensive line that was one of the best we have had in ages.

That OL gave us a 28th ranked rushing Offense along with a 3rd ranked Sacks Allowed at only 10 on the whole season. We have no offensives stars of that caliber on this squad – so far at least. Some kids shined against Ohio but we’ll see what they do against better competition.
This year’s version of the OL is a far cry from those of the past when we won 8 games and as such I feel Pickett will be running for his life on most of his drop backs on Saturday. That’s going to make a big difference in his passing stats and effectiveness.

I don’t have a crystal ball but I predicted a 1-3 start on the season by the Panthers and nothing I’ve seen has changed my mind on what will most probably happen in Happy Valley. I think PSU shuts down our run game, disrupts the passing game and scores on deep passes against us.

Penn State is now giving (-)17 points to Pitt according to the latest betting websites. I think that is just about correct but I’ll take even more PSU points so my prediction is:

PSU – 45
Pitt –  17