Let me be honest here… I don’t think Penn State is as good a team as they were projected to be in the preseason.  That said Pitt played them straight up defensively holding them to 17 points.  Our offense was a different story though – Pitt fans look at Pickett’s gaudy numbers and say our offense is starting to click.  I look at them and see a whole bunch of passing yardage with nothing to show for it.  That is what happens when you can’t field even a semi-decent run game.  Then you must throw it all the time and Pickett did and we didn’t score even one passing TD. Again.

That yardage total looked great but save the last 28 yard pass and great catch to Mack at the now-National Historic Registered Penn State 1 yard line the Nits DBs kept everything in front of them – hence 0, zero, zilch, zip, nada TD passes thrown by our QB.  Right now he has two TDs in 12 quarters of play with none in any second half going back over the last six games.  We’ve accomplished just three field goals in the last 12 quarters of second half play – makes me sick thinking about it.  So I won’t.

How do you think that resonates going into a game against a University of Central Florida team who not only is scoring at will over the last three seasons but now is also among the national leaders in defense along with another great offense.  And in doing so have won there last 27 regular season games (28-1 overall in the last three seasons)

Take a look at what the Golden Knights have done so far as far as national standings and “Value”.

When I wonder how good a defense is I look directly at Passing Efficiency Defense first – theirs is an outstanding 4th nationally in keeping opposing QBs to a 77.79 rating. For comparison what is considered a ‘good’ QB rating is up in the 150s or higher.  Right now Pickett is sitting at 122.7 which is poor.  But get this – the 130th team in this is Wyoming and they have a QB rating of 79.5.  So UCF holds QBs to even worse that the worst team listed.

Who did UCF play ? Their only P5 opponent so far has been Stanford who they ass-kicked to the tune of 45-27 but that score is a bit misleading – UCF jumped out to a 38-7 lead at halftime then led 45-17 before they put in their 2nd string kids.  Stanford scored on a FG with 1:12 left in the game and then Stanford’s defense ran a fumble in for a TD from the 28 to get to 27 points.

What we need to look at is how many points did the Stanford team score offensively? That would be 20. With that they held Stanford’s passing game to 233 yards and no TDs and one INT on 24/49 (49%) gathering only 4.8 yards per attempt and a 88.7 QB rating which is fantastic defense overall.

Oh, BTW – they are also limiting the opponents to 85.7 yards per game on the ground. Stanford did a bit better at 23 for 116 yards and one TD. So may be can match that – it would be a hell of a lot better that our 0.9 yards per carry against PSU wouldn’t it?  Lets hope.

Now – what does UCF have on offense.  Well, one of the best QBs so far in Dillon Gabriel who stands like this against his peers:

3rd  nationally in yards per completion @ 18.9 per catch…read that again – 18.9 yards per catch.  (Pickett = 95th @ 10.7 yards per catch)

4th nationally in Passing Efficiency @ 206.6  ( Pickett = 91st @ 122.8)

7th nationally in TDs thrown with nine. (Pickett isn’t listed in the Top 85 with his two TDs)

This kid is a freshman and is damn good and he’ll tear up our defensive backs so badly in the 1st and 2nd quarters they will start tackling the UCF WRs as the ball is in the air to get Pass Interference calls to stop more deep receptions.  Here are Gabriel’s season numbers:

Now – Pitt has played pretty well in our Pass Efficiency defense holding opposing QBs to a 114.6 rating and 36th in Passing Yards Allowed at 193 per game…but we haven’t faced a pure passer like UFC’s kid yet.  If we can do that against Gabriel then we may win but I don’t think we can.

I think UCF carries all of this forward to tomorrow’s game playing against Pitt and Pickett.  I expect we may see some more Pitt yards on the ground this week but less passing yards in the air.  We’ll score some points but UCF will go up big time early and crusie to a win at Heinz – where I think there is zero home field advantage for the Panthers.  UCF is currently standing at 19th in Scoring Defense with 13.7 ppg.

Oh – before I go here is one stat we just can’t overlook now that we have Mark ‘The Wizard’ Whipple as our OC – we currently stand at 126th out of 130 in Scoring Offense putting up an average of  only 14.7 ppg. Yes, you read that correctly – 14.7 ppg against teams that really don’t have that great of defenses save VA which is doing pretty well this season.  But 20 against Ohio and only 10 against Penn State sucks and you can quote me on that.

We may win tomorrow – or at least bet the spread which seems to float Pitt fan’s boats and we may win some more games down the road – after all we aren’t going to be 1-11 are we?  No, we are not. At least I don’t think so.  No! We can’t!

But I truly don’t feel we have the type of talent that Narduzzi inherited when hired and who gave him two eight win seasons.  I truly believes that all this comes down to the talent level teams playing against us have and what we have. It’s no secret that I think Narduzzi has been very poor at identifying hidden talent and/or seeing that talent and getting them to commit to Pitt. I’m not just talking about star ratings – but that sucks also – but real honest to God talent.  It is indicative of this when we played FCS Ohio and only beat them by 10 points. Also the fact that we scored only 10 points against PSU.

…and don’t even get me going about 2nd half scoring – if that isn’t indicative of stubborness on PN and the staff’s part what is?  He thinks that whatever he has planned is good enough so why change at halftime?  Good God – at least three victorious opposing HC’s have said almost exactly that in post-win press conferences over the last two years.  Narduzzi is the only one who doesn’t see problems with his overall decision making – everyone else has gotten used to it by now.

Seriously – ask yourself this…were you really that surprised when he went for the FG instead of a TD last week with the game on the line…and then threw out snide remarks when asked about it?

What it comes down to is Narduzzi didn’t trust his Panthers to punch it in from the 1. He noted the anemic run totals for a program that was billing itself as RBU not so long ago: 24 yards on 25 carries. He failed to mention freshman running back Vincent Davis scored on a 3-yard run in the second quarter.

“We can look back at all the calls, guys,” Narduzzi said. “All the armchair quarterbacks, you guys all have those armchair desks, so it’s easy to make those decisions. We were throwing the ball — we threw for over 300 yards — and we felt like we had some plays open.”

No- you were not because we’ve seen this movie before.  OK – prediction time. I think UCF beats the spread scoring a bunch in the first half and doubles our point total – but we actually score a TD in either quarters three or four.

UCF – 42

Pitt – 21