Sorry. Been a little sick. Also swamped with work. Oh, and had to go out of town for family things. In other words: Life. I mean, I couldn’t even get the time to put together some open threads.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching Pitt football and doing some deep thinking about it. No. Not at all. After the rather interesting affair up in Syracuse, I started to have some things coalesce. Perhaps some basic understanding of how this Pitt offense operates.

I’m working from a the last three FBS games — UCF, Duke and Syracuse. The similarities in all three are obvious. But I think you can break it down rather simply.

1st quarter/first few offensive possessions: Get a balanced approach. Try to keep the same number of plays for runs and passes. Definitely want to establish some sort of running game.

2d quarter tweaks: Well, crap. That wasn’t just kind of spinning the wheels. Time to throw the ball. Hey, keen, it’s working. Build a nice lead going into the half. Wheeee.

3d quarter/coming out of the half: Okay, now let’s try that again with the whole balanced offensive approach. Besides, the defense has been solid. Nothing to worry about…

This roughly brings us to the 4th quarter where the game seemingly in hand has taken a dark turn.

Scenario 1 — BLOWN LEAD: Oops. Wow, that balanced approach to the offense didn’t work. Again? Who could have seen that coming? Welp, time to throw the ball once more.

or

Scenario 2 — BLOWING THE LEAD: By god, we will run this ball even if it kills every fan we have, and try to hang on for dear life.

And some how with this approach, Pitt is 3-0 in the games.

Here’s the numbers in each of the game by quarters:

UCF — Q1: 11 run, 16 passes+1 sack; Q2: 9 runs, 7 passes; Q3: 10 runs, 14 passes; Q4: 7 runs, 14 passes

Duke — Q1: 4 runs, 14 passes; Q2: 13 runs, 21 passes+1 sack; Q3: 7 runs, 4 passes+2 sacks; Q4: 4 runs+1 kneel down, 9 passes

Syracuse: Q1: 10 runs, 9 passes+1 sack; Q2: 9 runs, 15 passes; Q3: 6 runs, 6 passes+2 sacks; Q4 11 runs+3 kneel downs, 3 passes

The Syracuse game may have been the purest expression of this approach. Breaking down neatly by quarter.

This is obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there’s an underlying truth to this in Pitt’s approach on offense.

There are plenty of of other factors. There is the reasonable approach that you want to run it a bit more in the second half to run clock. It’s just that Pitt seems to want to start bleeding clock almost as soon as they come out of the tunnel.

It’s clear that the defense starts to wear down in the second half. You can see it reflected in the number of plays the offense gets to run. It isn’t simply the offense having 3-and-outs. The defense starts to give up longer drives to the other team, and Pitt’s offense has fewer opportunities.