Over the past ten years or so, it has become a little more noticeable that the talent level of high school football in Western PA has started to drop. It’s not a slam. It isn’t that there isn’t still plenty of solid players being produced and even stars. But there is definitely less big name talent than in the past.

Some of it is simply the population trends that has the area (and the whole state) losing population. Some of it is simply cyclical as there is a down time in the talent.

Still nothing drove the drop-off home like the P-G’s strange piece on the offensive talent in the region and its impact on college football. The players it hyped were Pitt’s Dion Lewis and Jon Baldwin, WVU’s Noel Devine, PSU’s Evan Royster and Terrelle Pryor of OSU. Of those players, only Baldwin and Pryor are actually from the area. Devine is from Florida, Lewis — New York and Royster is from Virginia.

If one of these players wins the Heisman, it would mark a return to a day when this part of the country turned out the best offensive skill players college football had to offer.

Between 1973-76, this region had a firm stranglehold on the Heisman

Penn State running back John Cappelletti won it in 1973, Ohio State running back Archie Griffin grabbed it in 1974 and ’75, and Pitt running back Tony Dorsett claimed it in 1976.

So, um, Western PA is now claiming Columbus and Morgantown?

There’s some excellent talent on the teams the P-G covers, and of course there is plenty of interest in Pryor because of his local ties. Yes, there’s a possibility of seeing the Heisman be tied in to the area this year. Still, couldn’t there have been a less awkward way to shoehorn them into a preview piece?

The offensive line, in preparing for Utah knows it will not be the same as going against the defense in camp and practices.

The philosophy for Pitt’s defensive line is to get off the ball and whip the offensive line straight up. Wannstedt’s defenses rarely blitz and, when they do, the blitzes are reserved for certain situations.

Utah, however, will bring extra guys from all different directions, and Wannstedt said he expects to see a steady flow of run blitzes, blitzes off the edge and stunts from the Utes. That is why he said he is glad the Panthers’ offensive line has had extra time to prepare for the game.

“They are similar to a lot of teams we will face in that they do a lot of fire-zone pressure and whatnot,” right tackle Lucas Nix said. “The whole thing is they will have eight [players] in the box the whole time, or at least we’re expecting that, and then it becomes a matter of picking up tendencies.

“They are pretty much an edge rush team. We will see a little bit of pressure from the middle, but, for the most part, they are going to bring strong pressure from the tight end side and try to get in the way of our bread-and-butter plays.”

Karabin added, “Since it is the first game of the year, they will come out with some different things, some things which aren’t expected, but we’re going to try and prepare for anything they can really throw at us.”

I would say the best comparison to how Utah likes to attack on defense is Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights are a blitz-happy team that attacks and brings pressure as much as possible. Corner-blitzes, safeties, overloading a side. That has been the style of Schiano’s defenses and it seems much like what Pitt will see from Utah.

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Still backed up, and everytime I think I’m going to get caught-up, I get bogged down with other things.

The loyalty of the tailbacks seems to be a theme. Ray Graham has been noted for his loyalty despite a 4-star, sought after RB stuck behind Dion Lewis. Well, behind Graham is Jason Douglas. Another part of the 2009 recruiting class. The redshirt freshman has been just as loyal.

“I knew coming back this year that I was up against Ray and Dion and those two are great backs, the two best running backs I have ever seen,” Douglas said. “But if you are a competitor, you still have to come out and compete for your spot every day. And now I got an opportunity, I just need to go out there and make the most of it. I just want to make some plays, help Pitt win football games.

“You never know when your opportunity is going to come so you have to stick with it.”

AP wire article starring Tino Sunseri. Think the theme might be inexperience?

The No. 15 Panthers begin one of the nation’s toughest nonconference schedules Thursday at Utah, in a stadium where the home team hasn’t lost in three years. They’ll go there with a quarterback who’s never started a major college game.

Tino Sunseri, a redshirt sophomore, has thrown all of 17 college passes. He’s never stepped into a stadium knowing that his team’s success that day rested largely on his play. He’s never thrown a touchdown pass that’s won a college game, or thrown an interception that’s lost it.

Still, the Panthers don’t seem to be the least bit worried that Sunseri’s inexperience is a glaring negative going into one of the toughest road openers in school history.

“Everybody has to start somewhere,” Sunseri said. “Look at all the great quarterbacks who come out, Colt McCoy, all those other guys. They had to start and play some teams. I’d rather play one of the teams that’s good rather than a bad one.”

Everyone is publicly being confident.

The helpful thing is having a target like Jon Baldwin. Size, strength and hops.

Tristan Roberts gets some love from his local paper for being such a hard worker.

Motivating himself by just wanting to contribute to the team and stay healthy, Roberts has shot up the depth chart this offseason and currently finds his name in the starting lineup at weakside linebacker.

Roberts played some linebacker for the Panthers two years, but has not played every down since his days at Pennridge.

“I got here and played weak side, went to strong side, and now I am back learning the weak side more in depth,” Roberts said. “Weak does a lot more running around. The biggest challenge is the speed difference from high school. I used to be one of the fastest, now every defensive back is faster than me. It makes it more important that I know what is going on.”

And just as he gets the local profile, Paul Zeise blogs that Greg Williams seems to finally snapped out of a funk and is pushing hard to start.

Chris Jacobson is one of the three new starters for the interior of the O-line. And the only one that I feel reasonably confident can handle it.

“I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life right now,” he said. “I’m ready to go and I feel great. The mental preparation, it’s all there now.”

The 6-foot-3, 290-pounder looks the part and has the physical tools. He could help make Pitt’s left side the dominant run side with Jason Pinkston.

“When he comes off that ball, he comes off low and hard,” said defensive tackle Myles Caragein, who was Jacobson’s high school teammate. “When you line up against him, it’s not a walk in the park. It’s a brawl every time.”

As for the rest of the line, Jacobson said he feels confident in center Alex Karabin and right guard Greg Gaskins. The three new starters, he said, “are going out there every day and proving ourselves.”

And we will be watching for that proof very intently.

There’s a rhythm to training camp media coverage. The first few days is about how the players look, what the coaches are saying, and just general optimism. The players are without pads, and just doing drills.

Then the pads go on and the hitting starts. The reports are about what is happening on the practice field. Injuries, who looks good, bad, moving up the depth chart. How the units are looking.

As always, there are individual stories spaced in there. But at the end of camp. That’s when the individual stories dominate. It is all that is left for a while. There isn’t much more to write about practices. Depth charts are mostly set. It is really about counting down to the first kickoff.

That means most of the stories start focusing on individual players and the soft-focus puff pieces. Let’s hit them quickly.

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Just want to get some of these out, before I try to catch up on the training camp football material that I’ve fallen behind on, yet again.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News (now with a new and even slower loading format) has a piece on Pitt’s now deep frontcourt.

“I think he’s going to play minutes. I think he’s going to be good,” Dixon said.  “I think [Talib] Zanna is going to give us a different look with his length and his size at the 4. It gives us another option.”

Undersized Nasir Robinson started at power forward last season alongside 6-10 center Gary McGhee, and Robinson figures to remain in that position this season.

But Dixon is pleased that Zanna’s emergence and the continued development of 6-7 Texan J.J. Richardson brings a greater degree of size and physicality to the frontcourt and should give the Panthers five players to rotate at the two power positions.

McGhee and 6-10 sophomore Dante Taylor are the team’s centers. Richardson showed last season he can play there, as well.

“I think we’ll end up playing bigger,” Dixon said. “Our big guys played well in Ireland. We saw that happen in practice, too.”

Zanna shot .636 (21-of-33) from the field for the Panthers in the five games overseas and averaged 8 points and 7 rebounds.

Assuming for a moment that Pitt does indeed go big more often, I think the guy that sees his minutes squeezed more than anyone else will be Travon Woodall. He was already going to find minutes a little tougher with Isiah Epps and J.J. Moore pushing for time in the backcourt and to play wing.  Nothing I’ve read regarding the summer league shows that he has gained more consistency with his shooting touch.

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Last year Dion Lewis grabbed the starting tailback job as a true freshman. A lot of attention was on how he beat the more heralded Ray Graham — also a true freshman. Really, though, it was that he also beat Chris Burns and Sharif Harris that made it surprising. Before the season started, this seemed like a bigger concern. I mean, Lewis didn’t even have the starting job at this time last year in camp. It was still open.

Hindsight (or even just a couple games into last season) made it obvious that Dion Lewis was a special player that was somehow missed by nearly everyone as Pitt was his only 1-A offer when he accepted. A mix of luck, shrewd evaluation, and late realizations by other programs.

Now that theme is being promoted with true freshman CB K’Wuan Williams.

“If he continues to improve he has a shot to help us,” said defensive backs coach Jeff Hafley. “We still have a long way to go before that first game, and he has a lot of work to do with the rest of us. But he’s putting himself in position to battle for a spot. There is no question about that.”

That’s quite an accomplishment for someone who did not receive another scholarship offer coming out of St. Joseph Regional High in Paterson, N.J.

Williams appears to be another recruiting coup for Hafley, who is gaining a strong reputation for being able to identify high school players out of New Jersey. Hafley is the coach who is responsible for landing another lightly recruited player from New Jersey, Heisman Trophy candidate Dion Lewis, and many other New Jersey-bred players on the roster.

One of the reasons Williams was overlooked by major-conference schools was his height. He was only 5 feet 8 as a senior in high school. He has grown a full two inches since signing day in February, which has been an added bonus for the Panthers.

It’s not to say that Williams will be starting in the first game. Antwuan Reed has one spot locked-up. Ricky Gary is a senior and has played well in training camp, so he looks like the other.

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The one area where there just doesn’t seem to be any angst over the position — now or into the future — is in the receiving corp.

It starts with Jonathan Baldwin, as the star of the crew. Realistically he is gone after this season barring some catastrophic injury, but there is such depth there.

Mike Shanahan has a lot of us excited because he is just as tall and opposite Baldwin. Both were basketball stars with offers from BCS programs. That size and athleticism is one of the reasons why there is a touch less worry about the passing game with a new QB behind a line that will likely be weak up the middle.

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The open browser tabs keep piling up, and it is getting out of hand.

The post on seniors graduating spurred some more good comments and discussion. There was also a Trib article on Coach Wannstedt keeping a close eye on the players and their academic performance. The anecdote is on Ray Graham being consistently late for a class and Coach Wannstedt dealing with it. But here’s the stuff on how the senior class is doing.

This year, several key players have graduated before the first snap of 2010 season and are taking post-graduate credits. They include fifth-year seniors Greg Romeus, an All-American candidate at defensive end; kicker Dan Hutchins; cornerback Ricky Gary; nose tackle Tyler Tkach; and senior wide receiver Greg Cross, a junior-college transfer. In addition, seniors Dom DeCicco, Nate Nix, Jason Pinkston and Jabaal Sheard are close to graduating.

“It would be neat to go nine-for-nine,” Wannstedt said.

Meanwhile, redshirt junior quarterback Pat Bostick earned a bachelor’s degree in communication in three years and is working toward a second degree in media and professional communication.

The dismissal of Elijah Fields certainly increased the odds that all seniors will graduate.

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A question many of us have asked.

Q: In your camp reports and blog entries you consistently mention a lack of depth at offensive line and linebackers. I would also consider there to be little quality depth at cornerback as well. For all of Wannstedt’s acclaimed recruiting, doesn’t the lack of capable backups speak poorly to this staff’s ability to get these players to translate that talent to the field?

ZEISE: Well, it is one of two things — there is an issue with evaluation of talent and recruitment or there is an issue of development of talent.

I think one thing that may help with the linebackers is it seems in recent years they’ve actually recruited linebackers — as opposed to safeties or receivers they want to turn into linebackers. But I really don’t know that it is a recruiting issue at linebacker or corner — I think, like you said, they seem to recruit a lot of good athletes and they have a lot of younger players on the field who seem to have some talent. To me that speaks to perhaps a development of talent issue and it is something that likely needs to be addressed. There is no reason there shouldn’t be a few more linebackers and corners out of this group who are ready to play. I’m not sure what the issue is but you are right, it is something that needs to improve.

Now the offensive line, to me, is an entirely different issue and that is all about evaluation and recruiting. They seem to take a lot of kids who are reaches based on potential or because they have “good feet” or whatever but as one high school coach said to me “if a kid can’t block anyone in high school, what makes you think he’ll learn to in college when guys are bigger, faster and stronger.”

So in short, I think they’ve missed on a lot of recruits at that position and they don’t have nearly as many viable options as they should given how many scholarships they’ve devoted to linemen in recent years. That position to me seems to be more of an issue of scouting and evaluation than development of talent.

Simply put, six years into a program you should not be in a position where your best center is a walk-on and his primary back-up is a redshirt freshman defensive lineman who has never played center. So I’d say recruiting for that position — offensive line — has been hit or miss and right now it looks like a lot more misses than hits.

As well as the offensive line played last year (and the good health the starters had) and the development of some players, the lack of quality depth on the O-line has been glaring. Especially with a coach that wants to run the ball, and was an offensive lineman in his playing days. It almost seems inexplicable. The failure to recruit true centers over the years has really bothered me.

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It is the dead period for college basketball. No “official” recruiting. The summer AAU circuit is winding down. So any basketball news is surprising beyond reports of high school kids and where they are leaning.

It is also how you know that your team is either controversial or expected to be good next season (or both). The team keeps getting mentioned in stories or features about the upcoming season.

Jeff Goodman at FoxSports.com posts a little on Pitt’s recently completed Ireland trip. The focus is the NCAA changing the rule to allow freshmen to make the trip. Coach Dixon (obviously) liked the rule change and thinks more teams will take the opportunity. Before, it was only teams with very small freshmen classes taking the trip, simply because there weren’t enough bodies on the roster.

Dixon said this year’s Pitt group will be much bigger and longer than a year ago. Don’t be surprised to see a frontcourt that features much-improved big man Gary McGhee and Zanna – a long and skilled 6-foot-9 native of Nigeria who averaged 8 points and 7 boards on the trip.

“We think he’s going to be pretty good,” Dixon said. “He’s another body so we can play bigger.”

Dixon also has plenty of size on the wing with guys like Gilbert Brown (6-foot-6), Brad Wanamaker (6-4), Patterson (6-5) and freshmen J.J. Moore (6-6) and Cameron Wright (6-5).

This could be Dixon’s deepest team since he took over – although he was cautious.

“Everybody is deep in the summer,” he laughed.

Not in Kansas and Memphis if the NCAA isn’t clearing top-5 players.

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The pads went on yesterday, and suddenly things changed.

Today, however, the Panthers put on the shoulder pads and that meant the speed of the game went up a few notches as the drills became semi-live (meaning there is contact but players must do their  best to stay on their feet and not tackle to the ground) and it was easy to see the difference because Sunseri struggled.

He threw two picks, was not nearly as accurate as he was the first two days, missed some easy throws and by the end looked a little bit rattled.

That’s not a big deal – in fact I expected as much from him because the speed of the game was so much different from yesterday until today. I also expected the offensive line to be a step behind as they got used to a full speed rush and they were as well.

When camp started, even Tino Sunseri was well aware that things change when the pads go on.

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Before I can get to actual training camp, I need to clean out some browser tabs that rapidly accumulated over Big East Media Day.

Related to nothing, but a good laugh. A 1980s golf outing photo featuring Coach Wannstedt and Nick Saban.

If you want to judge which Pitt player was the favorite choice for the media to interview there are two options. One is to wait until you find an article that mentions which players got the most attention (“…the media’s most popular interview at Tuesday’s event — Zach Collaros and Dion Lewis tied for that award…”). The easiest metric, though, is volume of stories. Dion Lewis was the overwhelming option.

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Can’t hurt for awards and attention.

Anticipation is growing for the start of Pitt’s 2010 football season. A few reasons for the excitement are Panthers’ wide receiver Jon Baldwin, running back Dion Lewis and defensive end Greg Romeus.

To showcase the individual efforts of the team’s stars, Pitt is pleased to announce the launch of JonBaldwin82.com, DionLewis28.com and GregRomeus91.com. Check back with each site throughout the season for updated stats and video highlights as the trio makes a push for the top awards in college football.

I don’t think anyone really expected anything other than this for the initial preliminary hearing for Jabaal Sheard’s adventure in Barkleyism.

A preliminary hearing for suspended Pitt defensive end Jabaal Sheard has been postponed to Aug. 4.

Sheard’s attorney, William Difinderfer, asked for a postponement while he and the prosecutors attempt to negotiate a plea agreement, prosecutors said.

By the time the plea agreement is reached, you can expect the felony charge (aggravated assault) to be reduced to some sort of misdemeanor level.

Training camp opens August 7, so you know that Sheard’s attorney is pushing to get a resolution by the August 4 date.

If charges are withdrawn, defense attorney William Difenderfer said he will recommend his client be reinstated to the team in time for training camp next week.

…

Sheard’s lawyer said the hearing was postponed until the court could determine the cost of Parker’s medical bills and lost wages, which Sheard is expected to pay.

I can see Sheard reinstated for camp. Unless the plea agreement gets things down to a mere disorderly conduct charge, though, I can’t see how Sheard isn’t suspended for at least one game. Unlike DGunn’s incident last year, this wasn’t a relatively victimless incident. There have to be some consequences.

With the NCAA enforcement paying attention to social media as a way to find out who could be violating rules, Greg Romeus’ name is somewhere in the midst of the burgeoning agent scandal.

Greg Romeus attended San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore’s South Beach party in May, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told NFL Insider Aaron Wilson.

Romeus is from nearby Coral Springs, Fla., so it’s plausible that the NFL draft prospect could have arranged for his own transportation to the pool party at Gore’s residence.

We’re told that Romeus is prepared for any inquiries about how he came to be at the party.

The story notes that reports state that Romeus has denied to Pitt officials and coaches that he was even in Florida. Hopefully this is true.

If the NCAA starts sniffing around him, he had better be honest about things even if he attended. Last year Dez Bryant for Texas Tech Oklahoma St. had his career ended because of lying to investigators. Not for actually meeting with Deon Sanders. It’s always the cover-up that makes things worse.

Romeus is poised to be a first round pick regardless of this. It will, however, effect a lot of other things.

Romeus is one of the seniors on the squad and a face of Pitt football this year.

The Big East exposure continues on Friday as Pittsburgh hits the Bristol campus.

Coach Dave Wannstedt, running back Dion Lewis and defensive end Greg Romeus will appear in spots on the “Mike and Mike Show,” “College Football Live,” “The Scott Van Pelt Show” and ESPNews.

Romeus has also been named to the watchlist for the Allstate Insurance and American Football Coaches Association’s Good Works Team.