One of the most impressive parts of the offense thus far has been red zone efficiency. Through two games, the offense has scored a touchdown on all 12 red zone possessions. Pete Roussel of 247 pointed out that this is not a trend unique to Pitt just this season. Paul Chryst offenses have been remarkably efficient in the red zone. (more…)
(This is a weekly series of articles entitled “Monday Morning Quarterback”. I will try to post them two days after the football games are played so as to have our wilder emotions under control by then. It will be my take on the positives and the negatives we saw happen and a chance for commenters to agree or disagree and to add their own thoughts.)
Coming off a nice win against a fellow ACC member team in Boston College we PITT fans are feeling pretty good right about now. The only long lasting problem that arose during the game is when Artie Rowell, our Center, went down for the season with a torn ACL. Other than that it looks and feels like the team will have nothing but positive ramifications of that win.
POSITIVES
The one thing we can all point to is that, unlike sometimes in past season, we soundly beat an opponent where the odds were close and we were playing in their backyard as it were. Yes, the 30-20 score aside we beat the BC squad up and down and bettered them in every phase of the game. This wasn’t a pushover team either. They will win more than they lose this season so for me a real positive is that we didn’t feel overconfident coming of a big 62-0 the week before.
Another good thing that happened is that James Conner had two monster games in a row. Last season he had a singular two game set where he ran for over 100 yards and that was against New Mexico State (119) and then Duke (173). Other than that he was way less productive during the regular season having done this for yardage: 27, 1, 28, 3, 35, 102, 26, and 22. Does anyone actually think we’ll see that type of low production again from Conner this year? Not me.