Key words for today’s news round-up.
Starting with the inexperience. While that describes several positions for Pitt this year, it applies to the entire (healthy) receiving corp.
Pitt sophomore Greg Lee caught 10 passes last year.
That’s 10 times as many as the rest of the Panthers’ wide receivers — combined.
Yet, there isn’t a sense of panic. There is a lot of faith and confidence that the receivers will respond and play well. I liked what little of Lee, I saw last year, and have thought that he would be the stud receiver for Pitt this year even if Brockenbrough had been healthy.
Seems the defense is trying to live down the legacy of last year. Defensive Coordinator, Paul Rhoads, says that this year the team will concentrate on tackling (Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat! But that trick never works. This time for sure…). I’d like to be a little more optimistic about this, because Rhoads does mention that the missed tackles last year were so numerous. The problem we saw last year, though, wasn’t so much the missed tackles, as it was too many players just trying to hit the guy with the ball. They weren’t even trying to tackle. They were too focused on making the big hit. No mention of that in the article, so I live in fear of its return. Hope I’m wrong.
Puff pieces on members of the defense. H.B. Blades, sophomore starting linebacker, gets the standard treatment. I like Blades, and there is no disputing his bloodlines. What makes me nervous is all his talk about wanting to put the big hit on someone. See, above.
A more gushing puff piece is for freshman cornerback, Darrelle Revis. This is, in no small part, because he is a local product and the people saw him play high school ball as well. He is good and will be a stud, but this piece is setting the bar a little high
Shelly Anderson defends Harris‘ decision to not release Getsy from his scholarship to transfer to Akron. Hopefully this will be the last we hear about this for a while. It should be a dead issue after the first game is played. I mean, unless Palko goes down with an injury, then the hand-wringings and what-ifs will resume no matter what.
Speaking of backup QBs, looks like Darrell Strong has been practicing with the QBs a bit, just in case. Seems reasonable.
