Hell, I don’t know where to begin. Here’s the Box Score, Recap, Drive Chart and Play-by-Play.
I took so many pages of notes, but most are incoherent because things were happening so quickly and I spent a good chunk of time talking with Lee on the phone while the game was happening (and of course, the Makers Mark didn’t help the coherence).
Some things that stood out, the NBC/ND play calling crew absolutely blew chunks. It wasn’t the fact that they were ND homers. Kind of expect that. It’s that they were so busy most of the game talking over the action with their pre-scripted story lines that they would forget to mention things like who caught or ran with the ball, where the ball was spotted, generally speaking — what was actually happening on the field of play.
Tim Murphy was actually running the ball well from the tailback position. They wasted him on a couple of dumb, predictable pushes at the goal line. Brandon Mason never made an appearance.
Notre Dame really hurt themselves by not running Freshman Darius Walker more. Their best RB, but they insisted on giving the Senior, Ryan Grant about half the carries. He wasn’t bad, but Walker was far superior. Really dumb.
Greg Lee may have fallen 5 yards short of 100 yards, but he was impressive. Not just with some deep catches, but the way he fought to take the ball from defenders. A big improvement from the first couple of games. He is now less than 80 yards from 1000 yards for the season.
Pitt really exploited the ND secondary. Mixing deep and medium passes along the sidelines with some great underneath passes to the RBs and TEs.
Palko’s flip to Furman on the last drive took about 7 years off of my life. It worked, but one of these times a defender is going to step in front and take it all the way back for a score.
The Walt Harris look with the leather jacket and stylish shades was something. You’re 58, isn’t it a little late for a mid-life crisis?
With WVU laying an egg against BC, Temple finally winning a game in the Big East against Syracuse, and Pitt’s win — Oh, god, I hate to type this, but Pitt is once more in control of it’s own (DON’T SAY IT!!!) destiny.
Well, I’ll angst over that in a couple days.
Right now, I’m just looking forward to seeing some highlights on College GameDay Final, and Palko better get a helmet sticker.
