Spring Drills begin at 10:30. The spring practices will be more about finding out who is buying into the new regime right now, and who needs work. At least that is the subtext I find in the whole, “we have no depth chart and every position is up for grabs” stance taken by Coach Wannstedt. I’m not disagreeing with it, I’m just giving my interperetation.

Players will be learning new things, especially when it comes to the redesigned offense. Some will be at new positions as Wannstedt tries to add speed to the defense, shift to a run-first philosophy on offense and retool the offensive line.

“We will move at a fairly fast pace, and I think we can,” Wannstedt said yesterday at a news conference.
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Nine starters return on offense. So, although Wannstedt has opened all positions, there could be minimal movement. One area in flux is the line, where senior Charles Spencer, who moved from defense a year ago, will switch from left guard to left tackle to replace Rob Petitti, an All-Big East player.

Wannstedt made it clear that position changes could be abandoned or added at any time.The biggest shift on defense will find senior Thomas Smith sliding inside from defensive end to tackle.

Every defensive move will be geared primarily to speed, even at the expense of size.

“We could have ends moving to tackle, linebackers moving to end,” Wannstedt said.

Although the offensive staff is new and all the defensive assistants were retained, Wannstedt has spent most of his preparation time with the defense. That’s because he has a lot of trust in Cavanaugh, and, in part, because Wannstedt’s coaching background is on defense and he wanted to put his mark there by tweaking things.

Speed, especially on defense, is the key point of emphasis for Coach Wannstedt.

And more than anything this spring, Wannstedt wants to turn Pitt’s defense into a play-making machine.

“You’ve seen the style of defense that I’ve played the past 15 years — they’ve always been big-play defenses,” Wannstedt said. “My teams have given up some size to play fast. Not many teams can play with a 5-10 1/2, 235-pound middle linebacker like Zach Thomas or Jason Taylor as a 225-pound defensive end. Those guys wouldn’t be able to play in most systems.”

In Pitt’s slightly altered defensive system, a lack of size won’t keep potential play-makers off the field. Such is likely the thinking behind moving from fullback to defensive end former Kiski Area standout Chris McKillop, a 6-2, 240-pound special-teams letter-winner last season.

See, not only can McKillop go but he has a knack for finding ball-carriers.

“Defensively, I really wanted to make changes, but keep the terminology similar to what the players have been used to (under defensive coordinator Paul Rhodes),” Wannstedt said. “They had a complete defensive package here and now it’s a matter of looking at it and finding out what we’re going to be.”

In a word: faster.

I think, the defense will show much improvement. Not just from Coach Wannstedt’s presence, but because the young secondary should be more improved, conditioned and (hopefully) able to play tighter coverage.

The unasked question is what happens with the offense? Yes, an emphasis on the running game will be important. But the offensive line was so bad last year, and now the best player from the line has graduated. So what happens with the line?

Then there is the offensive coordinator, Matt Cavanaugh. Wannstedt has admitted he isn’t doing much on the offensive side, since he knows and trusts Cavanaugh so well. In that respect, he’s put all the pressure on Cavanaugh not to let the offense take a step backward. Fair or not, Cavanugh comes in to the job with a need to repair his reputation. He was the fall guy in Baltimore for the Ravens offense.

Yes, I know they had no quality #1 or much of a #2 receiving threat. The QB situation was hardly positive. And I know they had a solid line and great running back. You can say that Redman, Wright, Dilfer and the host of other stiffs who they stuck at QB would be too much for anyone to create a high powered offense, and I won’t disagree. And since their head coach Brian Billick came there as an “offensive genius” there should be more blame put on him. Again, I’m not disagreeing. Cavanaugh was still the scapegoat. There’s the issue of developing Kyle Boller, who everyone gives credit to Jim Fassel for making any progress this season.

All I’m saying, is that if the offense doesn’t perform at near the levels seen by the team last October and November, then Cavanaugh will be getting the blame.

There’s definitely more people paying attention to Pitt football right now. There’s this AP story on spring drills about to get underway. Even one of the bastions of Penn State-centric football coverage, the Harrisburg Patriot-News has a story.

“I think we can do a lot on offense to help our quarterbacks and to help Tyler from the standpoint of the play-action package and our running game,” Wannstedt said. “If we do them correctly we can help a quarterback like Tyler who’s a movement quarterback.

“[Palko] makes a lot of plays on his feet and has a great ability to make plays on the move. And we need to make sure that we’re doing enough things within the system to give him a chance to do things by design. So, we can put in plays to complement his ability.”

Wannstedt mentioned a plus-10 turnover ratio and 46.7 penalty yards per game — both among the nation’s best — as the most positive points from last season, but added that Pitt’s run defense, run offense, pass defense, punt returns and kickoff returns had a lot of room for improvement. But that made it all the more exciting to prepare for this season.

You know its almost 6 months to the first game, and I’m already feeling excited.