Matt at Blue Gray Sky has the final post in his series of new coaches ND will face this year. It is Dave Wannstedt’s turn. It’s an interesting read, but I concede there were some points that made me defensive.

They really question whether Matt Cavanaugh is the guy to be running the offense, given his history. I can’t totally disagree, and I think many Pitt fans are a little concerned what will happen with Palko’s development. If Palko doesn’t develop further this year, the blame will be coming firmly and fully on Cavanaugh. Concurrently, it will be interesting to see what Kyle Boller of the Baltimore Ravens does this year. If there is no real growth for him without Cavanaugh to blame, then it would be fair to say that part of the problem was the talent not the coaching.

By the way Michael, you can’t really bring up the Rick Mirer trade on a ND site without acknowledging that this NFL flop was one of your guys (who knew he was still technically in the league). Yes, it was a hideous deal, at the time there was still a belief that he could be salvaged — but not at that pricetag. As you have noted even Charlie Weis couldn’t do anything with him.

It also seems a little strange to mock the positive descriptions of Wanny in his bio and from the local media. I mean from Dylan analogizing the Weis hire to Outback when he’d prefer to go to Ruth Chris in December, to Mark’s post in July arguing that Weis has fully absorbed the lessons of Lord Belichick (and can I add that this is just scary). Just remember that Belichick flopped in his first head coaching gig.