Today was a scrimmage, Coach Wannstedt had comments afterward (as opposed to telling everyone to f–k off?).

On the scrimmage:

We ran the ball okay today. It was a good day. We wanted to take advantage and take a good look at the running backs today and we did that. I thought the whole group played well. We protected the ball. I think we had one penalty. So that was smooth. The only negative thing was the couple interceptions. I think there are two sides to that. Number one, we can’t turn the ball over. We can’t throw interceptions. But our secondary is playing well right now. You know, if you want to throw the ball on us, there’s a good chance we’re going to come down with it. Josh (Lay) is continuing to have an outstanding camp. He has come out everyday and really performed and made plays. But overall I’m happy with the effort. We got everybody in there. Everyone got some work. Heck, we had a nice little crowd. It was about as nice a crowd as we can get. Some ex-coaches were here. Coach (John) Majors was here. Coach (Foge) Fazio was here. Coach (Louis “Bimbo”) Cecconi was here. So we covered the last 50 years of Pitt football. (laughs)

Stull would appear to have the backup QB job (no shock). The RB position looks to be Jennings and Murphy, with Stephens as the change-of-pace. Wannstedt’s exact words, “I get excited every time we hand the ball to LaRod Stephens. He kind of gives you that feeling every time he touches the ball that he may go the distance. So I think he helped himself today.”

Tony Barnhart at the Atlanta Journal Constitution seems to think Pitt will do better than ND in the short term — and that Domer fans and alum expectations will be the bigger problem long term for Weis.

Looks like parking will be a real problem for the opening weekend. There’s this damn rib fest.

Best news, the weekly Q&A with the Post-Gazette’s Pitt beat reporter, Paul Zeise, is back.

Q: Will you be brave and predict Pitt’s record and ranking for this season?

ZEISE: Hmmm, Ok I’ll bite. I think I’ve said before in the spring the season will come down to how the Panthers fare in four games — Notre Dame, Nebraska, Louisville and WVU. If they split those four, which personally I think might be asking a lot, they can finish 9-2. I’m guessing 8-3 is probably a little more realistic. I know there is a lot of enthusiasm for this new coaching staff and there should be – it is clearly an upgrade and will pay big dividends in the future.

But this team has some flaws in places that make it very difficult to run the table in college football. The defensive line is very unproven and frankly, there isn’t much depth particularly at tackle. Thomas Smith is out for now and if this is a lingering type injury, there is a huge hole that needs to be filled and I’m not sure the personnel is in place to fill it.

The offensive line is going to be the best it has been since that line had Bryan Anderson, Chad Reed and Rob Petitti (2002), but it is very, very thin as well. Any key injury could be a disaster, particularly to either of the starting tackles.

Those two potential trouble spots are not a surprise because the one of the main criticisms of the former coach was his inability to recruit big guys on both sides of the ball. Coach Wannstedt will change that and start bringing in linemen, but he ‘s still basically playing with the former coaches players.

The same can’t be said about wide receiver, which was supposed to be the specialty of the former coach. It is very troubling that all of those young, and talented, receivers are still very inconsistent and not yet reliable. There just isn’t many of these guys ready to step in and really contribute and that’s a surprise. This is an area that could become a real trouble spot if Greg Lee or Joe DelSardo gets hurt and miss any length of time.

These three areas, I believe, will ultimately cause some issues for the Panthers and will translate into at least two and likely three, losses.

He has thoughts on the running back position, the back-up QB, and the WR position. This is always one you should click to read in full.

Graessle and Cummings get featured on a piece on the special teams.

But both said they had areas to work on in the offseason and quickly listed them when asked about their workouts.

“There were a lot of little things that went wrong,” Cummings said. “I had three or four kicks blocked against South Florida and another against Utah. I know both got out of hand, winning big at South Florida and losing to Utah. No matter how it happened, it still affected my numbers.

“I was 17-for-22 (77.3 percent) going into South Florida, so ending up 18-for-27 (66.7) is disappointing after missing only five kicks. So, I dropped significantly from 80 percent down to 66. That breaks my heart, but I hope to get 25 attempts again this year, and I’ll try to make all of them.”

Cummings made a long kick of 47 yards, but he missed six kicks from longer than 40 with an 0-for-2 performance from more than 50 yards. He appears to have enough leg to make long field goals and could get more chances this year. Graessle has an even stronger leg and will kick off again this season. He averaged 43.3 yards per punt with a long from 79 yards, five touchbacks, six fair catches, 17 inside the 20 and five blocks.

“I worked on increasing my get-off (catch to punt) this year, and we’re aiming for 2.1 seconds,” Graessle said. “I was probably in the low 2.2s, but that little bit of time difference is really big when you’re a punter.

“So, I just wanted to improve in that area, as well as my direction and my hang time. My goal is to average 45 with a net of 45 (yards per punt) and with a lot of fair catches. So, there’s a lot for me to improve.”

Graessle improving his time to get off the punt is important. Last year way too many were blocked, and while bad protection was part of it he didn’t help with how long he took to get it away.

An interesting story from the AP on Tyler Palko’s continuing relationship with Stanford Coach Walt Harris.

When Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko sees the 650 area code pop up on his cell phone’s caller ID display, he knows immediately who is on the other end.

It’s Walt Harris, calling from Stanford University to check on his protege and friend, to discuss football and, specifically, playing quarterback. A year ago, Palko ran Harris’ West Coast offense at Pitt; now, the two maintain a West Coast-East Coast relationship.

Palko, who enjoyed the best sophomore season statistically of any quarterback in Pitt history, hopes it’s a coach-player relationship that will continue even though the coach no longer is his coach.

“We’re very close, and we got closer as we had more success because the trust factor was there,” Palko said. “I talk to him once or twice a month and we stay in touch. He’ll always be a good friend of mine because of how close we were, and I wish him the best.”

Harris’ advice can and counsel can only help Palko, and by extension Pitt.

Finally, I noticed that “Recruiting expert” Tom Lemming is providing content to CSTV.com. Today he rates the Tight Ends. He has Pitt commits Justin Hargrove and Nate Byham as #7 and #2. Lemming, though, is not paying much attention to actual recruiting it seems.

Byham has yet to divulge even a short list, but Penn State (his childhood team), Iowa (the first school to offer him), Michigan, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Ohio State, USC and Michigan State are believed to be among the frontrunners.

That’s more than a week after Byham committed to Pitt. Hope CSTV.com isn’t paying too much for the services.

I’ll keep this short. One of the most tiresome topics is back.

One of Fran Ganter’s new duties as associate athletic director for football administration is the task of future scheduling.

So who better to ask about the revival of the Pitt-Penn State series?
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“A big part of me wants to see us play Pitt every year. I realize why [we don’t], but I really thought that was it. I still feel like we can do that. That’s personal.

“I’m just shooting from my hip. Curley would have the biggest say. Well, that’s not true. Joe would have the biggest say. Personally, and this might just be because I’m from Pittsburgh, but they were great games.”

It’s not that I don’t want Pitt and Penn State to play annually. I do, in perpetuity. Very much. On a home-and-home basis. It has been a long standing tenet of this blog. It just is not going to happen for the foreseeable future.

I’ll put it bluntly, there is no way Pitt and Penn State will play each other in football until Joe Paterno is in a box in the ground 6 feet deep. I’d say retired, but I doubt even that; and besides I suspect both will be — let’s just call them — interrelated.

Fran Ganter, was the scapegoat for Penn State’s offense after 2003. Penn St. basically created his position in the athletic department in an effort to make it less obvious that they were blaming the offensive coordinator to deflect it away from Joe and Jay. (I have to believe some small part of Ganter had to be laughing bitterly at the team’s offense in 2004.) His influence on this sort of thing is about as strong as, say, Pitt’s Special Assistant to the Chancellor and Athletic Director.

I have no doubt Penn State loyalists will see this as yet another attempt by the evil Pittsburgh media to “stir things up”. (And even they are starting to worry about Morelli’s intelligence when he describes the Penn State Offensive Playbook as “never-ending.”)

Idle thought, do you think Ganter was the “former assistant football coach” the target for prank calls by 3 PSU players?

Here’s a story looking back on former Pitt Center John Pelusi. Pelusi played in the ’70s for Coach Johnny Majors. His son, John, Jr., is a Freshman tight end at Pitt. Unasked, but striking me as curious, is the apparent family tradition of using a “J-name” for everyone. His kids are John, Jodie, Jacquie and Jamie; and his brothers are Jeff and Jay.

Meanwhile, Luke Getsy, now the QB with the Akron Zips is getting ready to be a starter.

Prior to taking the Akron job last year, Zips coach J.D. Brookhart coached Getsy at Pittsburgh, where Brookhart was offensive coordinator.
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“What we saw (at Pitt) was a real savvy kid who did not have a great arm but had great poise in the pocket and was smart,” Brookhart said about Getsy, who was named to the Big East All-Academic team his sophomore year. “He doesn’t have what you would call a strong arm but his intangibles make him a good player.

“And the thing that really got me was that he played a lot better in scrimmages and games than he did in practice. We were excited about Luke at Pittsburgh.”

Interestingly, Pitt did actually give him his release at the end of the fall semester.

Finally, a piece on Pitt commit, John Malecki.

Malecki picked Pitt because he’s always been a fan, he wanted to stay close to home and he likes new coach Dave Wannstedt.

“I was really impressed with coach Wannstedt,” Malecki said. “I like the atmosphere there, and I didn’t need to go anywhere else.

“After Dorin Dickerson (West Allegheny) committed, I knew we were going to get a great class. There is something great coming out of Pitt.”

Malecki, however, isn’t worried about playing at Pitt these days. His focus is on leading Franklin Regional to places it’s never been.

In fact, Pitt coaches told Malecki and his high school coach, Greg Botta, that if he was on the roster this year, he’d see playing time.

Obviously, the story is about the guard’s upcoming senior season.

Bob Smizik’s column concerns the expectations for Pitt and Coach Wannstedt. I don’t disagree with his final sentence.

For this Pitt team, 7-4 will be a disappointment, 8-3 acceptable, 9-2 a possibility and 10-1 not out of the question.

It’s how he got there, that wasn’t too good. It was okay with the opening about how this is not a team in need of rebuilding — there is a nice mix of talent already on hand. But then to talk of how Coach Wannstedt could be Pitt’s Paterno? Just dumb. It doesn’t fit or work. Not just for the differences in years (coaching in one place and age), but because as soon as Smizik writes that it is “foolish to compare anyone to Joe Paterno,” he tries to do it. The extent to which is essentially — they are both on their last jobs. That is it.

The column then shifts gears to start going on about where Pitt is ranked and that other than Louisville, the rest of the schedule is against lower-ranked teams, and so on. Weak.

Then there is this piece on Coach Wannstedt based on his comments at yesterday’s press conference.

The Pitt Athletic Department is happily taking in the money right now with the Quest for Excellence fundraising campaign and football ticket sales.

Season-tickets sales for football are far ahead of where they were last year at this time and Long said he expects to sell out all of the season-ticket packages within the next week to 10 days (there are 48,500 designated season-ticket seats — 42,500 are non-club seats and 6,000 are club seats).

The school has sold on average between 200-300 football season tickets every day since they went on sale in May. Men’s basketball season tickets have not gone on sale yet but Long said based on the number of new donors and early requests, the tickets will again be quickly sold out.

“Part of the football sales is driven by the new coaching staff and the excitement that it has generated,” Long said, “but the bottom line is we haven’t missed a beat, and in fact we’ve gotten stronger.”

Long also said it is very likely that there will be no single-game seats available to the general public for the opener against Notre Dame because the tickets generally designated for single-game sales (along with the season tickets there are 16,500 tickets allotted for students, visiting team and corporate sponsors leaving about 2,000-3,000 single-game tickets) will be sold to Panther Club members.

“We will have about 2,500 standing-room seats, but Panther Club members will get first crack at those, so most of those will be gone as well,” he said.

It will just be a matter of the fans actually showing up to the other games.

Both beat reporter notebooks lead in the notebook regarding Defensive Tackle Thomas Smith getting his knee operated. They still hope to get him back for the season opener.

Wannstedt said that senior Phil Tillman will take most of the snaps with the first team in Smith’s absence. He said the normal rotation of tackles once Smith is back will be Smith, Tillman, Corey Davis and a fourth player from a group that includes senior Ron Idoko and freshmen Craig Bokor, Rashaad Duncan and Ernest “Mick“ Williams.

The kicking and punting was discussed in both, as well. Both Punter Adam Graessle and Kicker Josh Cummings are vying to handle kickoff duties. Graessle seems to be booming it better.

Bill Fralic will do color commentary on the radio with Bill Hillgrove for the second straight year. He apparently came to Pittsburgh from his home in Atlanta to briefly talk with Coach Wannstedt at practice. I did not hear any of the radio broadcasts last year, so I don’t know what kind of job he did.

While everyone agrees that Pitt will use running back by committee, everyone has a favorite. Rashad Jennings has impressed at least one of the reporters covering Pitt’s preseason practices.

It’s been nearly two decades since the University of Pittsburgh had a running back like Rashad Jennings, a perfect blend of power and speed at 6-foot-1, 235 pounds, but with the Panthers stable full of talented running backs a solid rotation could be in order this season.

Jennings was the No. 1 running back coming out of the spring workouts, but senior Tim Murphy was injured and freshman LaRod Stephens-Howling from Johnstown was still in high school. Sophomore Brandon Mason and fifth-year senior Ray Kirkley – the leading rusher last year and as a freshman in 2001 – are also in the mix now.

“Murphy is healthy, and he and Rashad are taking most of the (first-team) reps right now,” Pitt running backs coach David Walker said. “But all of those guys are going to play, and they’re all competing very hard.
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Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh and Walker prefer to have one back carry the load, but there are several factors that might keep them from utilizing that plan this year.

“I’d love to have Tony Dorsett here, but we don’t have him,” Walker said. “But we have a good group of players that are competing real hard, and they’re all a little bit different. Rashad probably will do most of his damage inside and should be a high yards after contact guy.

“Brandon has the ability to make guys miss a little more, and Tim has both qualities. LaRod, he’s a change of pace guy with good speed, but they all give us a chance to spread teams out if we want or wear them out if we want to do that. So, with this personnel, we can execute every play Matt calls.”

[Emphasis added.]

LaRod Stephens gets some love in this story.

“There’s a lot of backs who are not as tall or as thick as other guys, but he can definitely be a factor in the return game in his career here. And he’s definitely going to be a factor as a running back in his career here,” Pitt running backs coach David Walker said of Stephens.

“He’s such an explosive young man. At times, he may break down physically, but you ve got to hit him to break him down physically, and if you can’t catch him, you can’t hit him.”
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“I just like to play football, wherever I can be on the field,” Stephens said. “If it’s helping the team, that’s even better. Anywhere they have to put me, that’s where I’ll go.”

Need a kick-returner? Stephens will give it a try. Need a big play on third down — a game-breaker for, say, 60 yards? Give the ball to LaRod.

“I’ve seen some guys like him,” said Walker, who ranks as the sixth-leading rusher in Syracuse history (2,643 yards). “That style of back puts a lot of stress on the defense. He can outrun angles. He can get in your gap and exploit you. He’s got a chance to be a productive player for us.”

Clearly, Stephens has been working on his cliches. Nicely done.