Tommie Campbell gets a little puff piece as he is expected to see more playing time at Safety with Mike Phillips out for the year. He will be behind Sam Bryant, but is still going to be out there more. He’s got tremendous speed, but it needs to be controlled in the game so that he doesn’t overrun the play or gets a pass interference penalty for getting there too soon.
A story from the Youngstown Vindicator looking at Pitt. Essentially an overview of the team.
WR Greg Lee is still confident that the passing game will come around soon. What choice does he have?
Yet another story on the struggling offense. Matt Cavanaugh is trying to take most of the blame — which is fine because that is where most people are putting it.
While Cavanaugh continues to temper Palko’s immense potential, he’s contemplating the idea of giving him more freedom to roam the field.
“He feels like he’s capable of more and maybe I need to give him more opportunities to do some things,” Cavanaugh said, adding that “blame goes to everybody, and I’m speaking for the offense, whether it’s a poor play-call on my part or a quarterback not executing, a receiver … dropping a ball.”
Or bad blocking. Mental errors. Penalties.
“Coach Cavanaugh has been calling plays for a long time,” Palko said. “I’m not going to second-guess him or anything he’s done. He’s had a long career playing in the NFL and he’s had a long career being an offensive coordinator.
“I’m in my third year of playing college football and second as a starter. By no means, am I going to question his play-calling. You trust the coaches are going to make the right decisions, and this staff is very experienced at both levels. We just leave that stuff up to them. As players, we’ll continue to stay the course and we’ll be fine.”
Those last quotes from Palko seem very subject to reading between the lines. I can almost picture him saying that through gritted teeth. It reads as if there is a lot of frustration on Palko’s part.
Palko is a coach’s son, though. He’s never going to publicly question his coaches. It is just not something he will do. He will be the good “soldier.” And of course, we don’t know how the question was phrased to him or the complete context.
Something I was thinking about yesterday. Palko is facing a lot more blitzing and pressure this year. I don’t think it’s just that the O-line is not doing its job. I think it is something teams learned from watching the Fiesta Bowl. Utah brought pressure on Palko all night to keep him from getting comfortable and finding any rhythm. That seems to be what other teams are doing now. They’ll take the chance on giving up some running plays to prevent Pitt’s passing game from finding itself.
