Here’s the AP story on the game.

Notwithstanding the Rutgers blog viewpoint of “it’s a big win, and I don’t care how,” the NJ media seems to be more of the opinion, “is nothing ever going to be easy with this team?”

Even when it looks easy for Rutgers, it never winds up that way.

Even when things are going as well as they can possibly go, the Knights somehow find a way to add unneeded drama to a game that looked to be completely devoid of it.
…
It just became one of those too-close-for-comfort situations for Rutgers because of the Panthers’ 29-point second half after they went to a no-huddle, hurry-up offense.

“I was nervous,” said running back Brian Leonard, who caught two touchdown passes.

“I refused to look at the scoreboard,” senior defensive end Ryan Neill said.

A weary Scarlet Knights defense, on the field for 84 plays, finally managed to summon up the energy to make three big ones when they counted, enabling Rutgers to improve to 3-1 overall. For now — fleeting as it may be — the Knights are tied with West Virginia and South Florida atop the Big East standings.

The theme is repeated here.

Okay, so they won. They had a must-win game and won that game, and if you asked anyone wearing red when they entered Rutgers Stadium last night, they would have gladly accepted that result, regardless of the final score.

But we have to ask: Must everything be so difficult with this team?

Can’t a 27-0 halftime lead be a comfortable margin? Can’t this team remember that a college football game consists of two halves of equal length and importance?

Can’t these poor fans ever relax?

Some college football diehards carry Jack Daniels in their flasks. Rutgers fans carry Maalox. No lead is too big, no amount of time is too short, and the stomachs never stop churning.

Somehow, a 27-0 lead turns into 37-29 victory, a blowout turns into nailbiter. Somehow, a potential defining victory comes off feeling like the Scarlet Knights ended up stealing one.

This game should have been over early in the second half. The Scarlet Knights did everything right, dominating hapless Pittsburgh in every facet of the game.

It had the makings of a truly memorable night for a program that has enjoyed too few of them. The student section was packed an hour before kickoff. The tailgaters started arriving early in the afternoon. ESPN was in the building, and with no other games on the schedule, the night belonged to the Knights.
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This one was not over until Dave Wannstedt called the single most predictable fake punt in football history. There were four minutes left with the Panthers facing a fourth down on the Rutgers 29-yard line.

Still, despite the near collapse it was a Rutgers win. That is different.

Friday night, against BCS-fresh Pittsburgh, on ESPN2, Rutgers would have a chance to show the country what Rutgers football was “about” coach Greg Schiano said.

Friday night, against Pittsburgh, at Rutgers Stadium, the Scarlet Knights started doing just that. They drove into the Pitt red zone at will and then couldn’t will out more touchdowns than field goals. A team they should’ve run roughshod over they did for a bit and then maddeningly didn’t.

And then, on its first undivided national stage, the Scarlet Knights forged a new identity. They showed just enough less of what Rutgers football has been about and more of what it could be. They turned a clunker of a game into an interesting one and in the end, if not roughshod, they did at least sort of run over Pitt, 37-29, in front of a near sellout.

The win marked the first time Rutgers (3-1, 1-0) won its league opener in 11 years. It was the first time the Scarlet Knights took out Pitt (1-4, 0-1) in seven years, the first time they’ve won three games in a row in 13 years and the first time they refused to allow the old trappings of Rutgers football to wholly trap them.

A criticism sometimes leveled at Pitt fans is that we are still dreaming of the glory days back in the ’70s and early ’80s. Imagine, though, being a fan or alum of a program that has no glory days. All they seem to have is a history of ineptness, so only nearly but not blowing the game is seen as a big positive.

When Pittsburgh scored its second touchdown, with almost five minutes left to play in the third quarter, you knew what everybody in the building was thinking: Illinois. This is Rutgers, after all.

When Pitt scored its fourth touchdown and the score was 37-29, with eight minutes to play in the game, people were sitting quietly, presumably because they wouldn’t stand for this. Not again. Not another Illinois.

Even if the people here want to believe the glass is half full — and they want to believe this in the worst way — they live in fear of the emptiness they have come away with all these many years.
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… they had to go and make them play the second half, a traditional and persistent problem for the Scarlet Knights.

This time they made it through the whole 60 minutes.

They didn’t pull another stunt like they did against Illinois. This time they made an exemplary first half stand up.

That’s progress.

That’s sad.

I’ll keep this brief (this time, for sure) since I’m sure most have read the stuff already.

Paul Zeise absolutely crushed the effort by Pitt in the first 4 ‘graphs.

Several members of the Pitt football team remarked that the Panthers had hit rock bottom after they lost to Mid-American Conference lightweight Ohio University earlier this season.

If that was the case, then those same players likely got out a jackhammer last night and to find out what is below rock bottom because the Panthers have reached a new low.

Pitt bumbled and stumbled its way through a mistake-filled first half against Rutgers, then botched a comeback attempt and lost, 37-29, in their Big East opener.

Losing a conference game on the road is generally not an unforgivable offense, but the Scarlet Knights are a team that have won a total of three Big East games since 2000 — and two of those were against Temple, which was kicked out of the conference for being unable to field a competitive team. It was also the first time Pitt (1-4, 0-1 in the Big East) lost to Rutgers (3-1, 1-0) since 1998, a span of six games.

In 1998 (my first year as a season ticket holder since being a student) Pitt last lost to Rutgers. That year Pitt was 2-9. The only wins came against Div. 1-AA Villanova and Akron from the MAC. This year, Pitt didn’t even beat the MAC patsy. The offense was non-existent in the first half and often the players didn’t help matters.

Pitt’s comeback in the second half was aided in part by mistakes from Rutgers.

Bizarre play-calling and personnel decisions by Knights coach Greg Schiano also helped the Panthers get back in the game.

Schiano used three quarterbacks — inexplicably sitting Hart, a senior who earlier in the game became Rutgers’ all-time leading passer, at critical junctures. Redshirt freshman Mike Teel and freshman wideout Tiquan Underwood both lined up under center, but neither was dazzling.

And, despite having a big lead and a burly, sure-handed fullback in Leonard, the Knights continued to try high-risk, deep-passing plays — and paid the price with punts and turnovers.

With 6 1/2 minutes left in the third, a pass from Hart to Tres Moses bounced off the hands of the Rutgers wideout and into the mitts of Pitt linebacker J.J. Horne.

Palko zipped a 25-yard pass to tight end Darrell Strong. On third down at the 11, Palko found Lee for 9 yards and a first-and-goal.

Justin Acierno’s 2-yard TD catch trimmed the deficit to 13 points with 4:42 to go in the third. It was Acierno’s first career touchdown.

Rutgers caught a break near the end of the third quarter. Palko scrambled out of the pocket and linebacker William Beckford jarred the ball loose. Cameron Stephenson recovered for the Knights.

Moses caught a 25-yard touchdown. Safety Tez Morris had a chance to stop Moses at the 3, but failed to wrap up and finish the tackle.

It’s hard to totally fault the switching of QBs, especially Underwood who was very effective in the first half at taking direct snaps. The Teel stuff wasn’t really that damaging, and I generally like seeing back-up QBs get some work — especially if they are the “future as Teel is supposed to be for RU. I also can’t totally fault Schiano’s play calling. It was aggressive. Trying to step on Pitt’s throat and put the game out of reach. It failed, but it’s better to err that way then turtling up early.

As for Palko’s admittedly costly fumble. The mistake from Palko wasn’t the run and the weak-ass juke. It was the fact that he never secured the ball. When he pulled the ball down, he never tried to adjust the ball from a passing grip to a carry. That’s why it was able to be jarred loose.

Now, I don’t hear the talk radio in the ‘Burgh, but I think we all know how closely I follow the local media. In the first quarter, around 8:30 pm, Rod Gilmore started talking about how the Pittsburgh press has been all over the coaching staff for the slow start. Say what? Now the national media has been on Coach Wannstedt — very hard since the Nebraska loss — but the local press has been more than kind.

That ended with the Rutgers loss. Joe Starkey blasted away.

…make no mistake about this: Dave Wannstedt’s return to his alma mater has become an utter embarrassment.

What else can you say, the morning after a 37-29 loss to Rutgers?

Pitt is now 0-4 against Division I-A competition.

Maybe things will change. Maybe Wannstedt will be like West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez, who suffered through a miserable first season that included a loss to Temple before turning things around.

Maybe.

At the moment, this fiasco is just not defensible. It’s one thing for Wannstedt to lose some games as he transitions to his system, and, eventually, to his players. It’s quite another to lose to Ohio and Rutgers in the same month (Rodriguez, by the way, beat Ohio and Rutgers his first year, the latter by an 80-7 score).

What’s more disturbing is Wannstedt’s tendency to distance himself from the mess.

This past Monday on the Big East conference call, a reporter was quizzing Wannstedt about his team when Wannstedt uttered what he termed “my standard line.”

It goes like this: “We are what we are, and it is what it is.”

You don’t need to be a trained linguist to translate that as, “There’s only so much I can do.”

There’s some truth there, but let’s be serious. Pitt was not that different, personnel-wise, last season and it beat Ohio by 17 points and Rutgers by 24.

He also points out (and this was something even the lousy ESPN2 crew noticed) that Pitt was completely out-physicaled by a Rutgers team. Being out-muscled and physically manhandled was something Coach Wannstedt and everyone associated said wouldn’t be happening.

Ron Cook’s slightly less brutal column also noticed Pitt being manhandled by Rutgers.

I also knew there would be a period of adjustment for Wannstedt. There almost always is for a new coach. It’s hard to win with your system when you have to play with the previous coach’s players. And it’s not as if Walt Harris left a lot of quality offensive and defensive linemen.

But, never in my wildest imagination, did I envision Pitt getting beat by Rutgers, which always has been a sure victory on its schedule, even in the dark days of Johnny Majors II and Paul Hackett.

Or that Pitt would be 1-4 at this point and staring hard at the possibility of 1-10.

Or that there would be so many questions so soon about Wannstedt being the right man for the Pitt job.

In case you are curious, Hackett and Majors II went a combined 5-2 against Rutgers.

What I didn’t get from Cook’s column was his questioning of Palko.

Pitt’s biggest problem among many is the play of Palko. Maybe those four touchdown passes he threw in the second half will get him going. That seems to be Pitt’s only hope at this point. He hasn’t looked like the same quarterback who lit up scoreboards last season. He doesn’t look comfortable in offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh’s system.

Has he not seen the continual blitzing and pressure Palko has been facing? He stood in there and took more abuse than anyone should. I may be biased, but Palko is one of the few players on this team that I have no questions about.

I will ask once again, why hasn’t offensive line coach Paul Dunn come in for more questioning. Sure there are plenty of issues regarding offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh’s play calling and Coach Wannstedt’s philosophy, but since most of the problems have been with piss-poor line play I’d at least like to hear/read what Dunn has to say.

Went to bed in a foul mood. Woke up still pissed about the game. Managed to resist the urge to start drinking right away as I started thinking about the game again — need to make it to at least noon.

Before I try to do any serious recaps, I want to post a few of your comments from after the game, and maybe add my thoughts.

Whatever you’re taking rjb, I’d like a double. That’s some strong, relentless optimism.

Jason had a lot to say.

Just too deep a hole from the first half. I don’t think Pitt could have played any worse in the first half at all facets. It was a perfection of ineptitude. They needed to be perfect in the second half to pull it off. They weren’t and that was it.

I can’t take a moral victory from this. If for no other reason that a Ron Zook led team was able to come back and win against Rutgers. Does anyone like that idea?