The middle, left, and right.
I think it is, generally, very satisfying when “offensive geniuses” get their comeuppance for arrogant play calling. Unfortunately, Pitt gave Petrino and Louisville time to shake themselves from such in the first half. In the second half, they eschewed the “creativity” in favor of winning. Louisville went to just running the ball straight and continually at Pitt.
The Cardinals could have run for 350 yards against Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt’s arm-tackling defense but waited until the fourth quarter to grind the Panthers into submission.
The Cards moved the football — they just weren’t able to move it into the end zone the way they had all season at home. Averaging better than 7 yards per rush while rolling to 115 yards, Bush ran like the best player on the field until a sprained foot stopped him in the third quarter.
It was absolultely demoralizing to the defense, and you could practically feel and see the desperation on the offense to do something. No luck.
Although the Panthers were clearly overmatched, they still had opportunities to win the game and could have made it interesting had they not made some crucial mistakes in the third quarter. They trailed by two points at the half and by two scores going into the fourth quarter.
But poor execution, dropped passes by Greg Lee and procedure penalties by right tackle Mike McGlynn crushed any hopes. Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said the mistakes were frustrating, but he stood up for Lee.
“You have to take advantage of every opportunity given to you against a good football team like Louisville, and we didn’t do that,” Wannstedt said. “We had the ball twice inside the 35 in the second half and came away with no points. Our offense scored 13 points and you are not going to beat a team like that when that’s the case.
“Greg is the best receiver we got, he will make those plays for us, he has to make those plays and he will get back at it next week. He had a bad night, it happens.”
…
Palko also came to Lee’s defense but said the mistakes on the offense are not a coincidence.“It is not one thing, it is a combination of things,” Palko said. “It is not good enough to come out and just be OK, it is not good enough. You have to have that kind of mentality and passion that Coach Wannstedt wants us to play with. I was always taught when you have high expectations, you better have the work ethic to match and our expectations are not going to be lowered, so you fill in the blanks.
“If we want to be a championship team and have those expectations, we need to work harder.”
Unfortuately, Lee has become consistent at dropping passes each game. It is something you see coming every game. All you can do is hope it isn’t during a critical point. Maddening as it was, there were plenty of problems on offense.
Still, the problem in this game was that the run defense was non-existent. That allowed Louisville to chew up more than 16 minutes on 28 plays in just 2 drives in the second half.
More in little.
