Just about ready to go. But the need to post was still there (plus I need to kill some time before the coffee shop down the street opens and I can get my espresso fix).
Maybe I’m just blocking, but I can’t remember Pitt ever stooping to playing the Baha Men at a game to “>enliven the crowd.
Guns N’ Roses wail over the stadium loud speakers before giving way to the Baha Men.
Who let the dogs out?
Greg Schiano just did.
“Playing on the road, everything about it is tough,” Rutgers University football coach said. “You’re not in a familiar area. It’s a hostile environment. The noise level is incredible.”
That’s why Schiano routinely puts his players in adverse situations in practice, blasting Heavy Metal, chants of “Defense,” and — what else? — barking dogs to simulate raucous crowd noise.
No. I don’t think Pitt fans (there are too many concurrent Steeler fans) would start woofing like Browns fans.
Rutgers special teams have been very good in addition to the defense.
“Their special teams have blocked four punts,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “They’ve blocked more kicks as one team than the entire seven teams that we have played up to this point. … They lead the country in scoring defense, and they’re second in the nation in total defense.”
Rutgers has allowed just 8.3 points per game with two shutouts against less than stellar competition. Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko and the nation’s most efficient passing game will make for an interesting matchup.
On the special teams, the player to watch at blocking is Manny Collins.
Collins, a 5-10, 190-pound senior, has blocked five punts in his career, including two this season (the other came against Illinois). As a team, Rutgers has four punt blocks in six games, for which Lee gives special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi most of the credit.
“He’s kind of like a guru, the way he can just come up with these schemes on the run,” said Lee, a sophomore. “Anytime we come off a punt block, he’s always asking, ‘Who blocked you? What happened?’ It seems like he always has all these ways going through his head of how he could design a way to get somebody through (to the punter). When he comes up with these schemes, it’s just amazing.”
According to Collins, Rizzi constantly stresses technique in blocking punts — reminding players never to close their eyes when they get through the line and showing them how to hold their hands when they get to the block point and dive at the foot of the punter.
But Rizzi isn’t busy only diagramming punt block schemes; he’s more big picture than that, presiding over a special teams unit that is having a big year for the 6-0 Scarlet Knights. When the punt return team (Lee and Collins call it the punt block team) doesn’t block the punt, the returners are averaging 10.6 yards per return. And both kickers are having exceptional seasons.
The Rutgers Punter is tops in the conference and 3d in the country in punt average. Definitely part of the game to keep an eye on.
The NY Post glances at senior leaders for both teams: Brian Leonard and Tyler Palko.
