I could be premature or simply unfair, but one of my (many) concerns after this past year with Pitt football is how Pitt handles the decisionmaking on the best way to use the players and athletes.
With the successful recruiting of Maurice Williams out of Erie, PA; and thinking back to Wannstedt talking about recruiting and evaluating players earlier this week on the Sugar Bowl pregame. Now what? Williams was recruited to be a WR, but he hasn’t played the position since he was a sophomore, and he has been playing DB as well as QB.
Whiel Rivals.com and Scout.com both put him as a WR, ESPN.com/Scouts, Inc. argued that his potential lie in being a Safety (Insider subs.):
This kid is a special athlete. We are projecting him as a cover safety who can play corner and has the size to match up in press, but he is also electrifying with the ball in his hands on offense and would make a scary wide receiver. He possesses the size, strength, agility and foot speed to play any position in the secondary effectively. He is a playmaker in coverage and has the big play ability on interceptions. He is a smooth and fluid moving athlete.
A fairly glowing review, that ends with this.
In our opinion, Williams is a supreme athlete who you take regardless of what position he ends up playing because you can’t coach some of his natural tools; he could become an impact player at more than one position.
And that’s what scares the crap out of me with Pitt. Do they have a plan on where to play him? Or are they going to make a late change and potentially waste him while trying to figure out what to do with him.
Credit has to go to my favorite target Paul Rhoads who was the lead in recruiting Williams. That also means there is potential for the defense to want to get him. Especially when you consider how crowded the WR position is looking these days (and anyone want to hazard a guess as to where Dorin Dickerson will be playing in 2007?).
I go back to Wannstedt’s point on TV about the importance and challenge of making good evaluations of kids. That also goes to evaluating the right players who fit what you (want to) do. Wannstedt wants speed everywhere. Great, but he has to know where to put players like Williams and Dickerson. They are talented players, but they aren’t strictly/necessarily a single-position player in any traditional sense coming out of high school. That puts it on the coaches to figure out quickly what to do with them.
I suspect that true freshmen that saw the field this year did so because they were told they would have the opportunity to play right away. The fact remains that no one outside of the coaching staff has any idea as to why certain players were not integral parts of the offense and defense.
DW has maintained that he will build Pitt football the right way. To me, this means academic and football performance. Only the coaches know how each of these individuals has performed academically (not just grades, but meeting program requirements for study hall and attendance), nor do we have any idea about their knowledge of their respective playbooks. The staff showed no hesitation in playing Joe Thomas and LSH as true freshmen when situations dictated (for example, Simonitis’ injury).
I side with DW on this one, and will continue to do so until the college football playing careers of each of these youngsters has been completed.
Just my two cents.
If you want to see some tangible evidence of how Harris left the program in the ditch go on Scout.com or Rivals and look at the 2002-2004 recruiting classes. No lineman above a 3 star ranking – and out of the very few 3 stars most didn’t make/stay on the team or never saw the playing field. I understand that the star ranking system is variable and opinionated but this is one indication of how these positions were ignored. Harris was enamored by big-play offense and couldn’t be bothered with building a strong foundation. I personally believe what we are seeing now is a Head Coach that is committed to school and the future as opposed to one that put the shiniest product out to attract new suitors (Stanford).
If we not next year, I at least want to see the blowouts stop. It seems like every loss we had over the past two years was a blowout…and this is completely unacceptable. I can handle a 5-7 year for 2007 as long as we get another stealler recruiting class and the loses are tight / close losses, NOT BLOWOUTS….and then we better have a winning 2008!
tought = tough
scratch the “we” in second paragraph
and loses = losses
to much alcohol left in my system from last night…go Pitt!
I agree with you. I can accept losses but these blowouts continue and it all sits squarely on the shoulders of our defense. We need to be more competitive against the top 25.
