Just got back from Heinz Field; glad we picked up the win and I’m sure Chas and I will talk about it much more in depth over the next few days. One of the more important story lines to come from this game was QB Bill Stull’s injury.
In the third quarter, when Kevan Smith came in for Stull, I just assumed that we were going to give Smith (and possibly Bostick) a chance to show what they can do. Stull then walked to the tunnel and apparently was given quick x-rays and even though he came back on the sidelines, he never went back into the game. He was definitely trying to keep movement of his lower right arm to a minimum.
Dave Wannstedt on the radio postgame show said that after a play, an EMU player actually grabbed Stull’s thumb and pulled or bent it backwards. He also said a few more tests will be done tomorrow to determine the future.
The radio guys also mentioned that TE John Pelusi might have been injured but he should be fine for next week. I was really impressed with how he played tonight, both blocking and catching passes.
UPDATE: Damn…
Pitt quarterback Bill Stull is out indefinitely after requiring surgery today to repair torn ligaments in the thumb on his right (throwing) hand.
“We feel very disappointed for Billy,” Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt said. “He worked incredibly hard during the off-season to earn the starting job and those efforts showed in his strong play last night. Knowing Billy, he will be very diligent in his rehabilitation and be back as soon as possible.”
it had to be said
it was only one game for everyone. Good Win. We see exactly what DW wants to do this season. To be honest we cant draw any concrete conclusion because this is the first time all the teams got to hit someone in a different uniform. Also look at the UM vs App St game- everyone -players, fans, experts, and alumni, thought that was an easy win. EVERYONE WAS WRONG bc APP ST came to play- REMEMBER- ANY GIVEN SATURDAY.
Next up is Grambling- I am hoping that we can take care of business and build confidence but we need to stay focus on the task ahead. One day and One game at a time.
Nice win. Let the players celebrate but lets get focus on Grambling.
CSTV didn’t show the game live just the pregame show and post game DW press conference live. It cost $7.95/month and since you can listen to the radio over the internet it isn’t worth subscribing.
I just went from being optimistic to not so much. Virginia and MSU are looking a lot tougher right now than they did a week ago.
Smith should get the start against Grambling though but we can’t ride on his mistakes. Unfortunately Bostick will have to play unless there is a walk on that Wanny has been holding back the praises on. Anyone know how good Steve Malinchak is? I see him on the roster and shows he is a redshirt Freshman walk on.
This makes you appreciate Tyler Palko that much more. It appears were going to be running against Grambling a mess load(this could be a good thing though). Smith should be fine if he can just wipe the butter off his fingers.
Whether or not there’s a positive relationship between his “personal issues” and rumors of “panic-attack,†it’s certain that the kid was ‘homesick’ and under a great deal of pressure to “perform.â€
So regardless of what we (as fans) want to see (or feel should happen) as a result of Stull’s injury, who’s to say that Bostick himself thinks/feels he’s anymore prepared/ready to set foot on the field as “leader” of this football team?
Kevan Smith will definitely be starting against Grambling, and I should think that if he has any measure of success, he’ll remain the starter until Stull returns, if at all.
Of course, if Smith were to go down or perform with unquestioning incompetence, Bostick might be more inclined to take on the challenge as starter-under-center. (As earlier expressed, the expectation that he’d immediately compete for the job was an unfair burden to place on a freshman, presumably manifesting itself in his discomfort and “personal problems.â€)
My point: ‘if’ PB is thrown onto the field sooner v. later, he’ll need to be in a more forgiving position (QB by default) than when he entered as “front-runner.” IMO, it’ll have to unfold like that before we see Pat Bostick as quarterback.
Great win, and great play by Stull. Hope we see him return to the lineup before MSU.
The second they decide to make the switch, though, Bostick better take the rest of the snaps the rest of the year. If they’re going to burn his redshirt, they might as well get everything they can out of it.
Like I said, my first preference would be to try to retain Bostick’s redshirt and only use him if absolutely necessary. If Smith can’t get it done against Grambling, he sure as hell isn’t going to get it done against anyone else on the schedule.
No chance he’s playing Grambling, MSU or UConn.
This presents quite the conundrum. As I said above, they likely don’t need Bostick to beat Grambling and if they do, the problems with these team may exist well beyond the QB position.
Would it make sense to burn Bostick’s redshirt for what could ultimately amount to two games – Michigan State and UConn? What if Stull comes back quickly and retakes the starting job for the Virginia game, thus relegating Bostick back to the bench? What if Bostick stays there?
Well, I think this team was going to have a hard time with Michigan State, so I’m not sure it matters who is taking the snaps. The big game then becomes UConn – a home game and an in-conf. game they can ill afford to lose if they want to make a bowl game this year. Can Bostick make a difference there, even though there’s a chance Stull may come back the following week and send Bostick back to the bench potentially for the rest of the year?
If beating UConn ultimately helps them into a bowl game, then I say burning Bostick’s redshirt was well worth it.
So, he could be back for 8 games, or he may be medically redshirting, or anything inbetween.
I guess you start Smith, and if he sucks, put in Bostick.
The best outcome of course is Bostick is so amazing when Stull comes back we’re not sure if we even want him to be the starter. Not that this’ll happen.
But it could be worse I guess…we could be Michigan.
I don’t know the exact extent of the injury, but having torn ligaments (foot) in my early teens, it’s knowingly not unusual for younger folks to heal a lot faster than those fully developed. (No sh*t, I was back maybe 85% 3 weeks prior to what I’d initially been told.)
Even if I’m off a bit, ligaments are typically a 6-12 week process. (Incidentally, is there a doctor among us to certify what-is-is-not avg. recovery?) So I’m not pretending to know how youth will translate for Stull — as a red-shirt junior you’d think he’s about as mature (physically) as any other player at this level.
I nevertheless don’t think it’s entirely improbable to conceive him back 2-3 weeks from now, given that A) his injured thumb won’t affect his mobility (esp. given the recent performance of the OL) and B) the fact that our offense is reportedly QB friendly; incorporating mostly short pass options in a pro-style WCO.
Seemingly, the ability to scramble out of the pocket outweighs the ability to toss a palko-like 41 yard completion. So even if Stull can only be effective 10-15 yards from the LOS, I think he’ll play — bad thumb and all — so long as his pain doesn’t require an ongoing script for pain-valid narcotics.
“Palko was the Saints’ third quarterback until the final day of the preseason, but turned in a dismal performance, including mishandling three snaps, during the second half of New Orleans’ final preseason game — a 7-0 victory over Miami on Thursday night.”
For one of the first times in my existence I don’t really have an opinion. I was very, very disappointed in the OL play yesterday, and if it were to continue in this fashion, this team will be lucky to win 3 more games, and I mean lucky. Absolutely none on the road, and only Grambling and Syracuse will be likely others. UConn, one that I eagerly anticipated for the revenge factor, suddenly looks dubious. Cincy has developed a good D that looks like it will shove our heads into the Heinz Field mud based on this performance. USF will have their front 7 in the backfield before the handoff is completed.
However, I fully realize that’s somewhat unfair after one game against an opponent so bad that perhaps the team was unmotivated. Hard to imagine that in the FIRST game of the season, but then again, look at Michigan. This is the danger of playing garbage teams.
The DL showed a little more, especially the interior, but they merely did more than hold their own. The DEs were totally ineffective. And I don’t know if I remember a more nondescript core of LBs. Dickerson looked totally worthless, like he’d rather be playing any other position. What a absolute shame to have wasted a talent like that. The safeties were as invisible as last year. About the best we have are the corners, even with Revis gone.
Again, not saying there isn’t some improvement here and there, maybe drastically so on the DL, but not enough, and without playmakers like Palko, Kinder, Revis and Blades, the net result is worse.
This all said, looking at a probable 3 win disaster season, why waste Bostick’s redshirt? Run Smith out there until Stull returns, if he does. Have a walk-on QB ready in case of another injury, God forbid. Hope the TB’s can make some things happen on their own, much like the mid-nineties when Curtis Martin and Billy West often had to do just that.
I had been very pessimistic about this season after, well, the UCOnn game last year. Little by little I gained some optimism reading some of the Gorman blogs and Zeise columns. They seemed very positive. But I realize now that they were too close to the situation day in and day out, and lost their perspective (how these guys would fare against other, really good programs).
The worst thing about all this is the OL certainly won’t be good enough next year, either. Guys like Jacobson and Nix and Matha definitely will be upgrades but not ready to step right in. Particularly considering how poor Dunn has done with the current group, who up and down were not absolute zeroes themselves as prospects (particularly Pinkston and Thomas), and guys like Otah and McGlynn who had experience.
Again, tremendous disappointment. The product is just so vanilla. I never expected greatness, not even by year 3, but I expected far, far more than we’re seeing.
I think the score is deceiving in a few ways. First, the defense was fairly dominant yesterday. That’s already been outlined above. The defense dominated EMU in just about every way any reasonable Pitt fan could’ve expected.
Second, the dynamic of the game changed when Stull went down. They had an 18-point lead against a team that was having trouble generating any sort of offense when Stull went down. The last thing they needed at that point was to bring in an unproven true freshman and ask him to start slinging the ball all over the place. An INT at that point could easily change the momentum of the game.
Keep this in mind, too. Wannstedt has said he wants to make this into a power running, clock controlling team. Pitt got conservative – very much like the Steelers used to do – and it paid off as they began to wear EMU down and establish a bit of running game through the fourth quarter. This is the power running team that Wannstedt wants, and those kinds of teams are often not conducive to generating blowouts when they control the tempo of the game.
Third, I believe they had two fourth-quarter drives that took them into the red zone and all they got were field goals. They convert just one of those into a touchdown and this is a 31-point win. They convert both and it’s a 38-point win. I’m not sure either of those outcomes really changes the way anyone feels about it though. To turn those field goals into touchdowns would’ve only required an additional 35-40 yards of offense from Pitt.
I’m not sure what more you could ask for. Pitt was easily three touchdowns better than Eastern Michigan yesterday. They covered the spread. The defense dominated EMU’s offense. And the offense was methodical, as most ball-control offenses should be.
All this from a beatdown of Florida International, who had no business being on the field with Penn State yesterday.
That being said, running LSH on 3rd down UP THE MIDDLE was extremely stupid. It just seems like the running-game stats were also deceptive, as most of that yardage seemed to have been accumulated in the 4th quarter. I think at a certain point late in the 3rd quarter EMU had more rushing yards than Pitt did. Given that EMU still sucks (and I still believe them to be one of the worst D-IA teams, along with Duke), I think that a team with greater stamina (ie.: all the other BCS-conference teams) would have kept the rushing stats down, taking away the pass as the front 4 would have been enough to manhandle the run.
I see MSU as a loss.
Virginia is a tossup. Rutgers probably still a loss. After seeing USF let 1AA Elon stay in that game, I think we might be able to take them.
How is that game still a tossup while you think we have better chance at USF after Saturday?
I also think that the game plan – while Cavanaugh did one of his better coaching schemes – was pretty vanilla, though there was a lot of motions with the tight ends to get mismatches against cornerbacks that will pay off in the future. The EMU D stacked 9 in the box the whole game and we never attempted to make them pay deep (hopefully not because we couldn’t). We used the tight ends well to keep the ball moving when the running game was stuffed. Once Stull game out the offense got as diverse as Vince Lombardi would have been.
Forget a 24 point margin. I agree, who really would have cared if it was 38-3 (as it could have been) or 27-7 (as it should have been). It was the nature of the play that matters. And the OL was atrocious.
This looked just like it is: A team that is a little better than a 1-11 team from the depths of the MAC. I’m sorry to have annoyed some of you here, but that’s not good enough after 3 years.
I’ve seen a lot of people ripping into Al Groh on several sites the last couple days (and rightfully so). I just hope those folks take a long look into the mirror.
It was great to be back at Heinz Field to watch our beloved Panthers after my hiatus for the past two seasons (thanks Uncle Sam). Watching the guys hit the gridiron and get the victory was great. It brought back such fond memories… like when we had an O-Line.
Yes, I said it! We all were saying it last night too! Our offensive line leaks more than a South Side drunk on a dumpster after last call. We couldn’t run anything up the middle for the vast majority of the game and our pass protection looked questionable. And this was against EMU for crying out loud! I saw a little of the Michigan State game footage and got a real bad feeling about 2 weeks from now. That’s just the tip fo the iceberg. Wait til we get get into the meat of the schedule against our Big East brethren. It looks like we are in for a rough one this year if the things don’t change soon (like yesterday)!
Think we could get some fo the old greats like May, Fralic, and Stepnoski to come out of retirement and suit up for a few games?