First off, this was a win for NC State. They have the scoreboard. They made the plays on offense and did enough on defense. The post-mortem is about what Pitt did wrong (and occasionally right).
Maybe this is about the post-Navy hangover for the defense. Afterall, last year after Navy they let Rutgers hang a huge number on them. Eh, I’m grasping.
You know, in a way Bill Stull is the ultimate QB for Dave Wannstedt. A pure reflection.
If you looked at Wanny’s record in Chicago and Miami without any context, you would see a mediocre head coach in the NFL. Surely not a good one, but not one that has engendered such anger years later at his very mention. It almost seems so outsized from the results. Of course, the reality is it wasn’t just how many wins and losses it was the way it happened.
Now Stull had a decent game. The loss should not be on him. He led Pitt to 31 points and was effective most of the game. The supposed big time defense got gashed on the ground and air. Yet, all most of us can see is Stull inconceivably throwing the ball away on 4th and goal from the 8 in the final minutes. Not trying to make the hero play. Not trying to give a receiver a chance or maybe draw a pass interference call. A boneheaded decision that I can’t wait to see defended by Coach Wannstedt. In the end, it seemingly reinforces everything thought about Stull before the season and wiping out his performance in the rest of the game.
Really, though, this was about a hideous defensive effort. In case the Pitt D did not realize it, the main guy to stop was Russell Wilson. The guy under center in the red. He threw for 322 yards and 4 TDs and ran for 91 more. That’s 413 of the 530 yards of total offense that NC State had. You know 78% of their offense. You might want to base the game plan on limiting him. The D-line rarely got pressure on him, and definitely struggled with containing him when he left the pocket. As bad as the secondary for Pitt was — and it was putrid — the supposed strength of Pitt’s D gave little help.
This was not a game where NC State had all the breaks. The officiating was not even close to the reason Pitt lost the game. Pitt had the field position all through the first half. They got the one big turnover. NC State missed two field goals. The fact is, the Pitt defense was unable to stop Russell Wilson and the rest of the Wolfpack.
All through the game, you would see the Pitt defense make a play. Maybe even two straight. Only to get gashed and give up another drive sustaining first down. NC State only had to punt three times in the game.
I honestly don’t know what the answer is. Unlike the D-line or the linebackers there just isn’t a lot of depth or talent with the corners or safeties. Who exactly would you move ahead of the present starters for any reason other than pure frustration with the starters? Purely on talent, I’m only seeing Jared Holly getting more playing time.
QB didnt lose the game but he clearly didnt win it either which is probably more important given the fact that he is the returning starter and senior.
DB are downright terrible and under talented. I agree that the worst thing about the DB’s is that there isnt anyone left to replace them with. Deccicco, Berry, and Holly are not D1 starters. Fields has potential.
Wanny is wanny. Great speech but little real substance when you get down to it. All the pomp and circumstance that you want in a motivator but poor X and O guy. He needs one of those positions that they gave Johnny Majors at the end. The only thought that come to my mind about Wanny is the saying “you are who you are”
Bottom line is we do not tackle well on defense and our secondary is undersized and not good. I thought Mason played adequately, but we definitely missed Gunn and his leadership.
This is a bad loss and “credit” for it gets completely blamed on the “D”.
8 crummy yards!!!
link to community.post-gazette.com
Seemingly always on the verge of success only to have it plucked from our grasp in the most inhumane fashion.
Our defense was awful, and there is no way to sugar coat that. I don’t understand how our D was supposed to be our strength, and they don’t even come to play some games. What is WVU going to do to this D? What kind of numbers will Tony Pike put on this D? I would add Jimmy Clausen to the list, but I hate him way too much.
Honestly though, we yet again had a camera-man/woman who was unable to follow a Stull ball on that last 4th down. What the F??? It’s so frustrating not knowing how to make heads or tails of it. How could Stull have such a decent game, just to piss it away?
I’m growing tired (as I’m sure we all are) of Pitt not keeping up their end of the bargain when it comes to BigEast representation. Most everyone in the conference is putting up the good fight with non-cons, but Pitt can’t win these games? It’s very black and white, but come on!
Time for the pitchforks and torches!
Frustration aside, we’ll bounce back. But HOW LONG is it going to take to stop taking steps backwards?
HTscriptP
Regarding his last fourth down pass – was I the only fan to that notice the receiver Turner was cutting in towards the middle of the endzone when it looked like the called play was a fade to the corner? The ball was thrown high, but I wondered if there was a problem of communication on that play. Splitting hairs maybe as that was a poor play all around.
What’s concerning me more than Stull’s play – which I though was pretty good last night… hell in all honesty he generated the only offensive production in the second half at all – are the drops and mistakes we are seeing from our WRs. McGee had another drop that would have been a first down, Baldwin didn’t get a foot inbounds for what would have been another first down and DD had a drop that would have been a TD. Right there is two first downs that would have extended drives and kept our defense off the field at least and the tying score. We saw the same thing last week in the second half of the Navy game also. Five WR drops in two games, that doesn’t help our offense at all.
I’m not putting this loss on Bill Stull by any means, not when there are so many other aspects of our game that just fell apart.
Having said all of this, Stull did enough to put us in a position to win. Our gloriously overrated defense laid a big egg out there last night. Two great stops and then a big breakdown. It never seemed to end. The middle of the field was a wasteland??? Wide open! That Russel kid is good, but he is not the second coming of Phillip Rivers! Make a stop, defense.
Well, my “one game at a time” recalibration of expectations continues….
While Stull had a good numbers game, I am certain that most fans knew this game was over after NC State went up a touchdown. Stull is not going to scramble for the big first down. He is not going to make the miracle Hail Mary to anyone but hte 3rd row of fans. He is just going to do the smart thing and throw it away….on 4th and goal – down by a touchdown.
#4 – Dorin Dickerson – Big time players make big time plays. Got to catch the ball in the endzone
#3 – Stull – Big league QB’s can lead their team to victory.
#2 – Deccicco- not worthy of being onthe field. Poor decision making. Can’t cover, tackle or hit.
#1 WANNY – WANNY BE! AVERAGE MEDIOCRE COACH WHO WILL COME OUT ON MONDAY WITH THE PEP RALLY SPEECH. ALL TALK AND NO SUBSTANCE!
1) maybe we have to scrap the man-to-man defense. I know when playig the zone, we got beat a few times vs Buffalo, but that was due to bad angles taken which are correctable. However, if we don’t have the psersonnel to play man-to-man as it appeared yesterday, then that is not correctable.
2) we are assuming that NC St is an average ACC team based on pre-season projections .. and maybe they are. But remember, Rutgers was the preseason BE favorite by most projectiosn, and we had all thought that our defense was the strength of this team. NC St had 14 starters return from a team that got much better as the season progressed last year. They lost a close game to what appears to now be a pretty good SC team,and the Wolfpack O-line was in much more disarray then, due to injuries and illnesses, than what is was yesterday. Who knows, if they compete for the ACC title, maybe this loss won’t seem as bad … I believe from what I saw yeaterday that they are much better than an average ACC team … and are much more than just a QB … but we will see.
1) S.Florida loss in 2001 (26-35) second season in D1 (disbelief and embarrassment)
2) Ohio U loss on friday night (Stunned on national TV)
3) Toledo loss in 2003 (31-35). Oh, we were ranked #9 at the time and Toledo’s QB torched us for 461 IN THE AIR!
4) Bowling Green loss last season (17-27)
5) Penn State loss in 1981 (14-48) I still cry at night about that one…
The other big problem was that the offense did not help in the second half. The scoring drive happened way to quick and the three and outs were devastating. I am not sure whether it was the O-line or Lewis that pooped out, probably both, but they did not give the D a rest.
They need to get the ball to Bynum more often and how about running Hyno three or five times a game.
I am not a big fan of the dump pass on third down. Too many times Stull throws low and behind. If you need four or seven yard throw the ball five or eight.
All this being said, This team should be competitive in all of its games and with the right breaks should win most of them.
Could not be more correct about the anger still remaining in Miami and Chicago (I worked in both those cities while Wanny was there). It wasn’t that Wanny lost…it was HOW he lost…unprepared, poor decisions, no adjustments, no QB talent…but the worst is his taking his foot off the gas pedal (i.e. stopping momentum) on offense when he has a team beat!
Classic expample is the Steeler/Bears game of 95…the only win ever for the Steelers in Chicago.
The anger and frustration Wanny’s “coaching” casuse in all of us is consistant.
No pettiness intended here but the PSU loss was a thing of joy!
When will the administration get it?
Again Walt wasn’t the guy either, but at least we went to minor bowl games for the most part.
I know it is one loss but this was the first “decent” team we played, this season is starting to spiral out of control, our defense just cannot stop anyone. Major adjustments are needed!
Stull has been exceptional this season and to even bring up that play emphasizes a gross misunderstanding of not only football but competition in general.
Suppose we did score. We were handed the ball at the eight yard line. So, it’s undoubtedly a PAT and overtime. Were we going to outlast them starting at the 25? No. This loss is on the defense — no one else. You’re reaching if you think otherwise.
Dallas Panther, if we do hire someone to take us to the next level, and that is a crapshoot, he would leave for a larger profile job in a few years anyway (Majors & Sherill revisited) although maybe we will accept that is we can win a few BCS bowl games. The thing is that there is just no guarantee that this person would be hired.
Oh and the Wannstadt stuff…every where I go and ALOT yesterday, Bears and ‘phins fans hate him and tell me about it. I hear it all the time. He teases you and then breaks your heart.
1. Zeise said all week that these two teams were very close and the separation at the end of the game would be a touchdown at the most. What I saw last night seemed to confirm that. What worries me about that is that Zeise seems to be convinced that NC State is a very mediocre team. So that’s either a bad day by a good Pitt team or…we’re a mediocre team.
2. I was a little surprised that Bennett didn’t have the defensive line playing more of a contain game with blitzes coming up the middle. Instead, he seemed to be trying to generate a lot of pressure with the ends, which allowed Wilson room to get around once the pocket collapsed.
3. Count me among those who will not pin this one on Stull. He made a good throw on 3rd down…might have been a LITTLE high, but Dickerson still could’ve come down with it. Not sure what happened on the 4th down play, but it did seem that there may have been some confusion in the pass routes there.
4. I’ve long been a supporter of Wannstedt and I’ve wanted him to succeed because I know how much this program means to him. But I’ve heard a lot of Wannstedt critics say that the losses his teams seem to suffer and furthermore the heights to which his teams typically aspire are limited by the same sorts of issues – limitations at the quarterback, ultra-conservative gameplay and games that are sometimes marred by mind-numbing mistakes in preparation.
5. So while I’m also starting to find my faith in Wannstedt shaken a little more, Zeise’s blog post that Dave in Orlando referenced up above proves to me one thing…this program was NOT better off with Walt Harris when it came to these kinds of losses. This program under Walt was still marred by the same mistakes, the same untimely calls, the same decisions that seemed to be reflective of a coaching staff either overthinking things, overcomplicating things or in some cases, being too damned inflexible for their own good.
6. All of this said, let’s please keep this in mind going forward:
– this loss does not damage Pitt’s chances for a BCS bowl berth.
– if you’d have told me after four games, that Pitt would be 3-1 and Stull would have 750 yards passing, 8 touchdowns to one INT and a 65.6% completion percentage, I’d have taken it. The offense does not look to be the problem here and it seems like it’s got potential to get better as more players are being worked into the equation.
– After some past poor defensive performances over the last couple of years, we’ve said the same things. “What’s WVU going to do to this defense?” “What’s Cincy going to do to this defense?” In the past, the defense has managed to get it figured out to keep those teams in check much better than any of us thought they would after losses like this. I think this one still has room to come around.
I hope the admin. cancelled the charter flight and made the team take the Greyhound back.
You realize that the turning point was probbaly the false start penalty which was reversed to a ‘disconcerting signal’ penalty, which changed a 3rd and 12 to a 3rd and 2. Pitt was winning 10-0 at that point and in control, but instead of holding them, they got the 1st down and went on to score their first TD.
I am kidding about the karma but not becessarily about the chilling out.
Why was Steve Dell in quite a bit instead of Mason? Not that either actually did very well.
I long for the days of Josh Lay. He couldn’t catch an INT for his life but he was pretty good in coverage.
If you aren’t going to return it, at least run up to it and fair catch it. Don’t let it bounce for 20 yards.
Would have been nice to see the offense move the ball a little bit more in the 2nd half. McGee once again had a big-time DROP that was a possession killer.
Incredibly frustrating game. The weakness that has been exposed in the secondary will continue to be exploited by opposing OC’s.
…On the bright side, the Buffalo and NC State gave us the most trouble because their mobile quarterback was able to elude pressure from our defensive line. I’m not sure we’ll see a kid who can really move around like Wilson did yesterday for the rest of the season, he’s a heck of a player.
Anyways in yesterday’s game the D was bad, and in
particular the linebackers and safeties. If they stop NC State at least 3 times we most likely win the game. God this D reminded me of a Paul Rhodes defense, Unable to stop a QB on 4and 15. I don’t know what defense Bennit called but why not have at least one spy on Wilson, you know he can run.
Sound familiar?
Should be an interesting couple of weeks…
Boy, that Cav was a great OC!
1. Just a total collapse…
2. What happens (or doesn’t) in the locker room at halftime? How do we come out in the third quarter of every single game without adjustments? They found the way to stop lewis and torch us on offense. We couldn’t even slow them down, let alone stop them.
3. Pitt can’t put teams away. We were up 14 in the second half and lost…total collapse.
4. Aren’t Wanny and Pitt supposed to be known for strong fundamentals in tackling and penalties?
On the positive:
1. It’s not a conference game. It would have been a great non-con win for us and the big east, but in the long run it’s not devastating.
2. Bill Stull is atleast playing solid, not great, but certainly good enough for the time being.
This makes Louisville a season-changing game for us. If we win, it’s a solid 4-1 (1-0) record. It’s on national tv, a game we need. If we lose, the morality will be gone and we’ll be sitting at 3-2.
The reality is, it isn’t always the “best team” that wins, but the best team on a given day. When Pitt dominated WVU two years ago- a WVU team that was on the verge of a national championship- we all knew that WVU was the better team. But Pitt was the better team that day. Given 4 more quarters, I don’t think WVU would have beat us. But we weren’t a national championship caliber team and they were. That is, as Christ Berman likes to say, why they play the game.
Our season is not over. Wanny doesn’t need fired. Anyone who blames Bill Stull for that loss has an agenda- they hate Stull and want any reason to blame him. I don’t think Stull is the kind of QB that could lead us to a BCS championship- but we aren’t a BCS championship caliber team. Stull has played FAR BETTER than anyone thought he would. He has 1 INT through 4 games. He has been plagued by receivers dropping balls in all 4 games, or his numbers would be even better. Somehow Dickerson has been let off the hook by so many after his drop in the end zone. “Stull isn’t the guy who can win it at the end,” people are saying. He put the ball in the receiver’s hands.
We all know that the defense has looked very poor. But if we want to figure out how to win games like this one, we HAVE to figure out how to get positive rushing yards in the second half. Other than breaking a huge run late against Buffalo, our rushing game has been virtually non-existent in the second half of games. I don’t know if it is play calling, poor line play, or not reacting to defensive adjustments (it is likely some of all 3), but if we can’t get our running game going in the second half of these games, then we are going to have a lot of 3 and outs.
And, to reiterate, if our WRs keep dropping balls, especially drive extending or point scoring balls, then you can’t pin that on Stull. I saw two bad passes out of Stull yesterday. One was to Baldwin, when Stull was being pressured, he stepped up and threw off his back foot and put it just behind Baldwin. If he got that to Baldwin, it was a first down and maybe a touchdown. The other was the fourth down play to end the game- where I too thought there was miscommunication on the route. I agree with the person who said above- if Pitt scored that TD at the end, is there any reason in the world to believe that our D would have finally stopped NC State in OT?
Pitt should have won that game. Pitt was up with a decent lead. Then, NC State got some momentum, the defense shit itself and every Pitt fan in the world knew we were not going to win that game unless the stadium got enveloped by a time warp that knocked 10 minutes off the clock.
Great short post! The jury is still out – Wannstedt’s era could end up being more mediocre than Harris’! Yet the Wannstedt die-hards come up with new excuses after each loss. Wannstedt’s butt was red hot before the WVU game in ’07. A few more losses this season and it will be red hot again.
I also said that we need to figure out how to get the running game active in the second half if we are going to keep winning. That falls squarely on the coaches, which I mentioned in that post- as does the poor defensive play.
My big concern is that we have seen tremendous growth out of this program in the last two seasons under Wanny, and our recruiting is better than it has been in decades- yet after 1 loss we are back to “Fire Wanny!!!” If we were 9-0 going into the ND game and then lost that game, the same people would be on this site saying that Wanny can’t do anything right. If we win the rest of our games until the WVU game and lose that one, we will hear the same things.
It is just clear that some people will ignore what is going well and just wait for a mistake to be made so they can immediately call for Wanny’s head or for Stull to be replaced- the latter of which has been evidenced by the amount of blame people have placed on Stull for yesterday’s loss.
If we had realistic expectations, then a loss like yesterday’s wouldn’t seem like the end of the world. I was pissed when the game was over because we sure could have won. But I didn’t believe coming into the season that we were going to go 10-2 or 11-1, so a loss doesn’t burst the bubble of my unrealistic fantasy. This program IS growing and getting stronger. They AREN’T near elite level yet. They may not get to the elite level under Wanny. But we weren’t really expecting 9 wins last season. So far we are looking pretty good this year, with knowledge of 1 primary area that is problematic- the defense, and especially the secondary.
I don’t know how this season will turn out, I just don’t know why so many Pitt fans root against Wanny and Stull and whoever else they don’t like. I didn’t want us to hire Wanny. I wanted a better QB than Stull. Both have made strides and dammit I am pulling for them to keep getting better. I don’t see how someone who calls themselves a Pitt fan thinks they earned the right to gloat at the rest of us because of a loss. Aren’t we all rooting for Pitt to win?
We have a perception problem in our conference, and everyone else has been manning up outside the BE schedule to help improve it. We get our chance to help our conference against an ACC team, and we don’t deliver. I know our job is not to play for our conference, but in a way, we have to in order to push our conference rep into the conversation.
Pitt is such a burden to the Big East in Football! We lay a terd in our only BCS game. We laid an ugly terd in our non-con schedule (see red shirt diaries) My gosh, then go and knock off the conference’s only shot to win it all(WVU two years ago as a 4TD dog)…when we had NO business doing it, causing us to not have a BCS Champion in the conference! Don’t get me wrong, I loved the win and I will always root for Pitt. I hate WVU, and would have hated seeing them win it all. But, it would have helped our chances to win one—immensely—- in the future! The way we come up SO SMALL in these non-con games just hurts our conference’s perception. And as we all know, perception (like it or not) is king in college football.
PITT fans are somewhat delirious if you think a loss like this is going to do anything to bring DW’s time at PITT to a close – or even not winning the BE championship. He be around for a long time if he keeps winning 8 or more games a year.
The comments on defense I echo completely. The secondary is bad, but who could be a decent replacement?
