God I hope they don’t pull an Ole Miss today.

Pittsburgh at Utah (Versus): Game of the night. Pittsburgh, a dark horse contender to potentially make a lot of waves this year (we’re measuring potential to possibly be relevant now), facing off against an always competent (this century) Utah team in their final go-round in the Mid Mountain Western Athletic Conference-USA (MMWAC-USA) before joining greener pastures in the Pac-12. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that Dave Wannstedt has an ability to underachieve and shit the bed with a regularity to which you can practically set your timepiece. So there’s no telling what will happen. Pitt’s defense this year should be superb, and they have an actual, legitimate stud at RB in the form of Dion Lewis, the black little brother of Warwick Davis. I don’t know jack shit about this year’s Utah team other than their uniforms are red. The real battle here is Dave Wannstedt’s mustache, said to hold untapped mystical powers, versus the kind sensibilities and magic underwear of the Mormon hordes. Football and the arcane all rolled up into one, it should be a great game to start things off on a Thursday

Don’t you know that Tom Savage is now the most veteran QB in the BE, not to mention Pitt, UConn and Cincy opening all the road vs quality opponents. Perhaps if these 3 would have beaten YSU, FAMU and Jackosonville ST at home by 25 pts you would have felt much better.

Any football coach will tell you that the biggest improvement for any team is between Game 1 and 2. We’ll know much more by the end of the month how good or bad this conference is.

28-14

sezitall

Changing the subject, I am surprised that no one has commented how much we missed Elijah Fields on Thursday. How many times was DeCicco completely out of the play or our outside linebackers found wanting? It says a lot about Wanny that he dismissed Fields when he had to know the result. I am still encouraged that this team will be very good. They played very poorly and still almost won against a quality team.

At the risk of sounding like an apologist, the freshman QB was at home against 1AA Youngstown State, that’s why they could turn him loose.

The 3rd year soph. was on the road making his first start against a perennial contender.

I’m not saying I agree with keeping the reigns on Tino as long as they were, but the two situations aren’t even close.

Let’s see how PSU uses Bolden next week at ‘bama.

On a blocked kick: why do we always fall on the ball? It’s not like a fumble. They are obviously good at blocking kicks. Does this subject not come up in practice? Are we really so conservative that we are worried about the other team picking the ball up and running at least 20 yards past the LOS so much so that we aren’t willing to try and advance the ball? Especially when we know the offense is impotent? Ok I’m done ranting for one game.

Off topic,

I noticed that our defense is dependent on big negative plays on 1st or 2nd down (like a big sack or penalty) in order to stop opposing offenses.

If we don’t get a team into 3rd and long, we usually aren’t stopping them.

i would take 1-0, beating a YSU by 25 over being 0-1 losing to a “quality” openent. Saying otherwise is so off the mark.

Yes Wanny has the program in a great place – it this single fact why Pitt fans want and expect MORE. Are you satisfied with just the level of success we have attained thus far? You have to continuously improve and staying where we are i.e. losing like this every year is simply NOT ok.

I love Pitt. Everything about Pitt. Always will. This is why its not ok to be where we are. I think that everyone else would share this point of view.

Think about it, USF always pulls off one big time, noncon upset every year, and Florida’s offense looked awful in their first game against Miami-OH. It’s totally ripe for the picking!

Then, USF can do what they do ever year and get the bejesus kicked out of them by most of the Big East teams, who in turn look good because they beat someone who beat Florida.

So USF (in my best Leslie Nielson from Airplane voice), I just want you to know we’re all counting on you.

Is anyone having trouble with All Access Sports? I have been subscribing on yearly basis to at least listen to the Pitt games not televised. The new video format is not accepting my renewal. Can not get a response from customer service.

Anyone have a phone number to reach these people?

I want to listen to the NH game this Saturday.

There seems to be a delusion of grandeur among the Pitt faithful that this was a possible MNC contender, an opinion NOT shared by anyone else, anywhere. Hell, I can remember such preseason thoughts in 01 before losing to a then unheard of USF team in the 2nd game (finished 7-5) as well as 03 until they lost to Toledo (2nd or 3rd game.)

Considering the recent recruiting efforts, the near future of this program bodes well with projected quality depth not seen around here for 3 decades … but Bama and OSU still does not start a walk-on center or a guard who has a good chance of being replaced by an ex DL RS frosh who has all of 4 weeks of preseason practice experience.

I’ve kind of changed my thoughts on the overall state of recruiting thanks to some of the points made here the last couple of days. As a whole, I do think the recruiting is in good shape. Under Walt, it seemed to be a top-flight skill player here or there and a bunch of linemen who were debating MAC and Conf. USA schools.

We’ve obviously progressed beyond that and we’re now routinely beating established BCS-conference schools for recruits, so I think the overall quality of the classes have been going up. But I just wonder if there’s a ceiling there given the regional nature of the program, and that may be why there are more gaps in the depth chart than what you’d see at national powers like Bama and tOSU.

The Pitt-UNH game should be on espn3.com (link to unhwildcats.com).

link to pittsburghlive.com

enough ofall this. bring onNH and a45-0 win.