So there are issues. Don’t worry, Coach Wannstedt has carefully examined the WVU debacle and knows what went wrong.
It’s not a secret what happened in that football game against West Virginia. When you turn over the ball as many times as we did, you have no chance to win and that’s exactly what the film showed. I thought we had a good game plan, and the turnovers will kill you every time. That was the difference in the game. Now we have to get focused for Cincinnati this week.
Um, uh, any reason for all the turnovers and near turnovers? Some common theme? The preparation? Focus? Anything? Surely in Game 11. A rivalry game. It wouldn’t be simply bad breaks and youth trotted out as an excuse. Right?
Right?
“I’d have to go through each turnover. I can tell you that Dion Lewis carried the football almost 300 times last year and lost one fumble in the bowl game against North Carolina – he fumbled out of the end zone. It’s not a fumbling problem with Dion Lewis, but for some reason he lost a couple on Friday. That’s not a problem with him.
“With the quarterback scenario, I think that Tino Sunseri really played well. When you look at the overall game, yes, the one turnover was costly, but he did a lot of good things in that game. I thought that he made good decisions and made some plays on his feet. I thought against the best defense in the conference, and one of the better defenses in the country, he stepped up and made plays. There were a lot of plays left on the field that we can improve on, and will. Unfortunately you throw an interception, and it gets run back to the two-yard line. That’s a tough deal. I thought that Tino Sunseri overall played well.”
“You have to keep coaching and keep believing that you’re going to eliminate those problems. Concerning the running backs, Dion Lewis has not been a problem. I’m not concerned about him.
“Ray Graham, he’s put the ball on the ground a few times the last couple of weeks. We know that and he needs to correct that. He is well aware of that. David Walker is out there coaching the principle of ball security in practice and in pregame warm-ups. It’s being addressed. Obviously the only solution over a long period of time is that if you put the ball on the ground you can’t play. It’s as simple as that. I don’t feel that Ray Graham is in that category. He just plays reckless. He’s a young kid, a true sophomore. He’s a young player right now.”
/slams tequila then slams head into wall
Ray Graham is at the end of his sophomore season on the team. He may not have played every game out of the 24 possible, but he has been on the 2-deep the entire time. He has practiced this entire time. But he is a “young player right now?”
And the disappointment of the season? We all know what is coming right?
“We obviously had higher expectations. I really thought that we felt like we needed to get a big year out of our best defensive player, Greg Romeus, and the way that he trained we believed that we would get a first-round draft pick type of year out of him. That was a little bit disappointing. I used the phrase in training camp that (injured player) Dan Mason was a linebacker who would fit into the Scott McKillop or H.B. Blades mold. Dan Mason has that attitude and ability. We had a couple of little setbacks there, but then Brandon Lindsey and some other guys stepped up.
“Obviously, with Dion Lewis and the expectations and all the hype – I don’t think anything that was said or written was out of line with his performance last year. I think it was all legitimate. For whatever reason, we just never get on track with our running game. There were some setbacks there.
“The whole thing with the development of a new quarterback, the three new linemen and the new tight end and a new wide receiver; I knew it would be difficult. I knew that we had the least amount of starters returning in the conference, out of anybody. I knew we were a young team and that it would be a work in progress. (But) you don’t expect to turn the football over. That’s the one thing that really disappoints me. For the most part, over the last three years we’ve always run the ball and protected the football. We might not have been as wide-open as we would have liked, but we’ve always protected the football very well.
“These two conference games that we lost, I thought that our football team was making progress defensively from week one. Our passing game was making progress, and then the turnovers obviously set us back. That’s very disappointing. The progress that our kids made at certain positions – Jordan Gibbs, Mike Cruz, Devin Street, Brandon Lindsey, Max Gruder and Tristan Roberts. All these guys are new starters. I thought these kids worked extremely hard and made some progress in the right direction.”
Yes youth, inexperience and injuries. Hard to avoid the inexperience, when Wannstedt never plays anyone but the starters I’ll pass along the polite response from Brian Bennett.
But youth doesn’t explain why the Panthers were still making the same mistakes in Game 11 as they were in Game 1. Or why a fifth-year senior center (Alex Karabin) would snap the ball over quarterback Tino Sunseri’s head in a key situation against West Virginia. Or why Pitt even had to play Karabin, a walk-on before this summer, at that crucial spot when the coaching staff had already used a junior-college stop-gap at center the two years prior.
Terrifyingly enough, Bennett also was close to dead-on in his preseason “Worst Case Scenario” for Pitt. Except I don’t think that Wannstedt is contemplating retirement.
Part of the problem for Wannstedt is that he just has no wiggle-room with the fans any longer. All goodwill has long since spent as he piled up the bad losses without even coming close to balancing out the good wins.
The fact is, Pitt just doesn’t finish well in the Wannstedt era. Something Chris Peak at PantherLair has pointed out.
“We keep falling short in the big games,” sophomore running back Ray Graham said after the West Virginia game. “We have our opportunities; we’re just not capitalizing on them.”
And the trend extends beyond the 2010 season. Last year, Pitt had to beat Cincinnati in the finale at Heinz Field to make its first BCS bowl appearance since the 2004 season. In 2008, the Panthers had to beat the Bearcats in Cincinnati order to clinch the Big East.
Both times, Pitt came up short.
“It’s the same old story,” redshirt senior offensive tackle Jason Pinkston said on Friday. “We just didn’t step up. We didn’t answer the challenge.”
…
The theme of finishing isn’t just limited to an individual game. Under Dave Wannstedt, Pitt has struggled to close out seasons. Over the past five years, the Panthers have posted a 9-11 mark in the final four games of each season. That includes an 0-4 record in 2006, when Pitt needed just one win to get bowl-eligible for the first time in Wannstedt’s tenure as head coach.
Pitt only posted one winning record in the final four regular-season games under Wannstedt – 3-1 in 2008 before losing the Sun Bowl 3-0 to Oregon State – and with a 1-2 record in the final quarter of the 2010 season, that trend will continue.
For a team that preaches the importance of finishing strong, Pitt has done a remarkable job of finishing weak every season.
There’s a small point to be made that Pitt usually finishes the season against some of the better teams in the Big East, and that can skew the record. But then that just says that Pitt isn’t in that group that is the upper-part of the Big East. The reputation and expectations are apparently overrated then.
Paul Zeise sees the problem lying in no small part to the way the players have handled things.
And when I say soft, I’m meaning, they are not tough physically and they are not tough mentally. They have no ability to reach down and find that extra something that usually is the difference between winning and losing. Instead, this team has far too many whiners who make excuses for why they can’t get the job done, they like to point the fingers elsewhere instead of themselves and this team has come unglued every time there has been even a hint of adversity.
Zeise goes on to express surprise because of the much-lauded strength and conditioning regimen of Buddy Morris. Along with the “tough guy” culture Wannstedt has supposedly instilled. A counter-point of snark might be that the players instead have learned too much from Wannstedt and that’s why they put the blame elsewhere and come unglued when things go wrong.
As to the reason why this team is that way, well does it go to the coaching decisions dating back to the spring?
The biggest problem I see with this year’s team is a lack of legitimate competition for jobs at certain positions. Alex Karabin was never, ever legitimately pushed by anyone. Greg Williams and Tristan Roberts were the third and fourth linebackers — and pushed each other but it was clear nobody was pushing them. Antwuan Reed was installed as the starting corner and never pushed. Tino Sunseri was never pushed. Mike Cruz was never pushed. Greg Gaskins was pretty much handed a job in the spring as well. He at least had to perform to keep it and when he couldn’t lost it. It was clear, though, that these guys were going to be the starters and they never had to really work hard to scratch and claw to keep their jobs. And that has continued throughout the season.
To me, that has been the biggest disappointment with this season — some of these guys have not performed anywhere near their capability but have not been held accountable for it. I understand the “well they have experience” sentiment but who cares if you have experience if you can’t make plays when you are on the field? This coaching staff has always been pretty good at creating a very competitive atmosphere for jobs but this year, it just didn’t exist.
Now, I’m not privy to practices. I don’t see them, but I am not sure about this one. Exactly how often in the Wannstedt tenure are starters replaced during the season without injuries or suspensions? Maybe they did face more competition in practices previously, but we have never seen it with changes on the field.
A starter remains the starter. Experience has always trumped talent unless it was too overwhelming to ignore. Better to have a less skilled player with experience get beaten soundly by a better player on the opposite side the entire game rather than risk a better player without experience make a mistake on one play. That is the Way of the Wannstedt.
Zeise used to poke fun at all the people who would e-mail about why Bill Stull never got mop-up time in the games Pitt had well in hand when Palko was playing. I’m reasonably sure it was because he just got tired of answering the same question over and over. (Simple answer that I think we all understand now is that Wannstedt never seems to pull his starters even in blowouts.)
The point of the questions, though, was always about getting the younger players a chance to play. The ones that would follow having some real experience. A chance to get their feet wet in an actual game, even if it was a blowout or relatively meaningless at that point.
And what has Wannstedt’s excuse been this season– besides turnovers? It has been the lack of experience of so many players. Well that fault goes to the head coach who hasn’t given the kids a chance to play.
It’s always excuses for not giving the younger kids a chance to play, despite claiming they would. Instead, the situation has never quite been right. There was a plan to use them, but things didn’t quite go as expected. The game was closer than expected. All the excuses in the world. What it ultimately comes down to is that Coach Wannstedt prefers experience, and then creates his own mess by refusing to prepare the next group.
Here Zeise finally fesses up:
Q: Paul, I read your blog about a lack of accountability and my question is this — what groundwork needs to be laid in offseason to start reversing this so this team can get out of its own way?
Kevin Oleska, Johnstown
ZEISE:
They need to make it clear that Mark Myers is legitimately in the quarterback competition…
Read more: link to postgazette.com
I will not be there, nor will I donate any money. Wanny might be a nice and personable man but he has not performed and taken Pitt to the next level, six years down the drain, maybe seven!
soon we start to lose recruits
soon leach and mullen are hired…
can these imbeciles not see that every day they wait hurts this program
Reading this post makes me question (even more) the one thing that Wanny was supposed to be good at or at least get credit for and that is recruiting.
How we can’t have linement recruited and in waiting year after year is beyond me. Same goes for corners, LBs, QBs and so on and so one adnauseum. This is further supported by the fact that these kids can’t be coached up to play. That says to me that they are either not talented or that the great Tony Weis is not all that great – which brings you back to coaching. The great circular reference.
Blame the kids and execution, take no accountability.
Wannstedt has beat UCONN a total of once since he has been the coach. The guy is awful. Stop comparing Pitt to Miami. Just compare them to UCONN. Randy Edsell is about to accomplish something that Dave Wannstedt never will, a BCS bowl.
Zeise, Wannstedt, his staff, and his apologists can all go to hell. He will continue to break your heart. The one year when things go right is the exception, not the rule.
We have seen UCONN, Cinci, Rutgers, etc rise to power and become legitimate competition within a VERY short ammount of time, all things considered. Some teams have actually lapped us (UCONN). There’s one word that can sum it up…Pathetic.
With TCU coming into the mix, they are poised to play a role that Pitt SHOULD have been poised to play at this point in the new Big Sprawl (that one’s for you, Chas). Pitt made a decision 6 years ago to go with Wanny and it didn’t work. Tough S, but now they have to make a decision to move forward before bad becomes a whole lot worse.
But what if the new guy isn’t a ‘PITT’ guy…
…don’t care
But what if the new guy has a lot of success and uses the school as a stepping stone for a better job?…
…GOOD!!!
I am holding out hope that my beloved alma mater will make the right decision and move forward.
Please find a good way to part with Wanny and for the love of God, PLEASE throw a script Pitt on the side of that helmet for next season (I could care less about colors at this point).
the Brian Bennett ESPN blog about the worst case scenario he wrote in late August was absolutely right on target. If he placed bets on those predictions, he hauled in a fair amount of coinage. Really uncanny.
Chris Dokish is the best and most honest analyst of Pitt athletics – football and basketball – anywhere (except maybe for Chas). He used to produce Panther Rants which had great pieces on Pitt football. He’s a good writer and he is not trying to win brownie points from anyone. I’ve been waiting for him to weigh in.
I have nothing against Bostick, he seems like a great kid who has continued to work hard throughout, but he just isn’t a D1 football player. He was mis-evaluated by recruiting services and this coaching staff and simply hasn’t developed because of poor coaching (Cavanaugh)and the fact that he truly lacks athleticism and arm strength.
There is absolutely no question that there was a lack on focus on this year’s team and I blame the players more becuase Wanny’s teams in the past usually were very good in the number of penalties and taking care of the ball. The two critical fumbles in the 1st half vs WVU were by seasoned, talented players.
Drum roll please!!!
Sunday, Dec. 26
Little Caesars Pizza Bowl
At Detroit
Pittsburgh vs. Northern Illinois
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got back on the bandwagon with tickets this year because of the unwarranted optimism, and because of the donations I was making for basketball tickets (which still didn’t prevent me from getting bumped at the Pete from way down low to way up high) we went for Club Seat tickets. Not even being able to have a few beers during the game was enough to put me out of the misery of this season.
if the scenario holds I expect NIU to win the game!
I think I predicted The Pizza Bowl before. But to be honest I was thinking the Birmingham AL. one which I thought was the Little Caesars. My bad, I forget about the one in Detroit. (I mean who wouldn’t)
The one in that fair city of Birmingham was the Papa Johns.com thingie which is now the soon to be famous (or maybe infamous) BBVA Compass Bowl.
Which might be appropriate for Pitt, our football program is confused, dazed and most certainly LOST, so it would therefore need a Compass. The only question would be…..would Sir Stache know how to use it?? 🙂
Thanks, I overlooked the wig, but I have a great story about Lou’s teeth, he lost his cool once at the Avis rental car counter in the airport at Hartford Connecticut in route to ESPN.
The clerk pissed him off by telling him to wait his turn and hold onto his teeth because Lou was bitching and talking so fast they almost fell out!
He is a tool!
“if the scenario holds I expect NIU to win the game!”
====
Yes, but I expect it to be close…I predict a score of 3-0, Northern Illinois winning on a field goal in the first quarter, and Pitt unable to find an answer in three quarters.
I fully expect to get rolled on Saturday and the administration manning up an forcing Wanny out. There is no way you can, in good conscience, sell the 2011 season.
Really, the writing is on the wall. Time for the top brass to save this sinking ship.
I agree, enough on the Leach talk…we have enough bad press these days…going from a loser to an abuser is not good.
I do agree Tino sucks though…
The fish stinks from the head down.
Think Oderick Turner(can still see him dropping a perfect wide open TD pass from Kevin Smith at Mich State), Conredge Collins, John Pelusi, the two DiCicco’s, Janocko, the two Nix’s, Tristan Roberts, Aaron Smith, Sunseri, Greg Williams. I’m sure I missed a lot more since I really only looked at this year’s roster minus Turner & Collins. These guys were ALL marginal players who played because they were cousins, sons, whatever of former NFL players, Pitt players, coaches that played at Pitt. That is the Wannstache way, you don’t earn it, you have the right or entitlement to play.
lmao, that is a hoot. I could see that happening, he prolly forgot the glue.
I like when he says Tenne-shee for the Volunteers.
The tool is a perfect example of someone having the job because he was a connected coach for so long. I’m sure he must be loaded with money, give someone else a chance for pete’s sake. Instead of the comic figure with the false teeth and the Prince Valiant wig that he has become.
I feel bad that Mark May has to put up with the tool.
Blaming the entire season on injuries to Greg Romeus and Dion Lewis. And inexperience. When was the last time you heard Chuck Noll, Mike Tomlin, Vince Lombardi, Ara Parseghian, Nick Saban, Brian Kelly, Joe Paterno, Jackie Sherrill, Johnny Majors, or even Randy Edsell blame losses on injuries and inexperience. I could go on and on. First of all, blaming losses on injuries or inexperience sends the wrong message to the team – gives them an excuse for not performing. Second, it makes the injured players, who are already looking at diminished value in the NFL draft, feel even worse. And these are, after all, college kids, and in the case of Lewis and Romeus, among the very best of character and heart. But worst of all, there are no true freshmen starting on this team. All of the starters have at least one year of Wanny Ball under their belt. And this is Sunseri’s third year in the program. So it just makes him look like someone who is simply looking for excuses, and not confronting the problem. And perhaps the thing that throws everyone over the edge – Chicago, Miami, and now Pitt, and he just does not get it.
But you now understand why people in Chicago and Miami not only thought him a bad coach, but practically seethe when his name comes up. I have always had my doubts about his “commitment”, but anyone now who thinks this guy is a class act – well, I guess I would just disagree, to be polite.
And comparisons to Ron Zook? Well, Zook may not be the greatest coach in the world, but he has had have several very impressive wins at Florida and Illinois. Wannstedt has had exactly one. And even that, as we now begin to realize, perhaps had as much to do with playing a very distracted West Virginia team.
I thought the Dokish article was excellent – hit the nail on the head. I would only argue about Tom Bradley – I think he would be a great catch, if he would take the job. I truly admire what he has been able to do, to keep that program together, to keep top quality recruits coming there, with the JoePa ego and distraction to deal with. I analogize to the Florida State situation with Bobby Bowden – and Penn State has not nearly gotten as bad as FSU did in the last 5 years.
link to bebballreportpitt.blogspot.com
[EDITED BY CHAS. I deleted the article because the entire post was cut-and-pasted here. That’s not fair use. Follow the link to read it.]
And it had nothing to do with Pat Bostick’s talent or perceived lack of it. That is what the PITT fans didn’t get. It had everything to do with the core sportsmanship aspect of competitive athletics… that players get the opportunity to show they can win a starting position by their efforts and talents. This was an open starting position at QB friends, not a ‘Union Job; Keep your starting position’ deal.
He circumvented that with the most high profile position on the team and did it in a way that every single kid on the roster knew the fix was in.
Honestly, he also couldn’t have picked a more psychologically inept kid to hand a starting position to. There were major problems in the locker room from Spring Practice on and it was in large part because of ego and arrogance.
DW has only himself to blame for this when he sent a terrible and infectious message that petty and personal considerations overruled adhering to the time honored tradition of winning playing time.
IMO it didn’t matter who was actually the starting QB after that happened, but on top of it all he never saw fit to show the rest of the team that he had any faith whatsoever in a back up QB… not once did anyone else get meaningful snaps with the first team offense during any game time. No meaningful snaps whatsoever.
Its as if DW was thumbing his nose for the last 10 months at us ‘outsiders’ in saying that “It’s my ball and I’ll play with it however I want to… and screw everyone else. If its a bad decision, it’s still MY decision and I’ll run it into the ground if I want”.
Good God, DW has an ego the size of old PITT stadium.
And for all the PITT fans who are clamoring for Frank Cignetti to be the next HC, ask yourselves this. After what we experienced this season would you hire the Fist Mate on the Titanic to captain your ship? He hasn’t impressed me one iota since he’s gotten here. Bill Stull has so many more fundamental positives than Tino Sunseri it isn’t funny and had Cignetti been the QB guru as advertised we’d have seen Sunseri been able to process what was happening before his eyes on the field… at the very least he should have shown some progression throughout the year. But, save two games against those poor BE teams in mid-season he’s been below average at best.
Set the stats aside, our QB could not be relied on to make plays consistently to save his life, negated our best offensive weapon with his utter inability to throw a deep ball, make excruciatingly bonehead plays and penalties (how many delay of games killed our drives) with regularity and could lead the team out of the locker room without the directions written on his wrist pad.
Now we read the team was “soft”. Whatever that means. More like the team was “lost” by Dave Wannstedt through his own machinations.
These past six years have been so tiring. Especisally for me knowing full well when he came that he sucked as a head coach. Add to that the legions of pitt fans who circled the proverbial wagons, defended him incestantly and laid their chips at his feet in hope that the old ball coach would change his coaching stripes.
It is utter bullsh** that a university with some 10 nc’s settles for mediocrity. Pitt deserves what it got from wanny. How the hell can he be good for the schools football program. The fact that he was hired and kept for these 6 years shows that the university and the leaders therein don’t care about the past and/or football champioships.
And oh by the way they got lucky with dixon because he will win a nc, wanny on the other hand can’t even win the BE title in the weakest bcs conference. Reason being he can’t coach, gameplan, adjust, develop players……
Leach didn’t actually do that. The kid’s dad is a big jerk who works for ESPN and they reported the story with no fact checking and are currently being sued for it.
What really happened was the kid was coming back from a concussion and was cleared to do a bit of physical activity but still had light sensitivity so they had him go into a darkened garage with bikes and stuff. The kid then went to an “electrical closet” that was really a media room for a few minutes and took a cell phone video of himself and sent it to his dad.
The administration wanted Leach fired beforehand as some emails shed light on later and used this as an excuse.
Here’s a link:
link to sportsbybrooks.com
I agree with the very well-written assessment of DW as HC. He is not a great coach, does not recruit the players to play his system, does not exploit match-ups, and takes no responsibility for his team’s on-field performance. To me, that speaks that DW is NOT a great leader, which is something IMO that all successful programs need.
Whether or not the fan base is wrong with their expectations, when the Athletic Department, local media, and DW themselves are all tooting their horns on how great a team we have, the great recruits & development we have, and the coaching/ leadership of DW, and the expectations are not met, who is to blame? EVERYBODY. No one should be happy about this season.
As long as the expectations are BE championships and national prominence, DW is not going to be the man to deliver that. His career speaks for itself. Sure he’s won games, been moderately successful, and is a nice guy. But he has not won big games, exhibited tremendous leadership qualities, innovate/ adjust strategies as needed, or taken accountability. The question is, what are the expectations of the program?
Walt led us to a win against Mike Vick and within a Yogi Roth drop of a win against Miami at the Orange Bowl. Never, ever, in a million years would Wannstedt be able to do that. Harris also led a team that started 1-5 to a 7-5 finish. A Wannstedt led team would have forfeited the season if they started 1-5. Wannstedt is an arrogant, incompetent, self-important jock that has been in the right place at the right time throughout his “career”.
Great analysis.
I’m sure you were being sarcastic given my wanting to see Bostick play some, but really… If Mark Myers was a legitimate 2nd string back-up this season then I’d agree.
It will be like a repeat of say 1992 to 1997. When I just didn’t even care about it.
I wouldn’t hold your breath for an actual QB competition next year – if he chose not to do it when there was an open starting position there prior to this season he certainly won’t do it next year.
The guy truly is an amazement and has an ego the size of a house – there is no other answer for how he makes these decisions.
He writes a story about Pitt’s running game over the course of the season, lists Dion’s stats(695 yds. on 155 carries for a 4.5 avg/carry and a 30 yd. Long Run) or lack thereof. And then in typical Zeise fashion there is barely a mention of PITT’s LEADING RUSHER FOR THE SEASON. That of course would be Ray Graham who has 825 yds. rushing on only 130 carries for a impressive 6.3 avg/carry and a 79 Long Run. They both rushed for 8 TD’s while Graham also caught 2 TD passes, more like caught a short pass and ran them in.
If you add up Graham’s 825 and Lewis’s 695, you get 1520 (I was a Math major) 🙂 with one game to go, let’s say they get another 120 on Sat., then you end up with 1640, which is not far off from Lewis’s 1799 last year. Which also included the bowl game. Pitt’s running game is not to blame for this years collapse as Zeise suggests in this article, it’s the fact so many long, wide open, momentum changing, TD passes were overthrown, underthrown, misthrown or never attempted, that is one of the main reasons Pitt’s offense sputtered a lot and missed (again) momentum changing long TD passes. Which by the way, if you complete those long TD passes it stretches the Defense and ALLOWS the running game more room to operate. Which is what didn’t happen for the most part, you had teams, knowing Tino couldn’t stretch the field play more men in the box to try and stop Pitt’s run. (and they did, like in the WVU game, as Tino proved to WVU he couldn’t hit a wide open Baldwin in the 1rst half for an easy TD, and you noticed as the game went on from there, Pitt had a tougher & tougher time running the ball)
This is something (like a lot of things) that goes unseen in the game stats. And reporters like Zeise should mention them. When they don’t, you have to ask……why not. Instead he writes in article like the one he wrote today.
🙁
When Wanny is gone I will stop back in. I need to bury the frustration of the last 6 years by paying attention to Pitt Football and find something else to follow.
B-Ball right? If I stop in here for B-Ball updates while football is still going on it will remind me of the pain.
Later