On the eve of the Notre Dame game I thought we’d wrap up some of the great discussions we all have had on here since PITT snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against Iowa.  Chas will have his Live blog up for the noon game so those at faraway places can follow just how pissed your fellow Blather commenters are during the game.

You may find it interesting that since last week’s Iowa game this blog has had 457 comments posted to its game related articles.  I don’t have figures on any other singular blogs but that has to be right at the top for reader participation.  Thank you.

In doing that you all have raised some pretty interesting points (and counterpoints) and have expressed some strong opinions on where the state of the football team, and program, is at this point in time.  Here are some of the main issues along with another few two-cent analogies…no, five cent analogies.

   Our defense bites the big one.  There is no nice way to say it. Especially our back eight in trying to cover the pass.  As of today we are sitting at 119 out of 120 teams in the NCAA in pass defense.  If you can actually read the table below you can see that what has been killing us is the amount of completions per game (30) and the yards per game (336).  I was a bit shocked to see that we’ve only given up six TD passes, it feels like that should be doubled. The lack of INTs hasn’t helped anything either, especially since this defense is dependent on turnovers.

   Our QB situation is unsteady.  This subject has probably garnered the most comments so far.  Sunseri, to his credit, has begun to play a bit better over the course of the first three games.  He’s gone from two crappy quarters per game to one crappy quarter last week.  Unfortunately that one quarter was the 4^th where we needed him to play at least average football and convert a 3^rd down or two to win the game.

As we’ve been saying as a mantra before each game… “let’s wait and see if he gets any better” and that applies to this ND game also.  Todd Graham is publicly backing his horse in this race and chose not to get any other QBs snaps last week.  He believes that Sunseri is progressing and that ‘little’ things are holding him back – like a fumble at the Iowa goal line and two INTs I suppose.  Sunseri seem to agree with him because he’s stated that last week was “My greatest game ever” which was nice to hear.  Its good to personally keep track of how you are performing, that way when PITT fans tell you you suck you can show them your Excel spreadsheet that proves the opposite.

It’s too bad he didn’t have a chance to explain what he really meant with that statement as UPMC orthopedic surgeons still haven’t been able to remove his foot from his mouth.

   Graham botched the end of the ND game by not managing the clock to limit the time Iowa had to march up and down the field while thumbing their collective noses at our pass defense.

There is a point to be made here, but as our HC has made abundantly clear since he got here… our offense is going to be aggressive in all aspects of play, regardless of the game situation.  Its sole purpose is to score points as that is how we will win football games.  I’m of two minds about this.  First, I can see where the fans are coming from but I’m not sure it would have made that big of a difference last week.  Secondly, I find it ironic that after clamoring for a HC who “understands that in college football you can’t take your foot off their necks” we all of a sudden want our offense to revert back to WannyBall.

Graham isn’t going to mix and match styles folks.  He’ll do what he said and keep trying to score points until the offense can go into the victory formation

Which brings me to the last big talking point over the last week and full circle back to discussing QB play, along with our problems on defense.  Fans have talked a lot about Graham trying to ‘fit a square peg in a round hole’ with Sunseri, stating that he doesn’t have the skills to execute this offense properly.  If that is the case, and assuming that a walk-on true freshman QB would immediately get the vapors and faint as soon as he went onto the field against ND, then there is not one else on the roster who can run Graham’s offense.

There just isn’t.  So, the great unwashed ask; “Why doesn’t Graham change his offense to fit the personnel he has on hand and give us a better shot at winning football games this season?”  And those in the know answer; “Because, basically, Todd Graham is stubborn as hell.”  He has run this offense in the past with great success and as a result he has both won games and progressed up the professional ladder.  Indeed, he was hired by PITT for just that reason – to institute his offense as soon as possible.

For the shorter term Graham has been using these first four relatively unimportant games (as the BE games are paramount) to get his personnel both used to these systems and to have them progress each week.  The fact that that may not be happening, or may not happen, in 2011 takes a back seat to 2012 and beyond.  His thrust is to get the returning personnel fully indoctrinated in “His Way” and then continue to recruit for that baseline.

I don’t doubt that he wants to win games this season and he sure may still, but he won’t do it at the expense of pushing back the progress of getting his systems in place for greater success in the future.

The upshot is that Todd Graham is going to do things the way he wants and will take every opportunity to proselytize about it.  He speaks about his approach with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

But Graham’s way will grow on us like it is a colony of E. Coli and we are room-temperature grade-A beef.

So,  28 hours until game time. We are going against a traditional foe on our home field. A win here quiets critics and infuses our players and staff with confidence going into our first BE game with USF next Thursday… can we pull it off?

Inquiring minds want to know what you PITT fans think.  So, let’s hear your predictions please.   Mine? I think PITT shows a jump in offense and scores about 34 points, but it just not enough as ND scores a bit more.

ND: 37  Pitt: 34… or maybe reversed.