(This is a weekly series of articles entitled “Monday Morning Quarterback”.   I will try to post them two days after the football games are played so as to have our wilder emotions under control by then.  It will be my take on the positives and the negatives we saw happen and a chance for commenters to agree or disagree and to add their own thoughts.)

These MMQB articles are getting harder and harder to write given the inconsistencies of our coaching staff’s decisions, our team’s efforts and our individual player’s success’ and failures, even from play to play sometimes.  I’m still not sure exactly what caliber of PITT football team we have this season.   I’ll put down some more personal opinions at the end of this article.

POSITIVES

1.  Todd Thomas’ play at OLB on defense. He came rigged to play last night and ended up with 12 total tackles; seven unassisted, five assisted with one tackle for loss, most of which seemed to come in crucial situations. He was all over the field and at least two of his tackles stopped important 3^rd down conversion attempts.  There is a lot of fan discussion this morning about how DC House is substituting for Thomas in certain situations, most specifically passing downs and against the spread formations we have seen in some past games.

I don’t necessarily agree that Thomas needs to be on the field 100% of the time as some of us do. The fact is that after Thomas’ two ACL injuries and surgeries, and let’s remember that he missed his whole freshman year in 2010 and major parts of 2011 & ’12 with those injuries, he isn’t as fast as he was when he first reported to PITT.  That’s one reason he gets replaced by Nick Grigsby as the ‘Freeze LB” and Bam Bradley as an OLB in those certain situations especially on the passing situations.

Both of those kids had major plays on defense last night; Bradley have three solo and two assisted tackles and Grigsby had three solo tackles so they combined for eight stops in very limited play.  That is production from that particular defensive game planning.

So. it is hard, at least IMO, to say that we’d have been better off having Thomas in on every play.  Another factor to consider that as a rsJR and rsSO respectively Grigsby and Bradley may well be replacing Thomas and Gonzalez as starters next season.

2.  Our second stringers continue to shine in their very limited roles.  Both RBs Chris James (2 carries for 18 yds) and Isaac Bennett (1 for 23) did well in relief of Conner and seem to have a knack for being able to jump off the bench and produce positive plays as soon as they are asked to do so.  We need to see more of both of those guys along with Ibrahim carrying the ball.

I have stated earlier that should Conner go down with an injury we’d see Isaac Bennett be almost as productive rushing the ball, he’s that good.  On the season he has carried the ball 17 times for 105 yards for an excellent 6.2 ypc, one TD and a long of last night’s 23 yards; his receiving has been productive also with six catches for 61 yards (7.5 ypc) and a long of 22 yards.  IMO he needs the ball way more than he’s getting so far.

Our younger receivers WR Adonis Jennings (1 catch for 6 yards) and newly burnt redshirt true freshman WR Jester Weah, who was inserted because he’s the fastest player on the roster,  got more experience on the field.

We may question why Weah was used at mid-point in the season and it’s because the staff most probably sees that the only way Voytik is going to be able to complete deep pass routes is to wind up and throw the ball as far as he possibly can in a certain direction, much like he did in the bowl game, and they are hoping that Weah will get enough steps on his defender to be able to adjust to the passes, accurate or inaccurate ones, on the fly.  We’ll see him play more in future games and he had two passes thrown to him last night.

Freshman CB Pat Amara had a key interception that not only stopped a UVA drive but lead to a PITT FG that closed the gap to a 11 point deficit.  That INT came right after PITT scored our first TD of the game and really helped us to keep that 2^nd half momentum going in our favor.

 3.  As spotty as they were I have to say that our defense did a pretty good job over all last evening.  Even though we lost by five points our defense kept us in the game in that crucial second half by not allowing any UVA 2^nd half points which allowed us to mount a comeback try.

Looking at the box score might lead one to think we didn’t do that well on defense but sometimes that isn’t the whole story.  Yes, we gave up way too many yards on the ground with the UVA running backs seeming to be able to waltz through big holes in the DL and past our missed arm tackles, but we also kept a solid lid on their passing game at 121 total passing yards and put strong 2^nd half pass rushing pressure on their QB to force a lot of 3^rd down conversion tries which didn’t work.

In UVA’s five 2^nd half possessions our defense held them to this:

1^st – three and out

2^nd – INT

3^rd – 3^rd down and 10 – QB sack – Punt

4^th – Punt

5^th – Punt

In the Defense’s defense, had Voytik not thrown that Pick-6 INT in the 2^nd quarter we would have held a decent ACC opponent to 17 points on their home field and most probably would have won the game. That isn’t shabby no matter how you cut it.

NEGATIVES

1.  First in my mind is our team’s death dealing habit of committing penalties at exactly the wrong times. The short story is that we had 10 penalties for 75 yards. The long story is the details of when they occurred and how those penalties caused us to give up any momentum we might have had in numerous possessions.

A perfect example of this was our second possession of the 1^st quarter when we were down by only three points.  We get the ball on our 11 yard line and “boom, boom, boom”; we run Conner for 14 yards, Conner for 10 yards and James for 15 yards to get us to the 50 yard line.  We were kicking the crap out of the UVA DL then we get a False Start flag for -5 yards, then twp plays later pull an illegal formation penalty for -5 yards which puts us into a 3^rd and 17 yards position and thus forces us to punt.

That drive, with the the way it was going, could easily have been finished with at least a FG or possibly a TD and could have changed the complexion of that 1^st half.  But no, we shot ourselves in the foot twice and killed the drive.

The very next possession, still down by only three, we started at our 20 and marched down to the UVA 13. That was done mainly on Chad Voytik’s two best pass plays of the day with a 34 yard pass for a Bennett circus catch that rallied the team, and a 3^rd and 4 23 yard 1^st down pass to Weatherspoon.  All of a sudden we are poised to take the lead and…  we commit another False Start for -5, are back at the 18 yard line and have lost any momentum we had on the drive.  Instead of a TD we settle for a 36 yard FG to tie the game.

Now jump to the 3^rd quarter and we are down 24-10; we drive from our 33 yard line to a 3^rd and 1 at the UVA one yard line.  Another -5 yard False Start and we are back at the six, all momentum drained and we settle for another FG.  A TD there makes it 24-17 with 23+ minutes to play and a much easier score to deal with.

So you see that it isn’t only the lost yardage of the penalties that hurt but in last night’s case had we not committed those three penalties at the most inopportune times our whole 1^st half of play would have been different.  Had we not had that other 3rd quarter penalty ON THE UVA ONE YARD LINE!! then we are within striking distance of the win.

IMO this issue is what lost the game for us more than any poor defensive plays or the Pick-6.

2.  The Offensive play calling and personnel usage. I mentioned above that I believe we have strong talent in the offense, specifically in the Running Back corps, that is being grossly underutilized.  I get the reasoning behind riding the James Conner tiger to victory and the theory behind trying to beat the other team to death with him and a huge offensive line.  I really do.

But when recent history (Iowa and Akron) shows that when it isn’t necessarily working as planned then an adaptation has to be made by the coaches.  It is as if this staff got enamored with the great results we had with that line of attack in our first three winning games and can’t bring themselves to deviate from it when it is as plain as the nose on my face that it has to be done.

Conner is a beast and he is giving every single measure of effort he can possibly give out on the field of play but sometimes that just isn’t enough, especially after the opposing defenses figure out that our QB isn’t much of a passing threat.  Give Conner a break sometimes and run full series with Bennett and James out there as the primary backs.  Get Ibrahim in there for more carries and short passes, those are working well for him so far.  In essence, use the good talent we have on the team to best place our players in the position to win the game.

As we have seen in the 2^nd halves of the last few games Conner’s effectiveness has diminished as he racks up those many carries. There is something to be said about keeping him fresh for the 4^th quarter also.  We know Conner’s banging the hell out of the run defense but the truth is he’s getting the hell beat out of him also.

3.  The continuation of the Defense giving up “Big Plays” that should never happen. Even though I wrote above that I feel the defense played well over all, we again saw the killing lapses in defense that give our opponents an easy score that helps to mitigate the good efforts of our defense otherwise.

Last night there were two plays in particular that really hurt.  The first was an easy 30 yard toss and catch by UVA’s QB to their TE Canaan Severin when they were at the 50 yard line early in the game.  Severin was in the middle of three PITT defenders when the pass was lofted to him then he turned up field and Layfaette Pitts totally short armed the play and tried to bump the TE down with a shoulder.   Honestly, Pitts looked like a rookie out there on that play.

The second was a back breaking, totally embarrassing 48 yard run by UVA’s Kevin Parks (29 carries for 169 yards and 1 TD).  Watch it again if you can stomach it.  Our LBs took themselves completely out of the play then our DBs took poor angles to try to bring him down when he was sprinting to the goal line.

We have seen this happen in everyone of the last five games and in the last three these typs of lapses have basically lost the game for us.

 Ying & Yang

This is a special weekly section dedicated to the quarterback play of Chad Voytik.  Why Ying and Yang you ask?  It is because we are seeing a duality of play from him so far this season that is maddening and all too believable.  At certain points in the matches he’s making plays out there that make you think he’ll be an OK player for us, and then you look at his full body of work after the game is finished and you realize that there is as much, if not more, bad as there is good with him.

Last night the good Voytik showed up with two TDs passes that were thrown with velocity and accuracy for 17 yards to WR Garner and another one of six yards to the TE (!) Holtz.  Those were good and timely scores that helped us come from behind to striking distance to attempt to win the game late in the 4^th quarter.  He also had a nice 23 yard completion to Weatherspoon that was a well thrown pass.

Then you realize that it was his poor play in the 1^st half that led us to the need for a dramatic comeback.  I’m referring not only to his easily avoided Pick-6 interception in the 2^nd quarter to give UVA a lead that they never gave up, but also to his overall lack of consistent play.

As in his last couple games his UVA stats are telling us a story that we aren’t seeing out on the field.  He was 16 for 30 (53%) for 195 yards (6.5 ypa) and 2 TDs with 1 INT for a Total Quarterback Rating (QBR) of 25.5 (which is not good and I’ll explain more on that in a later article).

At first glance and without getting into the weeds that isn’t a real poor outing but taken as a whole, but with applying the in-game context he had a very Sunseri-like evening where his stats show a decent game but the results, due to his dicey decision making mostly, say another thing altogether.  Week six and I’m not seeing the steady improvement I thought I would out of him.  I said earlier that I thought Voytik wouldn’t get yanked unless he started doing things that made us lose ballgames instead of just not winning them, so I think that Pick-6 he threw needs to be a wakeup call for Chryst and Rudolph to start getting Trey Anderson some series in case a change has to be made.

I read comments where our fans were wondering if we ran any screens (yes, to Boyd early in the game) or had Voytik specifically rollout to pass (yes, on a few calls) or have short patterns for him to get easier completions on (yes again).  The staff did call plays to his strengths but he threw too hard and behind Boyd’s trailing shoulder on that ‘tunnel screen’ and was inaccurate on at least half of those other short pass calls.  I said it before and I’ll say it again – the staff isn’t handling the ball after it is snapped.  They are not the ones throwing passes to receivers who are short of the 1st down marker either.  However, Voytik did use the TEs more this game so that is a nice step in the right direction.

That’s it – three thumbs up and three thumbs down.  How did you see it?