This is the first of a multiple part series on how the 2014 PITT football season unfolded over the last five months. This first article will address the actual games of the season themselves.
None of us fans were jumping up and down about our final won/loss record after PITT’s 2014 regular season ended last Saturday, even though we did win on an upbeat note. We finished the season 6-6 which replicates our records from 2011, 2012 & 2013. PITT is nothing if not consistent.
Right now we are waiting to see if the mysterious Bowl selection process will choose us to play in a post-season game. Chances are we will and that, if it happens, gives us fans a bit more football to look forward to and talk about. Also, and maybe most importantly, it could give us a shot at another 7-6 full season record.
However, right now, just after the regular season finishes, is a good time to cast our eyes and thoughts back to the pre-season, the month of fall training camp, and on through our regular season play to see if what we previously thought and hoped would happen, did happen… or not.
Let’s take a look at what transpired between August 2nd when it all really began to come together for this year’s season and November 29th when we ended the year with a convincing win at Miami. There are a million things to talk about but I’ll limit the topics to the season, the team and the team’s individual units, the staff and the football program over all. Let’s look at the season’s games first…
Here is a link back to an article I wrote on August 29th on the day before the opening game against Delaware. In it I link almost all of the local papers and blog’s predictions for the season, It is interesting and you can see that everyone was more optimistic for results that ultimately didn’t match up. Most had PITT at 8-4, some at 7-5, and a few had us at .500 ball. Which, of course we now are. I can’t remember anyone saying that we’d lose more than won.
The weekly game results were inconsistent, choppy and pretty disappointing for the most part. We started off fine with three straight well played and convincing wins against Delaware, a good 30-20 win over Boston College and then beating FIU. Two creampuffs there but I think that nice Boston College win made us all think things would go pretty well from there on. Our offense seemed to be clicking and our defense, albeit against poorer competition, was holding up.
Then we had two home losses, a close 24-20 game against Iowa and then the thud heard ‘round the North Side against Akron. Those were two thirds of three consecutive losses, the last being a 24-19 to a good (at that point) 4-2 Virginia team, played in Virginia, where we got behind early, battled back and then ended our chances for the win on a botched on-side kick. Personally, that UVA loss to make us 3-3 started to make me doubt that we were going to make good on the predictions of a winning season.
Then we had Akron and it was a bad loss. We are used to one ‘bad’ loss per year. We love tradition at PITT. So we moved on.
Our next match against the University of Virginia was a important game where we hoped to right the ship, but the 29-14 loss racked our confidence for the next four games. We pulled the next week’s game out against a decent Virginia Tech team and that was a nice five point win; if you’ll remember it was in large part due to Voytik’s rushes, but it didn’t seem like we played the way we should have over all, especially at home against a long-time rival.
We held them to almost nothing rushing and had a 14-6 halftime lead but we never really put the second half together enough to pull comfortably ahead. It felt like we play poorly, just scraping by, but a win was a win and it was needed at that point.
Then came the Georgia Tech fiasco and that was, for me, the absolute low point of the year, or any year that started in 20XX. I can handle a loss well, after all I’m a PITT fan and we have to do that to survive. However, most of our losses are well fought, normal football games where both PITT and the opposing team play well enough for one team to win at the end. That just wasn’t the case that evening; far from it.
Not to rip open any unhealed wounds but what transpired over our first five offensive series might have literally been one for the books. Five series and five lost fumbles; that’s bad enough but in that we had four lost fumbles in our first seven plays from scrimmage and allowed 28 unanswered and charitable points. It was so strange and unexpected that it became sort of funny after the 4th or 5th fumble depending on how drunk you were.
That game began another three game skid where we lost a heartbreaking OT match against Duke with a missed FG at the end of regulation and then a five point loss to North Carolina with a fumble to end our scoring chances as time ran out at the end of the game.
Those two games defined the season for us. The ‘one play away from victory’ loss against Duke at home and then going into Chapel Hill and leading going into the 4th quarter against NC only to see the lead slip away. Then the 4th quarter played out as a Special Teams nightmare with the NC player taking his 2nd punt return to the house when the score was 27-27. Both close games; both games where our offense provided and our defense did not and both losses which kept us from having a winning season.
What really stinks is that James Conner busted his ass for 483 yards and seven TDs in those two games and we couldn’t pull out a win. When that happened, for a ‘running team’ like PITT, I figured that we were in trouble and more on that later.
But wait!!
We then went onto a high(er) note and a had some redemption of sorts when the kids girded their loins and played two of the best games they had all year to avoid what could have been a very dismal season. The convincing 30-7 win at home against the Orangemen of Syracuse was a game where Voytik played smoothly our back-up running back, true FR Chris James, showed the nation what he was made of with a 19 carry, 122 yard day while substituting for an injured James Conner. This game was also the first one against an ACC opponent where the PITT defense really pulled together and shut down the opponent.
In that game our defense held SYR to 245 total yards with only 106 rushing; 12 1st downs (we had 27) and perhaps most importantly our defense gave PITT a 17 minute advantage in time of possession at 38 min-21 min. That is almost unheard of and was good defensive football.
We closed out the season in fine form doing what not too many PITT fans thought we could do before the season started and certainly after we started sucking, and that was to travel down south and beat “The U” handily. If we had polled our fans in August and asked if we’d go into Miami and manhandle the Hurricanes for a very convincing 35-23 win I don’t think the survey would have said “Yes!”
Miami is not the superior team of the 1980s that we all have loved to hate but they do have talent and superior speed which surprisingly enough we negated due to better play than our Defensive Ends and Linebackers had shown all year. Good showing all around with Conner, banger up and limited, breaking Dorsett’s TD records. It was another game in which our lesser known running backs, Bennett, James and Ibrahim, filled the void and did very well.
This season we had games of the sort where you look back and feel that we could have had two or three more wins with a break or two, or a better coaching decision or two sometimes. The Iowa game felt like that; certainly the OT loss to Duke could have gone our way with a late game field position play call on the FG attempt, and of our six losses only one game, against Georgia Tech, was by more than five points. We were there in each game but not quite strong enough.
As the season progressed, coming off the NC loss in week 10 it felt like things just weren’t going to get better for 2014 and some fans began to wonder if this was the ‘beginning of the end’ for Paul Chryst’s tenure at PITT. In all honesty, it may well have been a step toward that.
To end the season with the worst W-L record PITT had had since Majors II’s 4-7 season 18 years ago would have created very real doubt in all our minds whether or not we were going to get any solid winning seasons with this Chryst and his current staff.
But with all this, the bottom line is that our record shows us at 6-6. We can parse that fact any way we want, and we guys will over and over again for months because that is what we do. What that record signifies is that no matter how we personally feel we have either progressed or slipped backward the facts remain the same. We are what we have been and that is an average football team.
A bright spot is that we did turn the lost season around and we did it in a way that allows us PITT fans to look at the those last two wins of the year and think that the future may well be brighter for 2015. It feels better than three weeks ago and a win in a bowl game would get us another record to match last year’s 7-6 mark and would make us all feel we are a bit better than before going into the long offseason. When we start all this over again.
Next: The offense and defense we thought we’d see vs. what we really had.
less costly for Pitt in the long run??
That’s a rhetorical question for you, as I
know that you know the answer as well as I.
I do have to give him credit for being to hang into this team late season. This could just as easily remained a $hithole 4-8 season with two final loses rather than the Dunkirk rescue operation wins over Syracuse & Miami provided the Panthers.
At some point you gotta draw a line in the sand and challenge your squad to succeed. I haven’t seen HCPC set any such goals while HC at Pitt, ever! Next year, it’s all on him and as for me as one loyal Pitt fan, will be holding his feet to the fire expecting much more in the win column than what he has given us so far. Time to pull up his Big Boy pants and show us come 2015. Sure hope he has the guys to shed his bad DC hire to aid in that endeavor.
I’m also proud of the Pitt academic successes and believe we can have both together.
No doubt you have to have great football players to have a great football team. Right now all of our great football players are on one side of the ball. Erie I don’t think it is a good thing that we have to hope there are some gems in our lesser known underclassmen, but that is where we stand.
I have been calling for better recruiting on the D side for over two years. We have no quarrel about SP and House, they need to go.
The question on recruiting is has Chryst overachieved on offense as much as he appears to have underachieved on defense?
It has never been that easy to recruit at Pitt, Wanny did pretty well with D-linemen, some were converted to the O and running backs. Other than that not that great. Chryst has done well throughout the O with the exception of QB where he lost his two best prospects.
We are all frustrated by the current state of our football program, it is just a matter of how much.
One thing that is amazing is how we always seem to have a few of the very best in the game, just never enough to win 9 or 10 games.
I think this year we ought to have a Tony Siragusa Day or maybe a Pitt Defensive Tackle Day and Bring in all the old big guys.
Here is another one for you (hired one year after HCPC) – Tuberville in his 2nd year at Cincy is 9-3.
I believe HCPC can win and really should have won 8 to 10 games this year if he had a decent DC. He made a BAD decision when he hired DC House. HCPC needs to correct that mistake NOW.
C’mon man!
Interesting fact, there are only 2 true seniors plus Jamaal Poteat and 2 true juniors on the team.
This says a lot about the cupboard being bare. If there are only 4 that never took a redshirt, says that not many stars were recruited in that time period.
Pitt’s 2012 schedule (Paulie’s 1st year) and Pitt’s schedule this year (Delaware, FIU, Akron, Syracuse, UVA, the 2nd worst Miami team in 35 years, a 6-6 VT team and a Duke team loaded with 1-2 star nobody recruits and a 6-6 UNC team) were among if not the weakest schedules Pitt has EVER played.
2012 had such juggernauts as Youngstown State, Gardner Webb (not to be confused with Quincy Gardiner), Syracuse, Temple, Buffalo, a horrid Uconn team and an equally horrid 3-9 USF team.
See what a degree at Pit gets you!
This year, his 2nd, Auburn is 8-4 after one of the top five toughest schedules in D1.
I picked up the last two because they were on TV today…
but CBS’s coverage of college football has become quite quite stale.
From the boring announcers of Vern Lundquist and Gary Danielson to even the music leading out of the game into the many many commercials.
Rhoad’s Cyclones finished 0-9 and 2-10. ouch
You wonder, alum or not, if he’ll get run out of town.
There are two possibilities with that, 1. That is what HCPC does best as suggested here all the time. 2. The other possibility is HCPC knew he had to concentrate on one side or the other because Pitt’s recruiting fortunes only yield so much “top” talent and if he diluted it to both sides of the ball he has a mediocre O and a mediocre D.
Maybe he just started with the O first and the strategy is to concentrate on the D next while the O pulls its own weight. We don’t know his plan. The potential down side to a one side at a time plan is the O could go away to the NFL and graduation while he tries to come up with a D to match what he has built on the other side of the ball and we are still left with mediocre.
The reason Majors was able to pull off both sides at once was his first class had a bazillion recruits so even a modest yield from that number of recruits will work.
The question then is how long do you give the man to bear the kind of fruit we all want?
Using Gus Malzahn in a comparative is laughable. Gus Malzahn and most other top flight coaches would NEVER work for Steve Pederson. It was bad when Wanny left, it got worse when wifebeater was here briefly, but his bad reputation got worse when the first year head coach bolted in the middle of the night to get away from him. Pederson is a Non-starter for talented, experienced head coaches….unless of course it is someone making a jump to get into a power 5 conference to cut their teeth. Auburn had 2 – 5stars and 11 – 4stars in 2011 and 2 -5*’s and 9-4*’s in 2012. His cupboard wasn’t bare. I could have done more research, but the premise on its face was severely flawed.
Still looks good but in 2013 & 2014 their hardest non-com game was against Rice in both years.
They did kick the gamecocks ass this year.
What other incidents were there?
What other incidents were there?
Comment by wbb 12.06.14 @ 7:55 pm”
Mostly rumors, Shell and Howard and several more that have been suspended by Chryst or been shown the door since he got there, rumor #1 about them has been the weed…
When Wanny was here, again, just rumors I think. The team was out of control in general and it’s conventional wisdom to think a drug problem was part of that I guess.
It’s kinda predictable.
Oregon vs Ohio Fake in the Rose Bowl (like it’s always been since the 60’s, PAC whatever vs. BigJoke.
Ala. vs. FSU in the Sugar Bowl is a natural as well.
Feel bad for the Horned Frogs.
No…..I think that was the exception.
Wanny represented a threat to Cornhole, so that was all bent out of shape.
So true. One of those matchups is not like the other and the problem is it’s gonna need more horned frogs.
Who the hell wants to see a bunch of ducks murder defenseless tree seeds (other than other ducks) when horned frogs are right there.
So accordingly the local media, full of Pedo’s jumped all over DW at every opportunity.
And a lot of Pitt fools fell for it and joined in.
You could be right I don’t know enough of the real stories to have been that definitive. But it was an embarrassing time and continued in Chryst’s first year when he was still doing the rough early work of making the team his. Maybe I’m wrong but the arrests seem to have gone away. The number/frequency of players getting arrested can also go up and down independent of anything the coach does or doesn’t do, it isn’t all dependent on the HC.
I do think it’s safe to say that too many kids were getting in trouble several of Wanny’s years. And that it has gotten better.
He wasn’t out of Pitt’s league a few years ago – maybe now he is.
C’mon man!
The other major premise was that he would want to work for Steve Pederson, which is a stretch. It’s not just about affordability. Pitt isn’t a great football head coaching destination and it is compounded in a negative way by Pederson.
As far as drug culture, let’s go with weed and heroin as the most cited examples. Look, you don’t get booted if you are clean. I wonder what happened to Eric Williams and Drew Carswell. Williams was going to be a star in my opinion.
Per ESPN’s Brett McMurphy, that would be the Michigan Wolverines. McMurphy was on a radio show recently and dropped this tidbit:
“A name that came out of nowhere, I talked to somebody today that’s plugged in, said don’t be surprised if Paul Chryst gains some traction, which surprised me,” he said. “That’s kind of surprising since he’s been about a .500 coach at Pitt, but he had great success (as the offensive coordinator) at Wisconsin. His thinking was, if you can’t get your two marquee guys, then you start looking to see what’s the best fit for that program. Chryst is widely-respected, really well-liked, almost similar to how (Mike) Riley is.
Harbaugh has child custody issues and unless he ponies up an additional million per year to the ex, he ain’t going to Michigan. Chryst isn’t a tough sell to Michigan. He knows the big10 and was successful as a coordinator there. He works for an idiot. He has no financial or operational support from the Chancellor; recruiting is easier at Michigan because you can “just offer”. That works at Michigan. He would get 4 and 5 stars just because he is there. No home field advantage at Pitt and yes it is probably more of a disadvantage playing in a non campus facility. At michigan they get 100k for mediocrity. If he joins toastmasters, we have a problem!
@ PITT- cocks fan – thanks for the additional research. Here are my findings:
Of the 19 teams who hired a HC in 2012, only (7) had losing records in at least 2 of 3 seasons. 27% on the losing side.
Some to note :
Akron – need I say more – I will – 3 straight losing seasons.
Tulane – fired coach last week.
Illinois – we may get their 6-6 record for a bowl match-up.
So that leaves 12 winners in 2 of the last 3 seasons or 63%.
Some to note:
NC – Fedora has his problems to deal with – but he beat us two years in a row.
Rutgers – Flood is 9-4 in his 1st B10 season this year.
Fresno St. – down year in 2014, but 11-2 last year and 9-4 1st year.
I know Pitt can do better because 63% did. Failing grades for HCPC and AD Pederson. They need to fix this program with wins or move on – failing grades don’t cut it in business nor school. Someone other than us Blatherites need to hold these guys accountable.
I like HCPC and want him to succeed. The evidence of his work and the comparison to like hires tells me he may not. If Michagin wants him, I’ll probably root for him to succeed there as well – provided we get someone like Pelini. Bo would win at Pitt – bring on those 9 win seasons. Next year’s schedule could produce a special season with the right coaching staff.
HTP!
@ chuff – Eric Williams and Carswell transferred to IUP (D2) and we’re starting for their FB team last year. Not sure how that turned out, but I’m hoping they both got their degree and are gainfully employed.
Wait, isn’t this the same team that Va Tech man handled in their own house just 3 months ago? And Pitt can’t seem to figure out how to bring home a win over a meddling MAC team then decides to beat the snot out of that same Va Tech team thereafter.
College football, you got to love it. That’s why they play the games!
Dr. Tom – nice connection with Ohio St., VaTech and Pitt. I think this is a weak year for the BIG Joke as Emel calls it – look at some of the highlights for Gordon compared to Conner – Gordon ran for 400+ yards in 3 qtrs mostly untouched. And there are three RB’s from the BIG Joke conference as the (3) finalists for the Maxwell (I believe I have that right). Conner was left out –
Two points -1. I’m not sure the OSU jumps up to the top 4 based on their weak conference. TCU & FSU showed enough to stay in the top 4. Easy for the selection committee to not make any changes – in the future this championship will grow to 6 or 8 teams.
2. Conner has been left off the national awards listings because of Pitt’s poor showing this year, not because he isn’t worthy. Oh, if we could only have a “do over” of this season.
There is no doubt that PC inherited a program in need of repair, and has done a good job of repairing it, if nothing else, just by staying here for 3 years. And if you peruse all the posts above, you will see only a few incidents where someone is calling for his removal … the majority is just hoping for him to fix an obvious problem.
Of course, this changes next year if there is no overall improvement. For those who want to compare PC to DW, note that in DW’s 4th year, Pitt went from 5 to 9 wins, and maybe just as important, an increase in home attendance.
All most of us here are advocating is to merely fix an obvious problem.
UM has the resources: history, fanbase and $$$, and would bring Stoops back closer to his Ohio roots. Just a thought!
Conner will be on the Heisman watch preseason next fall. He’ll make a run for it too since I only see our running game getting stronger next year even with the loss of T.J. and Matt on the OL. It’s all going to rest on the defense on whether this team will have the cojones to put a winning season together for Conner to assist him in that Heisman push. Nothing less than 9-3 will cut it probably so it will be a reach for this team to produce for Conner me thinks.
As for me, I would like (1) OSU excluded because I hate them and their fans and (2) Baylor excluded because I don’t want the games to end at 1 a.m. Eater time …which I as good criteria as anything the committee comes up with IMO.
Conner is a definite Heisman candidate next year, but sadly may not win it if the team doesn’t win more than 8 or 9 games.
Comment by Iron Duke 12.05.14 @ 4:30 pm”
I’m sure that not one of those programs actually told him that and its more likely that there are still hard feelings about the break-up of the BE. If Syracuse is not having the same problem, I’d be more inclined to believe they simply don’t want to deal with ADSP versus having a fear of playing at the Pete.
I assume you mean Pederson and not Penn State, as I I can think of nothing about Wanny that threatened PSU..(?)
Note that B10 was and is a very top heavy conference through its entire existence, where the bottom half rarely poses any threat to the good teams (thus embellishing the W/L records of the top half). Even when Syracuse was a bottom feeder in the BE, they would continually beat or barely lose to B10 teams that made a bowl game.
Good resource for sports arrests, charges & citations.
Not much use if you are checking up on Wanny’s tenure.
Remember – site does not list school suspensions – Durand Johnson but does list traffic (speeding) citations.
If you go to sports you can see all teams – college & pro.
So. Car list includes G.A.Mangus the gamecocks QB coach cited for peeing outside a Greenville, SC night spot.
“From a couple of conversations I’ve had today, sounds like Detroit or St. Petersburg for #Pitt, but nothing final yet.”
From a few others, I’ve read that if they go to Detroit, they’ll likely play Maryland. If they go to St. Pete’s, it’ll likely be UCF.
I’m not sure why Pitt-PSU wouldn’t happen if they went to Detroit, but I’ll see what I can dig up.
Nothing above is official, by the way. Just speculation and educated guesses.
Lots of speculation now. Apparently, it’ll be officially announced on the ACC’s bowl selection show at 5:30pm.
The committee got duped by a real bad big10. Wisconsin at 2 losses and a third by 59 should have told the story. Personally, my belief is that the big12 was a much better conference than the big10 and should have received a bid. Oh, the OSU talking heads spewed how OSU played 8 or 9 bowl eligible teams, but noone mentioned that over half of college programs are bowl eligible. Not a big deal, but they sure made it sound that way!
@Erie – would be interested in the Michigan talk. I don’t think he goes but it is interesting that he obviously is being talked about, perhaps as a plan “C”, but still being mentioned I suppose.
