I wanted to let the dust from the recent PITT Football program shakeup settle a bit before I wrote down my thoughts about what transpired.  Since the end of the Miami game I checked out of football and went travelling around for a few weeks so I didn’t get back to looking at anything sports related until last week when I saw that Chryst would (certainly) be the new Wisconsin Head Coach.

Chas has kept up a fantastic running commentary of the breaking news and Justin has done some very interesting opinion pieces so now I’ll send in my two cents.

First off I believe a good thing happened when Chancellor Patrick Gallagher fired Steve Pederson from the Athletic Director position. I’ve said many times on here that it wouldn’t bother me one bit if ‘SP was gone tomorrow’ meaning that I’d probably have a neutral feeling about it.  That isn’t the case now though, it’s a positive feeling and that is due to the circumstances and timing of the events.

I especially like the fact of how the dismissal was timed as it sent a strong message that Gallagher himself would be more involved in the program than his predecessor, Mark Nordenberg, was.

In all honestly though, I didn’t expect those things to happen so soon. I had figured that PITT wouldn’t want to spend the money to buyout Pederson’s remaining four years on his five year contract.  I also was misinformed and really just plain wrong about the level of interest the new Chancellor would have in the football program so soon into his tenure at PITT.

So, In spite of my being surprised and wrong I’m pretty damn happy with the way things went down.

As to the departure of Paul Chryst; certainly no one can honestly say they are surprised that Chryst took the Head Coaching job at the university where he attended, played QB and then worked as a staff coach and Offensive Coordinator. Add on top of that the his whole family was the ultimate “Wisconsin football” family with his dad being a local High School coaching legend and it truly is a no-brainer as to why Chryst left.

There are two issues I think about with the Chryst move and the first is that I truly love what he did for the football program in his three years at PITT.  I’m not sure most fans really understand just how much turmoil there was from the end of 2010 until after Chryst was hired.  I don’t mean the actual games played but the state of the program itself, the attitudes of the payers who were currently on the roster, the negative reputation PITT had after the 2010 season and Todd Graham skipping town.

So in that sense I am very grateful that Paul Chryst was hired and how dedicated he was to making sure PITT was doing things the right way both for the university and maybe more importantly for the student-athletes he was charged to lead.

This quote from the Trib’s Rob Rossi sums up this sentiment very succinctly with the following quote.

“ESPN analyst and former Pitt quarterback John Congemi attended many Panthers games during the past three years. He noticed something special.

“The way Paul ran the program really solidified the beliefs of the University of Pittsburgh,” he said.  That’s exactly what his bosses wanted, maybe more than victory on Saturdays.

How true that is.  The PITT administration has always been just as, if not more, concerned about the external issues surrounding the football program separate from the actual playing of the games themselves.  We’ve discussed that many times on The Blather and it will be interesting to see if the recent three year string of good behavior on the player’s part will hold true in the near future.

That said, I do not find Chryst’s actual football expertise as a college Head Coach as impressive and I’ll echo what many have already stated about his game planning, his situational conservatism and his just plain poor decision making during the games.  There was a reason we were 19-19 team under him and that was because he was an average X&Os Head Coach for us.

We understand that he took the long term view as soon as he was signed on with PITT and was building a more solid foundation for the team.  I believed him when he said that he was happy at PITT and truth be told he wasn’t out there marketing himself for a better, higher profile job.  The Wisconsin gig pretty much dropped into his lap by the cause and effect circumstances of other HCs moving around.

The attrition rate under him in his first two years was evidence that he wanted to redo the roster with his players and kids who met other positive characteristic standards. He was doing well at that and given his solid leadership of the players he was, I think, close to getting the personnel and the schemes in play to be a better than .500 team.

But at this point who really knows what might have happened in 2015.  Had Chryst stayed Matt House would probably still be the Defensive Coordinator and that alone is worrisome given the results of his past two years in that position and the PPG we have given up (below).

The offense sure showed its mettle this season though as it was one of the most productive we have had in some time, even with a new starting QB and even if Chryst did completely forget that we had Tight Ends on the roster.

Here is a quick look at how PITT’s offenses have fared over the last six years:

(BTW this is a great site for historical PITT info)

Wow, almost 700 more rushing  yards this season than any other year!  So you can see by this comparison that Paul Chryst’s offense was pretty much head and shoulders above five of the last six years, the exception being our 2009 year when we finished 10-3. That season’s offense was only .4 PPG better than what we just put out on the field.

However, our running game in this year had a better yards per carry average then 2009’s .  That makes sense as Chryst’s offensive approach has always been run first then pass if you have to except, surprisingly, in 2012 when he had Sunseri at QB and Graham and Shell at RB behind him.

But all of that offensive build up was primarily centered on the Offensive Line.   Chryst stated publicly that he was going to recruit and construct a solid OL and after two years he did.  In addition to spearheading a great run game, our OL limited the opposition to 1.6 sacks per game (38^th nationally) which is much better than the previous years.  Granted a mobile QB really helps in that area but we put a very good OL out on the field this season.

What makes the offense he has had so impressive is that none of the QBs who played for Chryst at PITT were recruited by him or many of the RBs since 2012 save James Conner and Chris James this last season.

That was then, what about now?

Well, you’d have to think that the new HC is going to be pretty happy with the offense the way it stands.  RB James Conner and WR Tyler Boyd are superstars and QB Chad Voytik progressed well enough in the second half of the season to make us feel like he’ll build upon that in the future.  Conner was a TD machine with 24, besting Tony Dorsett in that production, but Voytik also chipped in 18 TDs of his own (15 passing and three with his legs) so that bodes well for 2015.

Conner, Boyd and Voytik return; the OL returns pretty much intact and we have talent and depth behind the starters there.  Hell, with RBs Chris James and Qadree Ollison and WR Adonis Jennings we have three possible stars in the offensive wings.   That is about the best present a new HC could ask for.  With the exception of if the Admin wants to hire a new HC who will bring in a Spread Offense which our OL is NOT going to be able to handle right away as we saw in 2011.  I very much doubt that is the type of HC we finally sign on.

Defensively it is a different story for the new guy.  We are losing some talented seniors in Linebackers Anthony Gonzalez and Todd Thomas who were our leading tacklers with 74 and 71 respectively.  Add Safety Ray Vinopal to the nearly departed (61 tackles) and we see a big part of our defense leaving us after the bowl game.

I don’t get too wrapped up in recruiting much, especially because I firmly believe that it takes two or three years to accurately gauge a recruiting class but let’s just assume that we’ll take a pretty big hit on the 2015 recruiting class.  We fans are hoping the Chad Voytik will step up and replicate his good work in keeping most of the 2011 class on board and hopefully some of the other players will follow suit.

If we keep some of the higher ranked recruits such as DB Jordan Whitehead and LB Malik Henderson then that’s good but I expect that we’ll take a step back in the recruiting game because of the coaching shake up.  But let’s look at this honestly as our current recruiting class isn’t so talented that we can’t replace what we might end up losing because of the coaching changes.

You know what though?  We have such a young roster that I think we won’t feel the negative effects of attrition as some of our ‘older’ teams in the past did.  Our starting lineups this year were chockfull of freshman and sophomores so in that sense Paul Chryst left a ‘full cupboard” for his successor.  Looking at the coming 2015 season it seems that many of the starting positions are pretty locked up right now, unless the new HC sees things much differently than PITT fans do.

Now, as to the ongoing Head Coach search; Chas and Justin are way more tuned in than I am so I defer to them for staying abreast of the rapidly changing info of who is available and who we may hire.

It seems like the players and many PITT fans would like to keep Joe Rudolph at PITT and have him fleet up from OC and I would be OK with that.  My gut however tells me that he’ll take off right after the Bowl game to join Chryst at Wisconsin… but I’ve been wrong before.  A Rudolph hire would not be the earth shaking hire PITT seems to want to make but it still could be the best one for the long haul.