The day is upon us. The day when it becomes plainly clear that PITT is a football school.
PITT’s long awaited Spring Practices begin today and this is the point in the off-season when we can start talking about actualities when it comes to the football team itself. We have been discussing the football program and the athletic department in depth since ex-Head Coach Paul Chryst left for his alma mater back in December but until now it has been speculations about the new coaching staff and the last recruiting class… both of which statuses we won’t be able to really gauge until the season starts in September.
But now it is the players’ turn to be in the main spotlight and time for us fans to start getting some serious questions answered about what we’ll see on the field this year. Whether or not individual units; offense, defense, special teams, etc. will do well or not isn’t going to be evident during these 15 practices including the scrimmages and the spring game. I say start because we won’t know anything for sure until the two deep is set in mid-August. That is what the fall camp is for.
What we’ll see transpire over the next four weeks are basically tryouts run by the staff for both returning personnel and the class of 2015 recruits. Last year it was pretty much a continuation of what we had in Chryst’s first two year with some new issues; how would our QB play turnout, who would replace Aaron Donald and would James Conner play both ways? I still can’t believe that that last issue is still being talked about. It is the stupidest idea ever and if this staff can’t see that, like the last staff eventually did, then we have a big problem.
All these standard springtime questions are magnified when you have a complete coaching staff change because of two things:
One is that the new staff has a different approach to football than the old one did. That happens even if there are theoretical similarities among the staffs and thus the new staff comes in with their own set of expectations.
