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May 2, 2015

Now that we are starting the “long desert march”, that dry spell we go through every summer until we get to the Fall Camp in the beginning of August, there are a few things on my desk I want to share with you all.

First addressing the question of QB Nathan Peterman’s role in transferring from Tennessee to PITT and why he’s doing it.  Everyone assumes it is just to provide a back up to Chad Voytik because somehow Voytik has a ‘lock’ on the starter’s job.

That isn’t true. There is no doubt that Narduzzi and OC Jim Chaney are bringing Peterman in to compete for the starting job right off the bat.  Chris Peak has written a very good piece with strong quotes about this subject in his April 23rd article.  That article is behind Rivals’ pay wall but here is a taste of what Narduzzi said…

“He’s going to come in here to compete,” Narduzzi said Wednesday. “Chad knows that. Chad’s embraced that, and Chad’s got to look at it as, ‘Hey, this guy is going to make me better.’ I think it’s always good when you can look in that rearview mirror and see that someone’s there on you. I don’t know that Chad had that throughout the spring, to be honest with you.

“So he’ll have that in fall camp, and they’ll learn together, and it will make us a better football team.”

Reading between the lines I think Narduzzi may well have meant that Voytik didn’t have that competition last season either and he wants to make that happen. I get the feeling,  just a feeling only, that Narduzzi isn’t 100% sold on Voytik’s skills at QB.

There is more substance on this issue in Peak’s article and I don’t want to impinge on his hard work but read it and you’ll see this isn’t some unknown kid coming to PITT just to be on the roster.

A four-star member of UT’s 2012 recruiting class, Peterman was rated as the No. 8 pro-style quarterback in the country coming out of high school in Florida.  After taking a redshirt as a true freshman, Peterman started one game in 2013, breaking his hand in the loss to Florida, and one game in 2014.

Peterman committed very early to UT after a sterling senior year of high school. Cheney lobbied hard for Peterman to come onto the team especially because Peterman has two years left of eligibility.  Remember that Chaney was with Peterman for a full season as opposed to three weeks so far with Voytik.

This mirrors almost exactly what I was told in response to some questions I asked when I was on the sideline during the spring game however I wanted to let some time pass before I quoted Peak’s stuff directly.

So, don’t be too shocked if we see both a competition and a controversy when we get to the meat of the fall camp. I expect we’ll know a lot more around August 22nd or so.  Here are the HS stats just as a comparison at a snapshot time.

QB

Nat’l Rank Games Comp Attempts Comp% Yards YPG YPC QB Rate
Voytik 4 11 128 223 57% 1593 209 14.7 86.1
Peterman 8 14 199 315 63% 2932 136 13.4

117.3

Those numbers are a bit misleading as Voytik has a full college season to show what he’s done, for instance his completion rate at PITT is a good 61.3 so take the table above for what it is, an historical look at the two kids.  Should make for some fun conversations…

Second is the continued insistence that somehow there is a windowless office on campus where the “non-existent super-secret plans” for an on campus stadium are being worked on.  Can we now please forget this idea for the next 20+ years?  The new Chancellor said it wasn’t going to happen at his initial press conference  and then yesterday at Barnes press conference our Interim AD Dr. Juhl re-iterated the point by saying this, and right before he introduced Barnes BTW…

Juhl said part of Pitt’s pitch toward Barnes was the opportunity to make a difference.  We don’t have to raise $300 million for a stadium,” Juhl said, “but we have more than enough things that we can work on to fix to bring us up to where we want to be.”  (emphasis mine)

Guys, PITT can’t make it any more clear that they are not going to pursue an on-campus stadium either now or anytime in the near and not so near future, so can we just drop already?  It is one thing to talk about in general terms but I keep hearing and reading from otherwise sane fans that  “the plans are in the works…: They are not in the works and won’t be.

Lastly, that “front porch” quote we got from both Gallagher and Barnes is a rather cute, albeit misleading, one.  Here it is in the entirety:

“Athletics truly is a front porch,” Barnes said after being introduced as athletic director on Friday. “It is not the most important room in the house but it is the most visible and what comes with that is opportunity and responsibility.”.

Every single PITT fan that has heard and read that quote is in love with the ‘welcoming’ image and the thought that athletics is the gateway to a school’s positive reputation.  Great! How wonderful!

Too bad it only rings true in a perfect world. I am here to tell you and remind to you also, that you can’t take that front porch phrase and apply it only when things are going into a positive direction for PITT athletics and therefore for the University itself.

We spent a full year on here railing at the world and our readers that all the crap that went on inside the football program from the end of the 2009 season until DW walked off the campus in January of 2011 was highly embarrassing to the university not only locally but on a national scale and negatively impacted the school and the athletic dept’s reputation.

Back then we shared with you that when the football program had an unprecedented string of highly visible and violent incidents, and then hard on the heels of that we had the Sports Illustrated “Top 25 Arrests” issue being released it was airing PITT’s dirty laundry across the sports world.

So just understand that all that gut wrenching crap we had to watch unfold back marched right up those same front steps, onto the university’s front porch and right into the school’s administration forcing them to make changes.

Over and over I heard fans either minimize what was happening or saying that it didn’t affect the school’s reputation at all.  That wasn’t true. I guess the fact that the best we could to in hiring HCs after all that bad publicity and the subsequent firing of Wannstedt was Mike Haywood and Todd Graham was just a coincidence. Do we really believe that the pool of willing and higher qualified candidates didn’t shrink rapidly when their phones rang and it said “Steve Pederson, PITT” on the screen.

Do any of us honestly think we’d have gotten an AD as qualified as Scott Barnes five years ago had Pederson been fired along with DW back in late 2010?  Hell no! Pitt was anathema at that time.

Barnes is inheriting an Athletics department that now does things the right way and is getting a football program that just went through a vigorous and successful top-to-bottom revision with Chryst as the HC.

Others may think fund raising must be Barnes first priority and that make sense, but for right now there seems to be enough money in the pot to go around.  So I’ll disagree and shelve that thought and say that keeping the progress made in the department moving in a forward and upward ethical direction is Job One for him.  If he sets a strict and positive tone right off the bat then his sports coaches won’t have a problem feeling the same way and doing the same thing.

So let’s keep this in mind even as we are celebrating this new AD hire. We can believe that our front porch will be squeaky clean with Scott Barnes as the AD but remember that just as quickly PITT’s front porch can be dirtied as we saw not all that long ago.

 

NOTE: In response to comments here is the 2014 ACC QB rankings

PLAYER team Comp Att Pct YDS YPA TD INT Sack RAT
1 Kaaya MIA 221 378 58.5 3198 8.5 26 12 20 145.9
2 Winston FSU 305 467 65.3 3907 8.4 25 18 17 145.5
3 Voytik PITT 176 287 61.3 2233 7.8 16 7 20 140.2
4 Brissett NCST 221 370 59.7 2606 7.0 23 5 29 136.7
5 Gardner, LOU 127 221 57.5 1669 7.6 12 3 13 136.1
6 Williams UNC 270 428 63.1 3068 7.2 21 9 26 135.3
7 Murphy, BC 131 230 57.0 1623 7.1 13 10 21 126.2
8 Stoudt, CLEM 191 302 63.2 1892 6.3 9 10 17 119.1
9 Brewer, VT 262 441 59.4 2692 6.1 18 15 32 117.4
10 Boone, DUKE 255 453 56.3 2700 6.0 19 8 13 116.7
11 Lambert, UVA 154 261 59.0 1632 6.3 10 11 11 115.7
12 Wolford, WAKE 214 367 58.3 2037 5.6 12 14 45 108.1

 





I’m a fan of that Tennessee hick. Voytik that is.

Comment by TX Panther 05.02.15 @ 9:56 pm

Upitt, you crack me up, out in left field on the Derby results and you don’t even miss a beat suggesting a double down on Paquio. NOT! Now you’re going to get JoeKnew divorced cause with that bet Joe didn’t Know! LOL, so glad that you’re not my financial advisor.

@ wbb, I sure hope that you boxed that trifecta bet on Upitt because I’m pretty sure that the photo finish ended up official as: Wrong 1st, Obnoxious 2nd, & Pompous 3rd, with Egotistical closing at the finish for 4th.

I love this blog!????????????

Comment by Dr. Tom 05.03.15 @ 3:29 am

Every time I hear the name Peterman, I can only think of Elaine’s old boss on Seinfeld. I’m hanging with Chad until further notice. QB election results finalized September 5th.

Comment by Dr. Tom 05.03.15 @ 3:37 am

Doc – I have balls to make my calls. You say nothing except we will win 9 games and you love root canals and shitty wine. Do we need tonhave the Dentists are guys that couldnt make it through Med School again?

Comment by Upittbaseball 05.03.15 @ 4:08 am

Why you have to go and hurt my feelings Upitt? You know all us wantabe “real doctors” dentists are sensitive about those med school wise cracks. Now I’m going to have to drink an extra glass of Ripple to feel better about myself tonight. BTW, I picked Mayweather.

Comment by Dr. Tom 05.03.15 @ 7:21 am

You mean the guy who ran around all fight and just hugged his opponent? You are far superior to me. Please teach me your ways. Haha.

Comment by Upittbaseball 05.03.15 @ 8:59 am

Yeah, exactly that guy! Haha

Comment by Dr. Tom 05.03.15 @ 12:02 pm

FFS Reed, re-read and adequately edit your posts before offering the to us. WTF? What you print means a lot to the Pitt World of things. So act educated in the very least.
Where the fck is Chas?

Comment by Neil 05.03.15 @ 1:17 pm

“Offering them to us”

Comment by Neil 05.03.15 @ 1:19 pm

And “authoring.”

Comment by Neil 05.03.15 @ 1:20 pm

Reed: you are a first rate class act. So just live up to it. Do not pile on here. Stupidity.

Comment by Neil 05.03.15 @ 1:26 pm

Last. I will add that Chad is a winner. Period.

Comment by Neil 05.03.15 @ 1:28 pm

This Peterman nonsense is getting old. Barring an injury, Voytik will be and deserves to be the starting QB. But I did hear that Peterman set records for his Pee Wee football team back in the day. So he’s got that going for him…..which is nice.

Comment by Kenny Powers 05.03.15 @ 2:20 pm

I’m taking a poll on how many espressos Neil had for brunch today. I say five.

Comment by Dr. Tom 05.03.15 @ 2:23 pm

Jeeezus — did I miss the photo where Emel was helping Voytik hoist the Heisman last year?! Some of us are apparently impressed by stats alone and some others of us trust our lying eyes and don’t see all THAT much talent in our QB. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little competition is I think all some of us are sayin’.

Calm the damn down already with the fusillade of frantic postings…everyone here is fully entitled to their opinion and to not be brow-beaten by spastic fan boys. And also, quit with calling people “A-holes”…grow the damn up folks.

Comment by Matt N. 05.03.15 @ 4:20 pm

Tino’s stats were the equal of many guys who ended up getting drafted…how come he’s not a starter in the NFL? Because he was pretty lame and anyone who played football recognized it, not accountants filling out their football spreadsheets on Sunday morning.

Comment by Matt N. 05.03.15 @ 4:26 pm

lol Matt

Yea you must have missed that. Helped with Boyd getting the Belietnikoff and Conner the Doak Walker as well.

I have no problem with competition. America needs more of it, as a whole, especially with the A-Holes running the Gov’t.

Whoops did I say a-hole. So sorry.

Comment by Emel 05.03.15 @ 4:34 pm

Funny as shit though, that nobody…I mean NOBODY was brought in to compete against the aforementioned Tiny.

Funny how that works eh !

Comment by Emel 05.03.15 @ 4:36 pm

As I posted earlier, barring an injury, almost zero chance of Peterman starts a game for Pitt. He’ll be third string but will jump to the front of the pack if Voytik goes down permanently. In game relief will go to Bertke for the almighty experience.

PN is letting Chaney run the offense and everything I’ve read from Chaney points to a very good beginning to the QB/Coach relationship.

The spring game was a hodgepodge of talent spread between two teams with no practice time between the groups. You can’t take anything from that game on either side of the ball.

Emel – you’re on point. Voytik started off rough but improved throughout the season and by the end looked like a D1 QB. People seem to forget he was the 4th ranked Spread QB in his recruiting class and now he’s back with a coach who has a spread background and will play to his strengths. Expect a much better QB this year.

Comment by Tossing Thabeets 05.03.15 @ 9:04 pm

How come our transfers don’t show up in our recruiting rankings? See rivals 2016 team rankings. HTP!

Comment by OPFM 05.03.15 @ 9:25 pm

The Peterman thing is really very simple. We don’t know whether Chaney & Narduzzi are comfortable with Voytik as starter. But, really, what difference does it matter? Regardless of their comfort level with Chad, they both assessed the situation and quickly realized not having a 2nd veteran QB is a very risky proposition going into a season. They may love Bertke’s potential, but he has no game experience.

So, they knew they needed an upperclassman transfer, and Peterman made perfect sense, given the familiarity and comfort shared between him and Chaney. Once they decided to bring Peterman to Pitt, what sense would it make to announce that he would not be competing for a starting job? This isn’t the NFL, where starting QBs need to be offered constant reassurances for fear they’ll throw a hissy fit. In college, unless you are an All Anerican QB, you are pretty much always on notice that you need to continue to prove yourself to retain your starting spot. I’ve said all along that Voytik is a competitor who will welcome the challenge from Peterman, and Peterman would not have agreed to come to Pitt w/o assurances that he would be given a chance to win the starting job.

Comment by Jim 05.03.15 @ 9:26 pm

@ Jim, DITTO????

Comment by Dr. Tom 05.04.15 @ 1:46 am

Can’t float a deception past many on this board. Peterman is barely D1 talent, his few starts demoralized his TN teammates. If he’s Pitt’s starting QB we’ll see no poise or chemistry on offense, inaccurate passing, pick sixes and Boyd going crazy; and that’s just the opener. Peterman belongs on Seinfeld.

Comment by Old School Panther 05.04.15 @ 5:09 am

OSP – exactly. The kid’s already checked out too. Graduated very early. He’s coming to Pitt to further his education and help the football team not the other way around. I’m 100% fine with it as he’ll be of value to the current QB group but he’s nothing more than a body and someone who knows Chaney’s offense.

Comment by Tossing Thabeets 05.04.15 @ 8:48 am

Bring in as many QB’s as possible. I’m all for
it. Competition is great.

And whoever the coaching staff picks, I’ll be
rooting for. I don’t have a love child in the game.

However, after watching last year, if you didn’t see Chad Voytik develop into a pretty good college football quarterback, you must have been watching another team.

Especially for his first year.

Last five games, Pitt scored

48, 35, 30, 35, and 34 points and went

2-3.

QB wasn’t the problem my friends. QB was actually a positive for this team in the end.

Comment by Dan 05.04.15 @ 9:06 am

By the way, don’t let Baylor and TCU and tv every week, scoring 60 and 70 points a week,
fool you.

The points above for Pitt are a lot of points.

If you go back and look at college football scores, yes, sadly I have, there are still a ton of

21-10, 17-6, 28-17 games.

The points above, should have been enough for
a college football team to have been

5-0.

Comment by Dan 05.04.15 @ 9:09 am

That would be 36.4 points per game.

For those games, Pitt would have been the
18th highest scoring team in the country,

out of 128 teams. 19th out of 128.

I know, I know, the whole season counts. Couldn’t agree more. Absolutely. I’m just saying, as the year progressed, our offense became very good, including the QB.

Again, I could careless if Mr. Peterman from Seinfeld (as someone referenced above) is our
starting QB.

Whoever is under center on Sept. 5th, I’ll be cheering for.

I hope our defense improves.

Comment by Dan 05.04.15 @ 9:16 am

Just back from weekend working in yard for SWMBO.
Reed- seriously? Tiny 5’2? and feet of Glue Sunseri was the worst college QB I have seen at Pitt in my life; 60 YOA and saw first game at 5. List his qualities 1) not even all conference in High School 2)never took his eyes off the primary receiver ‘going through progression’ bs that came out of his mouth was coach speak from his dad – drove coaches crazy when he spouted it (except for DW who wouldnt know a QB if he tripped over one 3) never hit a long pass – a 10 yard dump to Boyd and a 50 yard run is NOT passing deep – lies, damn lies and statistics 4) decisions constantly stupid, had no concept of football – how many times did he tuck and run out for a five yard loss rather than throwing the ball away – high school players know that 5) couldnt outrun a 350 pound lineman with a 15 yard headstart 6) panic mastered by him as an offensive strategy 7) disliked as much by the student body as his team mates just like his daddy ( I went to Pitt then and Sal was an arrogant SOB, just as a friend from Central said he was) 8) only got the offer after offered at Louisville and daddy walked around Pitt campus wearing Cardinal jackets, hats, etc causing panicked alums to cry that we couldnt let Sal’s son go elsewhere 9) did I mention he was shorter and slower than a D3 QB? 10) name one game he won on his talent – answer – none. I enjoy your postings and appreciate playing devil’s advocate but you have always supported this no-talent who only QB’d at Pitt because of daddy – big deal Sal; Pelusi’s family support Pitt, the Sunseris – not a dime. Hope you are getting free pepperoni’s in the Strip for your trying to find the worst QB in Pitt history for 4 years running.

Of course the section where I have season tickets all gave me humerous shout outs about how insane he drove me. I feel like Emel on a tangent. Love ya all. Go Pitt!

Comment by rkb 05.04.15 @ 2:00 pm

Very late to this party, but my two cents:

It’s ludicrous for anyone to think that Peterman is anything more than an insurance policy in the event that Chad gets injured. Pay no attention to what the coaches say publicly….its noise.

Ridiculous comment of the thread is the assertion that a QB should be able to overcome repeated defensive lapses.
It’s asking a bit much to expect Chad to overcome Matt House’s play calling during the UNC game (and others)…and HCPC’s gaffe at the end of regulation in the Duke game. Oh hell, let’s not forget the special teams lapses in the bowl game. You expect a QB to overcome that?

Comment by Joe Lawrence 05.05.15 @ 11:49 pm

Emel — can’t beat nepotism, or stupid (in Wanny’s case). I wonder if Myers or Tre Anderson think back to the good old days of watching Tino flail and yet never get their number called…glad they both got a chance to play somewhere at least.

Comment by Matt N. 05.06.15 @ 5:06 pm

Even with our limited talent and depth over the past decade, I bet with a good QB on most of those teams, we win 9-10 games a season…its that critical a position and yet our recruiting treats them like their long snappers

I feel bad for Palko, as his team talent was pretty suspect, but he could have won big on Pitt’s team last year. Coaching is a big factor for QB play also, and I don’t think Walt got enough credit for that.

Comment by Matt N. 05.06.15 @ 5:12 pm

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