…Of course, the downside of a beatdown like Pitt was given against Oklahoma State; is that with so many problems, where do you begin?

The defense does get Jordan Whitehead back, but that hardly addresses the issues for the defense. Which, in my view, starts up front.

The Cowwboys may have piled up the passing yards, but I really didn’t think the secondary was too bad. The inability to tackle, to not get the pressure up front. Oh, the missed chances. When you keep missing chances to get off the field on 3d down.

“It was good in that very moment,” Weaver said of bringing down NFL-bound quarterback Mason Rudolph in the backfield, “but throughout the whole game, we just didn’t finish plays. If you get the win, those plays are better Sunday morning.”

Yes, it’s not lost on Weaver that his sack that nearly resulted in a safety was only the third this season for Pitt’s defense. It came so early in the game that one might’ve thought the defensive line was in for a breakout day. As it turned out, that was the only sack, and it turned into a nightmare for everyone from the front four to the secondary.

That much became painfully clear on Oklahoma State’s next drive, when on third-and-11 Rudolph evaded a near-sack by Weaver, then fellow redshirt freshman Keyshon Camp, then defensive tackle Amir Watts, and stepped up to throw a dart to Marcell Ateman, who broke yet another tackle attempt by safety Dennis Briggs and sped into the end zone for a 21-0 lead.

The play kept getting extended, and OSU’s wide receivers are simply too big and too good to be covered by Pitt’s secondary (or many other teams) that long. The secondary got beat a bit, but the problems keep stemming from up-front and linebackers who struggled to handle pass coverage.

On Pat Narduzzi’s Monday press conference, he lamented the failures of fundamentals by the defense.

But you know, as I’ve said really the last three weeks, this is a young football team that has not paid attention to details like they need to. And there’s always blame to put on the coaches, like I said Saturday, of things we could have done better; what if you do this.

But when you look at it, you know, it’s almost at times where the young guys just — because they’re in that first-time situation, like option this week is going to be the first time they see some of that, so it’s a whole new ballgame. But you’re seeing some RPOs coming at you, which everybody hears about RPOs, but then when you see them, last year it was RPOs for your corners, this year it’s RPOs for the safeties, picking on the youth back there and inexperience.

But guys just panic with their technique. That’s the one thing that we try to teach our guys you have to fall back to is your fundamentals. At times we don’t do that. We kind of go — you go rogue a little bit, and you can’t do that.

…

You can’t miss tackles. You’ve got to read your keys. Like I said, some guys — and even some guys that aren’t so young didn’t read their keys. It’s like — and weren’t helping. You wonder where it came from. What are you doing? What are you being coached to do? I tell our coaches, hey, what you see is what you coach, so obviously it’s not sinking in; how do we get it to sink in? Do we need a sledgehammer; what do we do?

The coaching. Yes, that is a big question. Now, embattled, Defensive Coordinator Josh Conklin seems to be struggling to find an answer. Or at least one that is coherent.

“…But to answer your question, it’s everybody. It’s the secondary, it’s linebackers getting re-routes, it’s the defensive linemen getting pressure when they can get pressure. To me, in that game, what really hurt us — and I told the defense this — is we got them in some third-down situations, and it just shows you the importance of that. That’s one of our five key things, is third down, and we had been good in third down. When you don’t get off the field and you give a high-powered offense the ability to continue to drive, you’re gonna have problems. We stressed that going into the game, and we didn’t do it. You gotta get the ball back to your offense and give them more possessions, and that’s, to me, what really hurt us — especially in the first part of that game.”

I’ve read through the transcript a few times, and it is a great example of a coach saying nothing that actually addresses what he is doing.

Yes, the defense is younger up front. Supposedly more depth and less drop-off, though. And even as Narduzzi and Conklin stress that youth is no excuse, they keep bringing up the youth of the defense. A bit of making the excuse while saying it is no excuse.

A defense that keeps making mistakes. That doesn’t have good technique. That is really bad at making tackles. And now, they have to go up against Georgia Tech and their triple option? That’s a bit of a concern.