Both Pittsburgh papers reported the same thing: the starters are changing at some position. The only difference is do you want the news straight or laced with sarcasm.
I’ll take mine with sarcasm, please.
Walt Harris has reverted to the greatest motivational tactic known to football coaches: He is sending players to the bench.
…
It is the first time this season that the seventh-year Pitt coach has tinkered so heavily with his lineup from one week to the next. These things tend to happen when your defense sinks toward rock bottom — 75th worst in the nation — and when select offensive personnel fail to make plays.
Here are the changes:
Pre-season All-American Candidate, Claude Harriott, DE is now a co-starter. Harriott was bothered by injuries early, then subject to double teams, and lately has just sucked.
Weakside Linebacker, Malcolm Postell, the guy beaten at the end of the first half for the touchdown against WVU, is benched for J.J. Horne.
The #2 WR, Princell “Blockhands” Brockenbrough, has been benched in favor of freshman Greg Lee. Blockhands dropped an easy TD against WVU, and all season long has made it a habit of dropping easy passes because he is trying to look upfield without the ball.
Free Safety is now an open position. Tez Morris has had the job.
Strangely enough, Jawan “tap dance” Walker is the starting RB, rather than co-starter with Tim Murphy. I’d love to know what the Pitt coaches saw on game film to merit that decision.
Brandon Miree, the Pitt starting RB who has been out most of the season with a stress fracture, was listed on the depth chart for the Temple game, but isn’t expected to play. He did practice a little last week. There have been unconfirmed and unreported rumors that Miree has been physically ready for some time, but has been mentally “soft” about feeling any pain. There might actually some truth to that, if you want to read between the lines:
Harris said that the stress fracture in Miree’s leg has healed, but he is not mentally ready to return to action.
“We scrimmaged to try to get him confident that he can take a hit and make sure he can hold onto the football while getting hit,” Harris said. “He’s been away from it for a long, long time. But to me, it is still up in the air whether or not he feels he is ready to go. We know he is physically ready to go, that is why he is practicing and scrimmaging, but the mental healing has to take place.
“When you are a tailback, you are a marked man. He wants to play well and, hopefully, he feels more and more confident in his health.”
Well, maybe not even bothering to read between the lines.
Then there is this warning from Harris to his team about playing Temple. I love this:
Harris said Temple has a distinct home-field advantage because the lack of a crowd lulls opponents to sleep. “You can see when you watch the tape, there is nobody in the seats up high,” Harris said. “Fans don’t play the game, we do and Temple uses that as an advantage, an edge. People are going in there thinking ‘this is a scrimmage.’ If you have that attitude, you will get yourself beat.”
Beware the empty stadium. Beware.
Finally, Harris wants Rutherford to stop trying to do too much — something that seems rather difficult when there is no running game — because the interceptions were the result of Rutherford trying to force the ball.
