Here are somethings for your viewing and reading pleasure when you should be working on a Tuesday morning.

First off here is Pat Narduzzi’s Monday morning press conference: Notice he’s send a serious mixed message with the logos in the video!

We’ll follow that up with Nate Peterman’s presser. 

Then we’ll look at Pitt’s Cumulative Season Statistics to date.

Team Statistics

Individual Statistics

Defensive Statistics

Combined Statistics

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Winning definitely helps make it possible. When you are losing or just .500 you get the people who grumble about needing to do better before you can have a sense of humor or be a little goofy.

Right now, Pitt football is fun. And Head Coach Pat Narduzzi is having fun as well. While we should be getting ready for the Battle for the Kiwi, Narduzzi chose to blow-up Pitt and Penn State twitter.

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 (This is one of a weekly series of articles entitled “Monday Morning Quarterback”.   I will try to post them two days after the football games are played so as to have our wilder emotions under control by then. It will be my take on the positives and the negatives we saw happen and a chance for commenters to agree or disagree and to add their own thoughts.) 

Before we talk about anything else watch these highlights from Saturday’s win over Georgia Tech.

Done?  OK then.

Pitt flew into Atlanta, GA last Friday afternoon as a team that still had many legitimate question marks surrounding it despite winning five out of the season’s six games.  They flew back into Pittsburgh Saturday evening as a team that has shown it can handle adversity, adapt to tough in-game situations and whose personnel can rise to the occasion in a harsh environment.

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The biggest difference of the Pitt football team on the field is the defense. They play with passion, energy, and so much more confidence.

The biggest difference that is occurring for this team overall is their belief that they can and will win the game. That one bad thing is not the herald of finding a way to lose.

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3:10 to go, down four, ball on their own 38 yard line.

3:44 to go, down seven, ball on their own 28 yard line.

1:04: to go, down 3, ball on their own 24 yard line.

That’s the situation opposing offenses have been in the last three games. The result? ZERO points and three wins for Pitt. After the defense held on against VT, Narduzzi said in his press conference that the team made mistakes against Iowa that led to the 57 yard FG. Since then, not only has the defense held on, they’ve thrived. What a change from last year. When the defense is on the field with the game on the line they’ve responded. (more…)

I apologize in advance that this is not up to my usual standard. I’ve been too busy with work and I rushed through this. My analysis is good, but my writing sucks in this one. Sorry guys.

After last year’s abomination, it’s surprising to see how optimistic Pitt fans are against Georgia Tech. I’m not necessarily predicting a loss, but I see more confidence than I think is warranted. Last year’s homecoming embarrassment was not purely a product of the 734  six lost fumbles (five in the first half). GT had 612 yards of offense on the ground and scored 28 points in the second half after the Fumblepalooza ’14 in the first half. Georgia Tech ran the ball at will against a defense that returns most of the same starters. Let’s break them down. (more…)

Safety Paris Ford has committed to Pitt according to Chris Peak of Panther Lair. The consensus four star prospect from Seton La Salle chose Pitt over offers from Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Michigan State, some school in Central PA surrounded by cows, and numerous other P5 schools.

According to Peak, Ford chose Pitt because he “wanted to show people that this ‘#412Crew’ movement can be serious if a big piece committed…[s]o I decided to be that piece.” While his relationship with Narduzzi and the coaches undoubtedly was the primary reason, it’s safe to say the high level play from the defense so far makes this decision a lot easier.

Ford is a great addition for Narduzzi and could be the start of a domino effect bringing numerous other WPIAL stars into the fold. Ford joins Exree Loe as the second commitment for the 2017 class.

(Don’t forget to read the preceding article posted this morning also)

Oct. 12, 2015

PITT vs. GEORGIA TECH
October 17, 2015 • 12:30 p.m., ET

Bobby Dodd Stadium (55,000/Natural Grass) • Atlanta, Ga.
ACC Network • Pitt IMG Sports Radio Network
PittsburghPanthers.com • @GoPittFootball • #PITTvsGT

LINK: Where to Watch Pitt-GT

LINK (PDF): Pitt Game Notes (GT)  (Pages 1-3 are handy for watching the game)

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As Chas mentioned earlierd, the offense was entirely too conservative in the second half of the UVA game. This allowed the Cavaliers to make it a one score game late and add a little drama to Homecoming. Fortunately the defense came through eventually and it was all for naught. Play-calling remains an issue, but self-inflicted wounds were the bigger issue for the offense on Saturday. (more…)

 (This is the first article in a weekly series of articles entitled “Monday Morning Quarterback”.   I will try to post them two days after the football games are played so as to have our wilder emotions under control by then. It will be my take on the positives and the negatives we saw happen and a chance for commenters to agree or disagree and to add their own thoughts.) 

I told Chas I’ll try to keep the MMQB articles posted.

Four wins and one loss, with those wins including our first two ACC conference games is nothing to sneeze at and is a real ‘feel good’ generator for almost ever Pitt fan save a few disgruntled ones.

We held on, and that is becoming a mantra that isn’t real positive in itself, to win Saturday’s game against the University of Virginia at Heinz Field in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA.

Before getting into the game specifics let’s acknowledge something that is different with this season. There is a positive and growing sentiment among the Pitt football program, the university, the fans and, surprisingly, the local media, that sets this year, with this brand new staff, apart from the others seasons we have slogged through over the last five years.

What separates this year from all the other recent years is the solid belief that something good is not ‘about to happen’ but actually is.  Yes there are areas of the team and coaching that have to grow and mature.  I think we’ll all agree that even without Conner in the backfield our offense has to better come together and play more consistently.

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For the game, the offense had nice enough numbers. 363 total yards. 222 in the air. 141 on the ground. The overall play calling appeared a bit run heavy. 35 rushes (including one sack) to 24 passes. About 59% run, 41% pass. It’s the way it ended up there, that is a bit of a concern.

Last week after the win over Virginia Tech, Head Coach Pat Narduzzi admitted that Pitt got very conservative on offense in the second half. That approach continued — and if anything was worse — in the Virginia game.

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I know some of us have been putting our predictions down in Justin’s “Hoo’s Your Enemy” article but here is a separate thread for our guesses so that we can look back easily and see who knows what they are talking about when it comes to how Pitt does in actual games.

Speaking of which I have a 1-3 record so far this year, told you I sucked at that, but I’m thinking the passing games gets its feet under itself and the OL starts to come together now that there seems to be less substitutions there.  So the offense should be more productive with a more consistent running game.  Our defense gets better week to week but I think UVa gets two or three big plays.  We’ll give up some points but not more than we score.

While the Hoos may not stack up at that well in comparison to the other college football teams, we’ve seen other lightly regarded opponents come into Heinz and turn the tables. However, I do agree that Narduzzi and staff have done a good job keeping the kids up and focused for action.

As a reminder. these linked Pitt vs. Virginia Game Notes are essential for good Pitt football watching.  The whole publication is 41 pages long but for an individual game I print out pages 1, 3, 4, and 5.  Those are the game overview (pg 1) and then the Pitt Two-Deep and rosters (pgs 3-5).  The Pitt media dept does an excellent job with this coming out every week.

My thoughts?  The good weather, coming off a nice away conference win, and the possibility of showcasing the team at Homecoming points to a 34-21 Pitt win.

Yeah us!

Note: Yesterday I let Chas and Justin know that  I’m going to be backing away from the Blather as I have been working on a fictional novel  for the last few months, set in PGH in the early 1970s BTW, and a publishing company’s editor read what I had done to date and told me I need to finish it and send it out as soon as possible as she thought it had ‘good legs’.  So that’s what I’m going to do.  It will take up the time and energy that I have been giving to The Blather.

I’ll still try to get something up every once in a while but not on the scale I been doing for the last five years.  Of course I’ll read and comment as I always do.  Thanks for everything and it has been great fun to be with everyone… See you at the games!

This column will be shorter than usual as I’ve been under the weather all week. I’m also quite busy at work so that’s eating up a lot of my weakened energy. So, please forgive more typos and errors than usual. Long story short, Pitt is a better team than Virginia at almost every facet. Chaney’s offense is still a work in progress without James Conner, but I’m willing to give him a mulligan on last week. This week, however, the offense needs to produce and get things going as this defense is not good enough to win on its own against the likes of Georgia Tech and UNC like it did against VT.

The Cavaliers opened up the season with back to back games against highly ranked out of conference opponents (UCLA and Notre Dame). The Notre Dame game was a respectable loss, with the Fighting Irish needing last second heroics to pull off the win but UCLA was never really a contest. Since then, they struggled to beat FCS foe William & Mary and got whooped by Boise State. I respect UVA for the tough out of conference schedule, but in order to build the program you need actual wins, not moral victories. (more…)

Here is a three week late start for the Pitt Blather’s “Monday Morning Quarterback” series.  There was so much going on with the new staff and the QB competition and rotation through the first three games I forgot to start writing these.  If you remember the MMQB format is three points of Positives, three Negatives and then Notes.) Here goes.

(This is the first article in a weekly series of articles entitled “Monday Morning Quarterback”.   I will try to post them two days after the football games are played so as to have our wilder emotions under control by then. It will be my take on the positives and the negatives we saw happen and a chance for commenters to agree or disagree and to add their own thoughts.) 

A few things stuck with me Saturday afternoon as I left a Blather friend’s house after watching Pitt’s 17-13 win over Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.  First was that it is very nice to get a conference win any way we can get it, and that is just what we did.  Second is that no matter how a game turns out, good, bad, or middling, Pitt fans find things to worry and complain about.  Check out the Game Thread posts if you don’t believe that.

I say this because I watched the game with three new friends who are long time (suffering) Pitt fans who, to a man, are convinced we’ll be a 8-10 win team this season… yet they were also sure, down to Pitt’s victory formation out of the huddle, that we were going to lose that game.  Imagine that, Reed, who predicted 6-6 season and a close Pitt loss against VT calming those guys down off the ledge in the 4^th quarter and assuring them we were going to come out with a win.  Life is strange, eh?  Of course, watching our balls to the wall defense kick the Hokies’ collective asses at every turn help my confidence we’d win a bit also.  Which leads us to…

POSITIVES:

1.  We may be seeing a rising and complete 180 degree reversal from the 2014 team in that we are currently relying on our defense to win games for us and that is what they are doing… with an excellent shut down effort on Saturday.

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Here is Pitt HC Pat Narduzzi’s mid-week press conference for our game against VT this weekend in Blacksburg, VA, tarted up a bit for your reading pleasure..  It is a noon start on Saturday and looks to be a rainy day.

Official Virginia Tech Week Game Notes issued by the Pitt Media Dept.

PRESS CONFERENCE VIDEO: Narduzzi Virginia Tech Preview

PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT (HTML LINK): Narduzzi Text Transcript

 Opening Statement:

“We had a couple practices last week to focus on ourselves and become a better football team. We’re cranked up. It’s always rough on a Saturday to watch all of those games and not being able to go out and play. I think our kids are anxious to get back on the field. We’re getting ready for a great football team down at Virginia Tech.

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