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July 1, 2012

In totally untimely news, Joe Paterno finds himself in hot water due to the inability of the PSU administration to actually discuss things face to face over coffee instead of sharing their thoughts in an email.

Damn, this gives the PSU faithful another target to point fingers of blame at other than Paterno… “If it wasn’t for computer technology Joe wouldn’t be in trouble!”  As if they need any more basis for rationalization that is.  Here is my favorite from a PSU poster.

“Even if true this doesn’t establish “cover up” as the motive.  I think its quite likely that they wanted to help an old loyal friend, to get him professional help in the belief that it would halt the conduct without destroying his life and reputation.  Obviously, that was a bad decision and very misplaced.  But making a horribly wrong decision isn’t the same as covering up a scandal to protect the football program.”

Allll righty then…!!!

Maybe Paterno is glad he’s dead so that he doesn’t actually have to face the public and tell the truth, something that he’s proven he can’t be counted on to do in the past.

In case anyone has been in a coma these last three days a series of emails between the AD Curley and the President Spanier have been quoted in CNN articles (and now by AP stringers) that show “Joe” (Paterno) was complicit in not alerting the authorities back in 2001 after the four principals had gotten McQueary’s report of the shower incident.

If you’ve the stomach for it here are a few excerpts:

…then Vice President for Finance and Business Affairs Gary Schultz developed a three-part plan to talk with Sandusky; contact the Second Mile — the youth charity Sandusky founded; and inform child welfare authorities.”  and “But that plan was put on hold, the report stated, Feb. 27, when Schultz received an e-mailed reply from Athletic Director Tim Curley — apparently after a discussion with head football coach Joe Paterno — in which Curley suggests talking with Sandusky directly before alerting any outside authorities.”

What happened then is the most damning as far as Paterno is concerned…

In an email from Schultz to Spanier came this.  “After giving it more thought and talking it over with Joe yesterday, I am uncomfortable with what we agreed were the next steps,” CNN quoted Curley as saying in an email. Curley indicated, according to the report, that he planned to talk with Sandusky and also contact The Second Mile, but not necessarily the child welfare office if Sandusky cooperated and got professional help.

Cooperated and got professional help. Oy Vey, Goot Gott In Himmel!

This brings up the question if Sandusky was confronted and agreed to those stipulations.  If so, and if I were the DA, I’d want the name of that therapist who didn’t alert authorities that Sandusky remained a ‘danger to others’.  But you know that never happened and that PSU didn’t give a damn if it did.  They just wanted silence at all costs.

Then this bombshell which, to me, is the most sickening insight into these men’s minds when Spanier wrote “I am supportive,” Spanier emailed Curley, according to the e-mails obtained by CNN. “The only downside for us if the message isn’t heard and acted upon, and then we become vulnerable for not having reported it.”

“the only downside…then we become vulnerable…”  

(more…)

June 28, 2012

Losing OT Dorian Johnson to Penn Sate sucks.

There are no two ways around that.  Here was a four star recruit at a position of need for PITT, ranked either 13th or 23rd nationally at his position and after visiting PITT numerous times makes a spur of the moment decision to attend that school while riding in the car on his way back from a PSU visit.  It was a big swing and a miss for Paul Chryst.

PITT will have another good or bad day on Sunday, July 1st, when QB Tra’von Chapman, another four star, ranked 11th at a position of (big time!) need, makes his college choice.  Supposedly he’s been a strong PITT lean but the same could have been said for Johnson.  We await with bated breath, as do we for everyone’s superstar recruit #4 ranked WR Robert Foster who is probably good enough to start next season as a true FR.

Clairton’s four star WR Tyler Boyd is another prime prospect and right in our back yard.  IMO if we can land two of these four that will be a darn good start for Paul Chryst’s time at PITT but we are fighting heavyweight programs nationwide for these player’s services so it’s an uphill battle.

Now, I’m not one for blindly adhering to the ‘star’ ranking system and I’m on record about that,  but these four kids are Blue Chip players as defined by the offers they have received.  Look at the links provided above and you’ll see that these players are being recruited nationwide.

The bottom line is that there isn’t a laundry list of great four and five star recruits in the WPIAL each year any longer.  Jerry DiPaloa of the Tribune-Review has a good article on that this morning explaining how PITT has fared with recruiting these players in the past.  Not too bad actually.  Each of these highly ranked kids from our immediate area is an important recruit for PITT as it shows that we can compete with the big boys in the recruiting arena.

Chris Dokish of The Panther’s Prey wrote a long and detailed article on how he feels where the state of PITT’s recruiting is today.

As for my opinion Chryst’s recruiting so far? As much as I want Chryst to land all the big fish in the WPIAL/WPA area I think that might not happen and I truly can’t fault any kid and their parents who look at the PITT football program with a jaundiced eye right now.

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June 20, 2012

We have read and heard the cry for the NCAA to issue the “Death Penalty” to the Penn State football program due to a lack of institutional control because of the particulars of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal.   However, does what happened meet the NCAA’s own criteria and purpose of their rule regarding institutional control?

Perhaps the pertinent question is why the NCAA should even be involved in this?  Back on November 10, 2011 the NCAA President Mark Emmert’s public statement on this was as follows:

“Regarding the ongoing Penn State criminal investigation, the NCAA is actively monitoring developments and assessing appropriate steps moving forward. The NCAA will defer in the immediate term to law enforcement officials since this situation involved alleged crimes. As the facts are established through the justice system, we will determine whether Association bylaws have been violated and act accordingly. To be clear, civil and criminal law will always take precedence over Association rules.”

Emmert basically said that ‘we’ll wait until the dust settles then decide if we want to get involved’. Perhaps that was the right and legally correct thing to say.  I expect that it wasn’t nearly as forceful as some wanted it to be.  That last sentence -“To be clear, civil and criminal law will always take precedence over Association rules.” –  is the open door to not getting their hands dirty or having to deal with it at all.

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June 16, 2012

Boom! There It Is!

Filed under: Coaches,Football,Players,Recruiting — Reed @ 5:46 pm

Paul Chryst just convinced RB Corey Clement, a 5’11”, 205 lb power runner with great moves out of Glassboro, NJ  that PITT is It for his college career.  He carried the ball 249 times for 2,510 yards (10.1 ypc)  and 34 touchdowns last season, his JR year.  This is a big deal PITT fans and one that portends good things.  Here, take a look for yourself.  Stud RB at Work.

This is a great pick up by the Panthers in any year – a four star RB who had great offers nationally. We beat out ND, OSU, PSU, Nebraska, Wisconsin, etc…

You can just imagine the conversations Chryst had with this kid at camp this afternoon:

CC:  What about Shell and Bennett, aren’t they going to be returning starters?

PC:  Kid, look at what I did at Wisconsin.  Hell, we had Heisman trophy hopefuls at RB and still got three kids tons of carries each year.  I have one word for you; White-Clay- Ball.  That may be more than one word but get this, in 2010 they each had over 160 carries and almost all had over 1000 yards.

CC:  That’s pretty nice I guess – OK, I’m in.

PC:  Are you sure because I want you to want to be here.

CC:  Coach, I already said I would.

PC:  Just checking, because you know….

CC:  Damn, coach – back off a bit!

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June 14, 2012

Holgorsen: The Next Generation

Filed under: Coaches,General Stupidity — Chas @ 8:16 am

Slimmed down and showing more leg in the 24th century (via i09).

June 9, 2012

It’s Camp Time

Filed under: Chryst,Coaches,Football,Recruiting — Chas @ 8:40 am

If there is one aspect to recruiting that hasn’t changed under Coach Paul Chryst, it is the value of having camps. June is all about camps at Pitt.

“The important thing for me is that every kid who comes to camp learns at least one thing he can take back with him to help him become a better football player,” Chryst said.

Pitt has one-day “prospect camps” today, Saturday and next weekend at Pitt’s UPMC South Side football facility.

The “Little Panthers” camp for ages 5 to 11 will be June 18-19 and there will be a “specialist” camp June 21.

The camp season ends with the passing camp and 7-on-7 tournament June 23-24. It attracts area schools from different levels and allows them to compete.

Coach Chryst can couch it in terms of teaching football, and how much he likes/loves that aspect to the camps. There is even an element of truth to it. But outside of the little kids football camp, the most important part of the camps is with regards to recruiting. It’s getting recruits to the campus and facilities. Getting a chance to evaluate the ones the coaches are not sure are good enough. It’s about getting kids who already hold offers to want to commit to Pitt. And of course it is about selling the coach and Pitt to people in the area.

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May 30, 2012

Over the weekend Pitt released info on the highest paid university employees for the past fiscal year (July 2010-June 2011).

Ex-head football coach Dave Wannstedt was actually the top earner at $1,859,357. That number seems higher than what his salary was believed to be. Considering his termination, I figure the number is higher than expected because he got something of a buyout on his contract on top of his salary for the year.

Coach Jamie Dixon had a boost from previous earnings to be getting over $1.8 million for the season. That isn’t too surprising given the overall success, and offers he’s had. There’s no question that the money is a reason why he hasn’t been hired away by other programs in the past couple years. To make it worth his while to leave where he is established, a program would now have to start the offer at $2.5 million just to get him to seriously listen. Not even to leave. Just to take the offer seriously.

That’s a lot for a college basketball coach. A figure not many are that willing to pay as a starting figure — even for an established coach.

According to the USA Today database, only 9 schools pay their coaches at $2.5 million or more (OSU, MSU, Marquette, Kentucky, Louisville, Kansas, Florida, Duke and UConn). After that, 9 schools pay $2 million or more (Indiana, Michigan, Purdue, Texas, Wisconsin, WVU, Arkansas, Arizona and UCLA). Marquette is the only surprise on the list, but Buzz Williams has been a surprisingly good coach who has attracted a lot of deep-pocketed attention the last couple of years.

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May 18, 2012

Scout.com has come out with their updated recruit star rankings as they do a few times each recruiting cycle and our five committed recruits have all been awarded three stars.  That is a jump for Shakir Soto, Aaron Reese and Jaymar Parrish from having two stars or being unranked.  Parrish has also been designated as the #3 FB in the nation.  Orndoff and Samuelson already had three stars next to their name.  Congrats to them all.

As a result of the update Scout also released their updated team recruiting rankings.  As of today PITT is positioned at #38 overall and tied for #28 in average number of stars. For comparison we were #40 for the 2012 recruiting year, #47 for 2011 and had a great year for 2010 under Wannstedt at #17 (overall).

That’s not too bad considering it is early days and especially considering the crap our football program has gone through over the last 18 months.  It was a mess and we are dragging ourselves out of it one day at a time.

All of which leads us to this article about Paul Chryst’s recruiting approach written by Chris Peak of Panther-Lair.com.  It is interesting in that he reiterates the fact that Paul Chryst has been doing pretty much what he’d said he do in recruiting when he was hired – let the University and the football program sell itself as much as possible.

Chryst and his staff have been very un-forceful in recruiting thus far. More than a few recruits have commented on how “laid-back” the coaches are; that term has been used quite often by the recruits themselves. When Cincinnati offensive line recruit Alex Gall visited Pitt this spring, the interaction with Chryst stuck out for that very reason:

“Coach Chryst told me he wants me to make the best decision for me. He was really laid-back about it. There are a few schools that are like that, but he really didn’t want to push me to make a decision. It was pretty unique how laid-back he was.”

Similarly, when four-star Belle Vernon offensive tackle Dorian Johnson was on campus last week, he had the same impression:

“I liked the fact that we just chilled. There was no pressure and they really didn’t talk about football at all. We just talked about my personal life. That’s different because usually coaches try to talk up the program and talk about football and all of that, and they really didn’t do that at all.”

Peak goes on to say that will be effective up to a point but sooner or later the hard sell has to come into effect.  Chris Dokish over at Panther’s Prey addressed this in part earlier in March with this article (last paragraphs).

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May 16, 2012

“1,2,3,4,5 – Go!” ?

Filed under: Coaches,Football,Players — Reed @ 1:47 pm

Now that Paul Chryst has made the decision as to who is nominal starting QB is going to be in this season and I say nominal only because we still have Voytik coming in, lets look at one major thing that needs to happen for Sunseri to be able to play better football this year than last.

 
Bottom line: Sunseri has to take three less sacks per game for PITT to be successful this season.

 
On the face of that remark it looks pretty ridiculous; “three less sacks per game”, hell most teams didn’t give up three sacks per game. The bold truth is that we gave up five (4.92) per game and 64 total sacks, which turns my stomach just to type that.

 
But I think we’ll be better in that area this season for sure. Graham’s “One, two, three, Go!” passing offense had our OL trying to aggressively attack the DL they were going to block in pass protection and it didn’t work out.

 
Look, in 2010 Sunseri was sacked 23 times total for less than two per game. Guys, that is 43 less sacks on the year. It almost literally can be any worse this year.

 
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May 15, 2012

Does this actually surprise anyone?  Really?

ESPN has a short interview with Paul Chryst today where he states that Tino Sunseri will be the starting QB for the Panthers going into the 2012 season.

We here at the Blather have been trying to get you guys to prepare yourselves for this announcement for sometime.  It wasn’t a hard call for Chryst to make.

It also makes sense as much as we may not want it to. Here is a rather telling point and one that some fans just have refused to believe:

He clearly was the best this spring that we had. You’re aware of the history but it doesn’t really matter for us.

Then here is this zinger.

“He’s got room to grow. If he chooses to grow, and I know it’s easier for us to say last year or two years before that doesn’t matter. It matters in the sense that you should learn from all of it, positive or negative. But it doesn’t matter going forward. 

Look, let’s be brutally honest here and stop bullshitting around. It really doesn’t matter going forward because he is all Chryst has.  He has no choice but to play Sunseri because of incompetence after him. However that “If he chooses to grow” comment leaves one wondering.  What if he doesn’t choose to grow?  Riddle me that Batman.

We just have no decent QB on the roster but Tino Sunseri and he’s suspect as hell. If anyone harbors any hope for any of the other four QBs, lets add Gonzalez just for more psychic pain, just let go of it now while you still have some sanity left…

“Chryst said nobody grabbed the backup quarterback job. As for what he anticipates for Chad Voytik once the four-star prospect arrives this summer, Chryst said, “First he’s got to get here. Then we’ve got to see how he picks up things. I anticipate him getting work. Legitimately getting work and then we’ll see.”

Got that?  No – Body – Grabbed – the – Backup – Job.  Not third year QB Mark Myers, not Shorty Anderson and not Smoke Gonzales.  “It is a ship of fools we have here on the Southside docks, step right up and take the cruise.”

So what we have left is a long shot miracle that may or may not be happenning in training camp with Chad Voytik.  But here’s a bit of advice.  Don’t back the wrong horse…

Coming around the clubhouse turn!  It’s “Tino Time” with the big lead and… hold on!  Here comes the Tennessee stud closing fast!!!   It’s a horse race again folks, anything can happen….!”

… in our dreams.

Another aspect of this is that Chryst wants to get the offense personnel set as soon as possible and start instituting his playbook that first week of training camp.  He needs a starting QB to do that.  The fact that he said Voytik will get a legit look is nice but he’ll go into training camp with Sunseri and stick with him IMO.

But Chryst feels that he can coach Sunseri well enough to succeed in his offense and that may be the case.  We’ll see.  I tend to think Sunseri will not be the same QB we had last season and that he’ll be better due to his new comfort zone. I do not think we’ll look at Sunseri at any time this and think that he’s turned the corner or that his troubles are behind him though.

No, every snap will be an adventure again this season.  Perhaps that 70%/30%  run/pass split doesn’t sound to bad right about now, huh?

May 13, 2012

Dan Mason Ascending

Filed under: Coaches,Football,Players,Recruiting — Reed @ 10:20 am

Back in 2009 we PITT fans eagerly awaited Penn Hill’s linebacker Dan Mason’s field debut as a Panther and it wasn’t too long before we were able to see the extent of how he could play. Mason, a four star recruit who was on everyone’s All-Everything lists, verballed early to PITT and impressed the staff enough that he was in the two-deep at Middle Linebacker coming out of the summer training camp.

He did well that year,  assuming the starting role after Adam Gunn went down with an injury. In his first start he had 11 tackles and two sacks against Navy which earned him the Big East Defensive Player of the Week. Pretty damn good start to a career, eh? Mason ended up with three starts in 2009 including the bowl game where he made a game saving interception at the goal line to preserve a win against North Carolina.

In 2010 he was the uncontested starter at Middle Linebacker and played in three games before his dramatic and very serious knee injury, sustained when he was tackling a Miami player after a pass reception. That is a gruesome injury and he found out afterward that it was much more than a common MCL/ACL injury as he had thought. Reflecting back on how it happened Mason said this:

I think about it ’cause I was so stupid just,” Mason says with a smile. “I love getting contact so as he was going down I wanted to give him an extra shot, and I guess I blinked or something and he went lower than I thought he was gonna go. He took out my knee.”

 Mason initially didn’t know the damage that had been done. He thought he had torn his ACL. If only. “I rolled over and I looked down and saw my knee poking out. I was like ‘Oh man. I saw some of my teammates running the other way grossed out and everything. [The bone] wasn’t poking out of my skin, but you could see the form of the bone poking out. It didn’t break the skin.”

Ugh.  It was bad then and the news would get worse. Not only was his knee almost literally destroyed in being dislocated along with shredded ligaments but he also had serious nerve damage which resulted in “Foot Drop”, which sounds harmless enough but is a condition in which the person can’t flex the ankle into an upward position which leads to the foot staying at a downward angle and dragging along the floor.  Try waking with that let alone attempting to play ball again.

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May 8, 2012

Yesterday was an eventful off-season day for the Panthers.  We had one verified recruit commitment in Jaymar Parrish, a big FB from local Gateway HS along with one unconfirmed rumor about former Rutgers QB Tom Savage transferring to PITT after a short lay-over in Arizona.

First let’s look at the recruitment.  So far Paul Chryst has recruited five players, four of them on offense.  He’s gotten two big OL, a TE and a powerful FB in Parrish.

“They’re going to line him up as a traditional fullback because they’re a pro-style offense team,” said Gateway coach Terry Smith.  ”He’s an extremely physical blocker and just a tough, hard-nosed kid who is really athletic.”

Now, think back to what Chryst said he was going to put out on the field offensively and what he built so well at Wisconsin; a highly productive running game with big, strong players up the middle.  That is exactly what he’s recruited so far at PITT.

Jaymar Parrish has not been ranked yet but look at Scout’s FB prospects for 2013. Parrish is on the list but the telling thing is that only three FBs are awarded any stars at all by Scout.com at this point nationally.  Rivals.com has five FBs total with all being three star kids.

At Wisconsin Chryst loved this type of FB and used them pretty regularly.  Last year they had Bradie Ewing, a 6’0/245 FB who ended being drafted in the 5th round by the Atlanta Falcons.  Ewing had only seven rushing attempts for 33 yards but also caught 28 passes for 328 yards (11.7 ypc) in his two years of play with the Badgers. He was also the #1 rated FB going into the draft.

Just for fun compare that with what Henry Hynoski did at PITT over the course of his career where he had 37 carries for 134 yards and 40 receptions for 283 (7.1 ypc).  Of course Hyno didn’t have three 1000 yards rushers on his team one year either.

This is the FB model Chryst wants to replicate when he gets his kids on the field over the next few years and is what we were used to seeing at PITT under DW.  Whisky hasn’t rushed their FBs much but used them mostly as a lead blocker and receiver out of the backfield.  Parrish, at 6’2” and 235 lbs and having been a TE who caught 22 passes for 524 yards and four touchdowns, is well equipped with size and good hands to be that pass receiving FB Chryst has had and wants now.

As an example of Parrish’s blocking ability, last season when Gateway played Bishop McDevitt he went up against #1 nationally ranked five star DE Noah Spence and blocked him effectively enough call it a draw.  When the rankings come out he will probably be at least a three star recruit.

Tom Savage’s rumored transfer is an interesting issue.  According to his Twitter feed he alludes to playing for PITT (good luck finding it, I can’t read more than three or four Tweets before getting dizzy).  Here is what Chris Dokish had to say about Savage:

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May 6, 2012

One of our regular and more prolific posters, dhuffdaddy,  wrote this in a comment while in one of his more lucid moments the other day:

“Eight in the box with run blitzes will expose Tino and will lead to 5-6 sacks per game. The passing game needs to set up the running game except if you are alabama, lsu, etc. We are not elite linemen or runners and have no threats at receiver to actually hurt opponents for putting 8 in a box. PC has his work cut out for him and I expect him to do well.”

The idea of a defense stacking the box with Sunseri is, and has been, a common complaint of PITT fans looking back on 2010 and forward to 2011.  But what really happens when Sunseri is at QB and what impact does this have on our offense now and in the past?

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that our QB play contributed to the dramatically putrid sack numbers last season.  But some blame has to be shared and it can be in different ways.  A lot of the problem in not getting the passes off in time was based on the overall confusion that the PITT offensive players had with Graham’s offense.  This is a somewhat hidden issue but one that greatly contributes. We heard both Shanahan and Saddler stating that the staff basically said ‘run out to a zone and get open‘.

It also had to do with the fact that our OL was like a sieve on passing plays. What looked like ‘too long‘ sometimes was magnified because of that.  In an ESPN article their beat writer sums it up correctly:

“Pitt was bad in pass protection, though mostly because of strange blocking schemes that none of the players fully endorsed. Sunseri held on to the ball way too long, too. Let’s face it — neither Sunseri nor his offensive linemen ever fully grasped the timing concept that is the heart of the Graham offense. “

Add the WR confusion to that and you get 62 sacks and a pissed off fanbase.

However, this problem wasn’t as prevalent during the 2010 season when Sunseri was more comfortable in the Pro-Set offense and had a better OL in front of him.  That offense required the OL to hold their blocks longer and we saw a more normal passing game because of it. That year he was was sacked only 23 times for 1.77 sacks per game. I believe we’ll see this aspect of the offense level back down to 2010 sack numbers or even better.

As far as stacking the box against Sunseri? That happened some in both 2011 and 2010 and in ’10 we had 1088 rushing yards from Lewis and 958 from Graham. In addition, last season when the defenses really moved up into the box, Ray Graham had almost 1000 yards in the first seven games.  We had decent rushing success with whatever the defense did.

I think this is an issue that PITT fans may worry about too much sometimes.  There is an impact and the ideal situation would be that run stacking doesn’t happen at all because of a productive and efficient passing game, but even if the defenses do come up it isn’t the end of the world.

Our running game has been pretty good with Sunseri as QB. We were 45th nationally in 2010 and, even with Graham’s injury, 72nd in 2011. Had Graham not been injured halfway through the year we’d have been in the top 50 last year also.  You may say that isn’t too good either but here’s the thing…

… PITT has never had a fantastic rushing game even under Wannstedt with any QB at the helm.  He had some decent years but his running game had an average  rank of 64th.   However, Wannstedt did show improvements every year culminating in his best season in 2009 because he built to a strong running game.

What is going to be the difference between Todd Graham and Paul Chryst is that Chryst will also build to a strong running base.  He’s done this every year while OC at Wisconsin with sterling results.  Where the run game was an afterthought in the “High Octane” offense it will be the bell cow in Chryst’s.

Even with that you’ll see our 2011 yardage totals, under Graham and with the same QB we’ll have this year, were the third best in yardage but dropped to the fifth best in yards per carry over the last seven years.

Here is how we ranked from 2005 to 2011:

2011 – 72nd  – 1824 yds/3.52 ypc/21 TDs;    Sunseri and Graham /Brown

2010 – 45th  – 2154 yds/4.58 ypc/24 TDs;    Sunseri and Lewis /Graham

2009 – 34th  – 2344 yds/4 .89 ypc/25 TDs;   Stull and Lewis / Graham

2008 – 65th  – 1808 yds/3.67 ypc/29 TDs;    Stull and McCoy / Stevens-Howling

2007 – 71st – 1697 yds/3.62 ypc/20 TDs;     Bostick and McCoy / Stevens-Howling

2006 – 78th  – 1476 yds/3.88 ypc/15 TDs;    Palko and Stevens-Howling / Brooks

2005 – 93rd  – 1285 yds/3.20 ypc/9 TDs;      Palko and Stevens-Howling / Jennings

Out of those seven years we can say that we had subpar passing QBs four times, once with Bostick, once with Stull and twice with Sunseri.  Yet in each of those years we had at least a 1000 yard rusher and three of those years we had star RBs and fantastic production out of McCoy, Lewis and Graham.

In Stull’s good 2009 season we fared the best on the ground which makes sense.  A telling point is that even with Tyler Palko, coming off his great 2004 SO year, we our two worst all around rushing years in 2005 and 2006.

So, does the fact that Sunseri will be starting at QB automatically mean we’ll see eight in the box and a terrible ground game?  Who really knows, but I don’t think so.  Historically we’ve still been able to move the ball on the ground even without a great passing game.  Obviously a better passing game equates to more yards on the ground though and that would be really what we want.

If Graham comes back to his pre-injury form, Bennett plays at the level he did in the spring and Shell contributes we’ll have a good, if not very good, running game with Sunseri back there.  If Sunseri can regain the confidence and composure he had in 2010, with a less porous OL,  then that’s all the better.

May 3, 2012

Coach Paul Chryst is still a relatively blank canvas. Sure he’s been an outstanding Offensive Coordinator, but we have no idea how he will translate to being the head coach. We can project. We can believe. We can hope. But we don’t know.

Neither does anyone else. And one of the primary time-killers in the spring and summer months for college football media are lists. Best coaches, best hires, best players by position, etc. Then you can break them down by conference.

That’s where we are at right now. Lists.

Athlon, usually one of the first-to-the-market publishers of preview guides has a rather bizarre ranking of the Big East Coaches. Why is it bizarre? Consider that it includes the present members for the upcoming season, but also tosses the future members as well. This despite being a list just for this year. That means it is a list of 15 coaches rather than 8. Er… I realize expansiopocolypse can be confusing and convoluted, but this just seems silly.

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May 2, 2012

Now that the 2012 spring practices are in the books the staff has turned their full attention to ‘boots on the ground’ recruiting for the 2013 season.  Some PITT fans have been lamenting a perceived late start Chryst has gotten in this area but I’ll say that is akin to an urban myth as shown below.

As of yesterday, May 2nd, Chryst has received commitments to play football for PITT from four players; TE Scott Orndoff (verballed 3/18), OL Aaron Reese (4/14), DE Shakir Soto (4/21) and OL Dan Samuelson (4/25).  Note that Orndoff is the 16th ranked TE in the nation and Soto is the #2 ranked DE in PA (Rivals).

With this, Chryst has gotten more commitments before May 1st that we have had in many years, excluding prep school kids who had verballed the year before.  Here are how many kids we had commit each year before June 1st:

13 – 4   PC (4 so far)
12 – 1   TG
11 – 1   DW
10 – 2   DW
09 – 0   DW
08 – 2   DW
07 – 2   DW
06 – 3   DW
05 – 3   DW

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