Pitt Panther Prowl

Pitt Football Spring Camp- QB Comparison

The University of Pittsburgh starts their Spring Camp for football on March 25^th this year, and as that date is just around the corner, this is a good time to start talking about what we fans feel are our strengths and our areas to be improved for the 2008 squad. Dave Wannstedt has recruited well over the last three years and his players are just now coming into their own. Our team fielded a majority (33) of freshman and sophomores last year in the two-deep, and they are young pretty much across the board this season also. The team and staff are limited to 15 practices culminating in one scrimmage – which will be held on April 19^th at Heinz Field, actual time TBD. We hope to see the fans that can make it to the game actually go down and root for the PITT players this Spring Game. They need and deserve our support.

The Pitt Panther Prowl will run a series of posts up to and through Spring Camp, each highlighting a different area of the team and program. Remember, this is for the Spring Camp so we won’t be commenting on our great class of 2008 recruits until later in the summer.

Let’s start off with the Quarterbacks, who most believe was our glaring weakness last season. It all starts and ends at this position for the Panthers in 2008. With our excellent running game – which we will discuss in later posts - if PITT can get even an average threat of a passing game it should really open up our offense. We never had that last season. It’s vital that we go into September with this position settled and improved.

Our 2007 QB play was poor due to injuries and a lack of experienced depth at this position. We have three returning QBs who saw playing time last year, however each of them has questions regarding their ability to be successful at the D-1 level. Let’s look at them in the order they played last season.

Bill Stull (Jr) won the starting position out of camp last year and did well in his extremely limited playing time. He has the most roster time of all our QBs as he was backing up Tyler Palko in his first two years on the team. He has practiced with our offensive system for three years and should have a firm grasp of what is asked of him. But, he is coming off a major thumb injury on his throwing hand. He has to be healed to be back in competition, and if Stull isn’t 100 % healthy he might drop quickly down the depth chart. He completed 14 of 20 attempts for 177 yds with 1 TD and no interceptions.

Kevan Smith (rs So) is physically talented, perhaps the best of the bunch in that respect, but couldn’t handle the intricacies of the position in the short time he played. He looked overwhelmed at times, panicked because of it and thus was inconsistent in his play. He made some beautiful passes every so often, but not enough to offset his mistakes. There have been musings about Smith possibly moving to another position due to his physical attributes, but we most probably won’t see it happen prior to the Spring practices if at all. He completed 36 of 64 attempts for 415 yards with 1 TD with 4 interceptions.

Pat Bostick (So) has the most D-1 game experience after taking over for Smith in the fourth game of the season. He had a real ordeal when playing and while we give him credit for gutting it out as a true freshmen there are major concerns over his physical abilities – specifically his slowness afoot and his unorthodox throwing motion. The offensive coordinator, Matt Cavanaugh, was forced to pare the offensive game plan down to its bare bones to accommodate Bostick’s play, and that cost us options that we would have been able to execute with a more accomplished QB. Given that Bostick was a five star recruit, we feel projecting his future competency based on his play after being thrown in as a true freshman, and with a shortened pre-season camp due to personal issues, isn’t reasonable. But, should Stull or Cross step up and win the starting position, perhaps a redshirt year for Pat Bostick would be beneficial for his future career at PITT. In nine games he completed 155 of 252 attempts for 1500 yards with 8 TDs and 13 interceptions.

Due to the frustrating circumstances and poor results of our QB play last season, DW and staff reached out to the JuCo ranks and signed Greg Cross (Jr), a four star QB out of Fort Scott, KS who can run well and also throw the ball downfield. None of the other QBs seem to have that combined capability and soon we’ll see if he can live up to accolades he’s received from the coaching staff. One concern is how well he can adapt to a new offensive system in a higher level of competition. Some feel Cross is onboard to be a change of pace QB – to run the new “Wildcat” formation, and others feel he is expected to compete for the full time starting position.

Spring practice will show us few concrete things, specifically if Bostick has worked on his throwing motion in addition to losing excess weight as reported, whether Stull’s thumb injury has healed and if Cross can pass as well as we hope. However, we might have to wait until the Summer Camp to find out about Smith’s status as a QB. We have a four star QB in Tino Sunseri (Fr) of Pittsburgh Central Catholic coming aboard for the Summer Camp – but we feel it will be a cold day in Hell before DW plays another true freshman QB after what happened last season –look for Sunseri to redshirt.

So, here we have four players in the starting mix, all have certain strengths, but each also comes with real questions about their ability to perform. The one thing we can all agree on is that it’s pretty obvious that the competition for QB will be wide open going into the Spring Camp – and probably beyond into Summer Camp. At this point it’s safe to say there is no clear cut returning QB that has a lock on the position. But, it’s also safe to say that should PITT not be able to sort this out and get competent QB play in 2008 we can look forward to another second-rate season.