Pitt Panther Prowl

PITT FOOTBALL: SPRING GAME RECAP

Pitt had its annual Blue -Gold Game yesterday and with the exception of some strange mysterious scoring system, it was pretty much fun to watch.

As I was driving up from Maryland on Saturday morning - a beautiful day and a lovely drive through the central and western part of Pennsylvania - I was reflecting on what us PITT fans can expect from this sort of preseason scrimmage. My conclusion was not too much actually, but that won’t stop every PITT fan from having an opinion on what they see during the game.

Once I got down to the stadium I had a chance to meet with some new friends I’ve made through the PITT Message Boards and then sitting together, with their families (I went stag), was a real pleasure. Apparently there is a strong movement afoot to raise these young boys and girls up as Panther fans from young age. It reminded me very much of going to Pitt Stadium in the 1960’s to watch the games with my family, except a lot less booze. We all agreed on some subjects, agreed to disagree on others and basically came away somewhat happy about what we saw.

On a side note - I was impressed with the effort Steve Pederson and his staff put into the pregame activities. Walking through the parking lot was almost like game day, groups of fans tailgating and tossing footballs around, lots of laughter and just a good atmosphere. One interesting note about this: while walking through the parking lot I noticed a young man taking gulps of water out of a bottle and spitting it on the tarmac, over and over. I thought that was rude. As I walked by I was just about to say something when he turned and - LUCAS NIX! - I saw my life pass before my eyes. Actually he’s huge, and probably doesn’t know how lucky he is that I was in a good mood right then. So, I asked one of the guys I was with - Seamus Regan, a scrappy Irishman who is a Tae Kwon Do expert (I figured he’d be up for anything) - to go up and “tell that big guy to quit spitting”, but even at six years old Seamus was too smart to fall for it.

Back to football. Basically, we saw just what the coaches wanted us to see. But that’s fine, any live PITT football at this point is welcome. You can talk a subject to death over the off season, but discussing what we actually saw makes it so much more interesting.

The Prowler did a pretty comprehensive article on his impressions of the squad on Saturday - not a bad overview for someone who says he’s not a big football follower…but a good article, to which I’ll disagree on some points.

Regarding the subject most fans are concerned with, especially after the debacle of 2007, the QB play was pretty good all around. Each got some time under center with Stull being pulled early to keep injury free.

To me the key stat that jumped out regarding our QBs on Saturday was Bill Stull hitting six different receivers with his first six passes - you don’t think Cavanaugh was ecstatic about that? Plus Stull had the most intriguing post game quote…:

“My thumb’s not hurting anymore. I’m not going to get injured. I’m done thinking about all that stuff. It’s time to get some work done.”

…and shows that he’s doing just that - thinking about it.

All the QBs showed some good playmaking the other night, but nothing was so dramatic that, again IMO, changed the staff’s minds about the depth chart for training camp….

Stull

Bostick

Smith

Cross

…is what it looks like at this point. Smith will get more repetitions in summer camp due to his probably being the short term backup over the season, Bostick will be readied for a redshirt and Cross will get more opportunity to show what he can accomplish with his arm in the passing game. If Cross makes progress in the cerebral part of the QB position he might slide up to #2 behind Stull. Cross throws better than we were led to believe by the earlier media reports, but there is no way he’s capable of meeting the passing requirements as a QB in our Pro Set right now. And IMO not by September either, so I’ll look at him as out of the starter’s race.

However, I can see Cross coming in for both the Pro Set and the Wildcat as a change up and doing very well, especially if defenses will think he will only run…he was really fun to watch. That’s how I see us going into camp in a few months.

Bostick needs the year to work on being a better QB. He appeared to lock onto his primary receiver and that extended windup is almost as pronounced as last season from what I could see. Other QBs may have some tools which could compensate for that motion, I don’t think Bostick does right now. He looked leaner and moved a bit better, his passes seemed to have a bit more zip then as before, but four months of off season work just isn’t enough to overcome what I think needs to be done with his training. It looks more likely he’ll redshirt and that’s a good thing. A fine tuned Pat Bostick playing QB for us in his junior and senior years might be very productive.

At running back DW started McCoy to whet the fans appetite (and the NFL Channel’s who broadcast the game live) and then pulled him to safeguard our breadwinner from injury. McCoy looked every bit as good in his first and only series as we remember from last season. He made one run where it looked like he made a 90 degree course change with no loss of speed. He is pretty amazing to watch carrying the ball.

Shariff Harris is the rising stud RB and his efforts and production this spring will give Cavanaugh lots to think about over the summer. At first I was prepared to write that he’ll be our #2 RB in 2008, then had to rein my thinking in as I overlooked the fact that, in a west coast offense particularly, a RB has many more responsibilities then just carrying the ball. Blocking, outlet passes, etc…are all part of it. LaRod Stevens-Howling has shown he can handle that part of the game very well, and be productive carrying the ball. However, if the past holds the keys to the future, we’ll see LSH get banged up at some point. If that happens I think Harris comes into play rather then Kevin Collier.

So, this will be an very interesting battle in training camp - and one that might mean more than we realize right now if the unthinkable happens with our starting RB (you know what I mean, I’m not even going to put the words on paper).

Maurice “Mo” Williams played well at WR, caught seven passes, but had a couple missed balls also. Apparently DW wasn’t real happy with Mo’s play and when asked about his good production let it be known that catching the ball was just part of the WR’s job - Williams missed some down-field blocks.

“Dorin Dickerson”. Say it again. “Dorin Dickerson”. Pretty soon we PITT fans are going to have a nickname for him and be wondering why he’s not getting the ball more often. He played very well and showed the hand and body control of a much more experienced WR. He moved well after the catch also. More on him in later articles, but I’ll say right now that even though he’s gotten bigger over the last two years, there is no way is he sporting a tight end’s body. We’ll see him at H-Back and WR in the summer camp. This is good as the last thing we want Cavanaugh to think about is whether or not both Dickerson and Nate Byham play at the same time. Past examples have shown Cav tended to pull Byham on third downs - maybe he won’t be tempted so much this season. Boy, thinking about those two guys in the same offense, along with our other talent, makes thing look pretty bright.

As to the defense. Not much to report as we didn’t see it. Fields didn’t make a big impact, DeCicco did. Greg Williams is as fast as any other PITT defender and Romeus is still very good. The DL didn’t get to play any stunts so we couldn’t gauge how well the O line could handle it.

Really, it was hard to get any feel for the defense when it was so obviously held back from doing anything.

One last note:

I had a chance to spend some time prior to the game with Ron Byham - Nate Byham’s grandfather. It was a real pleasure and I came away from our meeting and conversation not surprised a bit that Nate has turned into the type of young man he is. Ron raised Nate from birth practically, and the pride Ron shows when discussing his grandson is just so evident. Plus, Ron’s a remarkable guy in his own right and I’ll just say it was my pleasure to make his acquaintance.