Pitt Panther Prowl

Turning the Corner

The funny thing about football, both college and pro, is that the season doesn’t really come into focus until eight or nine games have been played.  It is easy to write one team off early in the season with a slow start while crowning another team before enough games have been played.  But it really does take a while to get the bigger picture.

At the beginning of the season, losses to East Carolina and Colorado appeared to show that WVU was going to be terrible this year.  While they certainly haven’t been the Mountaineers of old, they have proven to be a decent team still.  If anything, the season has shown that they are talented, but that they lack coaching (welcome to the world of the Panther fan).

At the same time, people mocked Pitt’s win over Iowa.  Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t think that Iowa is a great team.  But they did just beat the 9-0 State Penner’s who were supposed to play for the national championship.  Likewise, of the three undefeated teams coming into last weekend, PSU certainly had the easiest road to finishing undefeated.  Yet they lost to a middle of the road team while Texas Tech and Alabama beat good teams.

What becomes clear at this point in the season is that some teams are headed in the right direction while others are heading the wrong way.  Final records or win-loss margins don’t always give an adequate demonstartion of that.  It is important to see what a team does against who, and at what point of the season do they do it.

Coming into the season, most of us thought that Pitt needed to finish at least 8-4 to be considered a success.  After losing the first game to a weak team, many doubted that we would even finish over .500.  The team got better each week, but didn’t really look convincing probably until the Navy game.  This led to more speculation that the team still wasn’t turning the corner as we had hoped.

Next thing you know, we are 5-1, despite a loss to Bowling Green and some ugly wins against Buffalo and Syracuse.  Somehow, it didn’t feel like the team was  5-1 based on what we had seen.  Yet the fact remained that we had beaten South Florida on the road, and had dominated a Navy team that embarrassed us at home last year.  Things seemed to be coming together nicely.

Then that pesky Rutgers game came along and Pitt’s defense looked like they hadn’t played a game this season.  From 5-1 and riding high to 5-2 and the season looked to be over for many.  Adding insult to injury was the fact that Bill Stull (QB) and Rob Hauser (C) went down with injuries.  With Notre Dame coming up on the schedule, such a loss preceding that game, and some key injuries, things looked bleak indeed.

Two games later, Pitt is 7-2, in the driver’s seat in the Big East, and absolutely obliterated a Louisville team that has given Pitt trouble since joining the conference.  Between the Notre Dame and Louisville games, two things really became apparent.  First, Pitt’s coaching has coming a long way.  The coaches have opened things up and placed the outcome of the games in the hands of the tremendous talent on the field instead of shackling them with conservative play calling.  And second, Pitt actually has a solid and talented team that can overcome adversity and make plays regardless of what the opposing team’s game plan is.

For example, how many people believed Pat Bostick could beat ND on the road?  I said that if Shady played well and our defense showed up, all we needed from Bostick was to not lose us the game.  Turns out, he managed to keep us in the game, and our playmakers made the big plays happen.

Against Louisville, everybody knew that the Cardinals were going to stack the box on LeSean McCoy.  McCoy rushed for a career low 43 yards, yet Pitt won by 34 points.  The defense stepped up and played extraordinarily well, aside from one drive where Louisville scored.  And the offense changed their plan to exploit the openings in the passing game.  Even McCoy completed a pass, as well as scoring a TD out of the Wild Cat package.

Overall, these last two wins, added to the good wins over Navy and USF, have added up to show that Pitt has really turned a corner.  They are turning into a good team.  They are changing the perception that they can’t win big games or that they can’t blow anyone out.  And they are showing that they aren’t one-dimensional.  By stacking the box to stop Shady, opponents are simply opening things up for a solid passing game.

Pitt could just as easily lose any or all of their last three games, because they are all against good opponents.  But they could very well win all three of them.  Either way wouldn’t be a huge surprise.  But the way this team has been playing shows that they are definitely one of the best teams in the conference.  They can play with just about anyone.  They have given reason to expect wins instead of losses.

The bigger picture after nine games shows that this team at 7-2 is every bit as good as we thought they’d be coming into this season.  At 3-1 nobody believed that.  At 5-1 some of us did.  At 5-2, fewer did.  But now the bigger picture is coming into focus.  Part of that picture is how does the team respond to adversity such as injuries or a tough loss.  What we are seeing is that this team has great heart, tremendous talent, and apparently a pretty solid coaching staff.  They have given us reason to be excited.  Though it is a tough road ahead.