20 things I'm thinking about on this chilly Monday morning...
1. Pitt beat Duke on Saturday. Yep, 28-26. You only have to score one more point than your opponent, and the Panthers scored two. So they went above and beyond, achieving twice as much as they needed to in order to escape with a win, improving to 7-4 overall and 4-3 in the ACC.
Maybe we can just leave it at that, and the other 19 thoughts here will just be me complaining about my fantasy football team. Let me start with Dalvin Cook.
Okay, fine. I won't do it.
2. What is Pat Narduzzi’s most famous quote since he got the job as Pitt’s head coach? It has to be from his introductory press conference, and you probably know which one I mean.
“Hail to Pitt, I guess, right?”
That has to be it. Well, Narduzzi had a great callback to that - probably without knowing - on Saturday after the game when he was asked about carrying momentum into the final regular-season game.
“We’ve got momentum, I guess, right?”
Classic callback.
3. I have to say, I had roughly the same reaction as Narduzzi did. It’s tough to say there’s a lot of momentum coming out of a win like Saturday. When you have a game like that, with an inconsistent offense and a defense that gives up two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, it doesn’t exactly feel like momentum. It feels like barely hanging on in a game where you had every chance to win comfortably. It also feels like almost giving a game away.
4. That said, I’m sure Duke also feels like the game was given away, what with a dropped touchdown pass and a fumbled punt return and a curious two-point conversion decision. I understand the logic behind going for two when you score after trailing by 14; you either get the two and you can kick after your next touchdown for the win, or you miss the two and then make it on your next touchdown for the tie. That makes sense in a vacuum playing a non-specific defensive opponent. But Pitt’s defense is better than average, and I think you have to adjust for that. Either way, it was a bit of a wrapped gift for the Panthers, and both teams were certainly in the holiday spirit on Saturday.
5. When it comes to Pitt and momentum and whatever the next two games bring, I think it’s best to try to be as results-based as possible. Did they win or did they lose? At this point in the season, that’s ultimately what matters. I mean, that’s what matters all the time, but earlier in the year, you could spend a lot of time analyzing what happened and why a certain game had a certain result and extrapolate from the inner workings of the game and use those extrapolations to make predictions and assumptions about the remainder of the season.
Now? Just win. Pretty or ugly, convincing or discouraging. Embrace the chaos, hold on for dear life and try to come out on the other side with a win.
6. I said something earlier about Duke giving Pitt some gifts on Saturday (and Pitt returning the favor a few times). But Narduzzi had a quote along those lines in the post-game press conference that I thought was interesting.
“Things fell our way. Didn’t fall our way earlier. You know, an inch here, an inch there - we were close to winning those other ACC games.”
I won’t go into the What-If game - I did that plenty last week - but, you know, sometimes it helps to be lucky. And sometimes bad luck can cost you a game or two. Like three turnovers inside the opponent’s 30 or two missed field goals in a game that went to overtime; yes, you do have some ownership of those elements (don’t fumble; don’t miss field goals) and yes, good teams can overcome things like that. But it’s college football, where there are only a few truly elite teams who can overcome those kinds of mistakes, and for the most part, the teams that have successful seasons do so with a little bit of luck. There’s no shame in that.
7. You know what else needs a little bit of luck sometimes? A winning streak. In college football - the NFL, too, for that matter - it’s tough to win a bunch of games in a row. It just is. You have to either avoid mistakes altogether or play at a high enough level to overcome those mistakes if you want to string together more than three or four wins. It’s just not easy to do; eventually, you’ll have a slip-up or two that you can’t get past and it will cost you a game. If you’re going to put together a winning streak of, I don’t know, let’s say five in a row, at some point, you’re going to need some luck. You’re going to need to sneak out with a win that you maybe shouldn’t have gotten. And maybe that happened on Saturday.
8. A few weeks ago, a friend and I were at a local establishment on a Thursday night, and there was an NFL game on one TV and a college football game on another TV. As I watched the two - one with anything-can-happen excitement that borders on chaos; one with dull predictability - it occurred to me that maybe the reason college football is so much fun is because there are 131 teams and each has 85 scholarship players, whereas the NFL has 32 teams with 53 players. Do the math: that’s a lot more guys playing college than the pros, and inevitably that’s going to water down - or at least spread out - the talent level. So what happens is, you have enough talent gaps that the door is open for some element of chaos. Put another way, college football teams inevitably are going to put some subpar players on the field, and that’s going to open the door for just about anything to happen. Which makes it fun.
9. A few weeks ago, I convinced myself to stop waiting for this offense to turn the corner. “They are who they are,” I told myself, “so stop looking for that game it all gels and things work and they look like an effective Power Five offense.” But then they started improving. I thought the North Carolina game was an improvement from the Louisville game, the Syracuse game was an improvement from the UNC game and the Virginia game was an improvement from the Syracuse game. I started buying back in, thinking this offense just might be able to come together in the final half of the season.
Now, after Saturday’s showing, I’m back where I started. They are who they are. The success is sporadic. The flashes are fleeting. And the potential is likely to remain unrealized.
10. Anyway, back to Pitt-Duke. Here’s a weird stat: Duke and Pitt came into Saturday’s game as the ACC’s Nos. 2 and 4 rushing offenses, respectively. There was such an expectation for a run-run-run affair on Saturday that Narduzzi claimed the game might be over in two and a half hours, and I don’t think he was entirely joking; that’s what should happen when you put two run-heavy teams on the field together. So what happened? The game took three and a half hours as the two quarterbacks of the two run-first teams combined to throw 77 passes.
77 passes? From two running teams in freezing temperatures? Now I've seen everything.
Continued...
1. Pitt beat Duke on Saturday. Yep, 28-26. You only have to score one more point than your opponent, and the Panthers scored two. So they went above and beyond, achieving twice as much as they needed to in order to escape with a win, improving to 7-4 overall and 4-3 in the ACC.
Maybe we can just leave it at that, and the other 19 thoughts here will just be me complaining about my fantasy football team. Let me start with Dalvin Cook.
Okay, fine. I won't do it.
2. What is Pat Narduzzi’s most famous quote since he got the job as Pitt’s head coach? It has to be from his introductory press conference, and you probably know which one I mean.
“Hail to Pitt, I guess, right?”
That has to be it. Well, Narduzzi had a great callback to that - probably without knowing - on Saturday after the game when he was asked about carrying momentum into the final regular-season game.
“We’ve got momentum, I guess, right?”
Classic callback.
3. I have to say, I had roughly the same reaction as Narduzzi did. It’s tough to say there’s a lot of momentum coming out of a win like Saturday. When you have a game like that, with an inconsistent offense and a defense that gives up two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, it doesn’t exactly feel like momentum. It feels like barely hanging on in a game where you had every chance to win comfortably. It also feels like almost giving a game away.
4. That said, I’m sure Duke also feels like the game was given away, what with a dropped touchdown pass and a fumbled punt return and a curious two-point conversion decision. I understand the logic behind going for two when you score after trailing by 14; you either get the two and you can kick after your next touchdown for the win, or you miss the two and then make it on your next touchdown for the tie. That makes sense in a vacuum playing a non-specific defensive opponent. But Pitt’s defense is better than average, and I think you have to adjust for that. Either way, it was a bit of a wrapped gift for the Panthers, and both teams were certainly in the holiday spirit on Saturday.
5. When it comes to Pitt and momentum and whatever the next two games bring, I think it’s best to try to be as results-based as possible. Did they win or did they lose? At this point in the season, that’s ultimately what matters. I mean, that’s what matters all the time, but earlier in the year, you could spend a lot of time analyzing what happened and why a certain game had a certain result and extrapolate from the inner workings of the game and use those extrapolations to make predictions and assumptions about the remainder of the season.
Now? Just win. Pretty or ugly, convincing or discouraging. Embrace the chaos, hold on for dear life and try to come out on the other side with a win.
6. I said something earlier about Duke giving Pitt some gifts on Saturday (and Pitt returning the favor a few times). But Narduzzi had a quote along those lines in the post-game press conference that I thought was interesting.
“Things fell our way. Didn’t fall our way earlier. You know, an inch here, an inch there - we were close to winning those other ACC games.”
I won’t go into the What-If game - I did that plenty last week - but, you know, sometimes it helps to be lucky. And sometimes bad luck can cost you a game or two. Like three turnovers inside the opponent’s 30 or two missed field goals in a game that went to overtime; yes, you do have some ownership of those elements (don’t fumble; don’t miss field goals) and yes, good teams can overcome things like that. But it’s college football, where there are only a few truly elite teams who can overcome those kinds of mistakes, and for the most part, the teams that have successful seasons do so with a little bit of luck. There’s no shame in that.
7. You know what else needs a little bit of luck sometimes? A winning streak. In college football - the NFL, too, for that matter - it’s tough to win a bunch of games in a row. It just is. You have to either avoid mistakes altogether or play at a high enough level to overcome those mistakes if you want to string together more than three or four wins. It’s just not easy to do; eventually, you’ll have a slip-up or two that you can’t get past and it will cost you a game. If you’re going to put together a winning streak of, I don’t know, let’s say five in a row, at some point, you’re going to need some luck. You’re going to need to sneak out with a win that you maybe shouldn’t have gotten. And maybe that happened on Saturday.
8. A few weeks ago, a friend and I were at a local establishment on a Thursday night, and there was an NFL game on one TV and a college football game on another TV. As I watched the two - one with anything-can-happen excitement that borders on chaos; one with dull predictability - it occurred to me that maybe the reason college football is so much fun is because there are 131 teams and each has 85 scholarship players, whereas the NFL has 32 teams with 53 players. Do the math: that’s a lot more guys playing college than the pros, and inevitably that’s going to water down - or at least spread out - the talent level. So what happens is, you have enough talent gaps that the door is open for some element of chaos. Put another way, college football teams inevitably are going to put some subpar players on the field, and that’s going to open the door for just about anything to happen. Which makes it fun.
9. A few weeks ago, I convinced myself to stop waiting for this offense to turn the corner. “They are who they are,” I told myself, “so stop looking for that game it all gels and things work and they look like an effective Power Five offense.” But then they started improving. I thought the North Carolina game was an improvement from the Louisville game, the Syracuse game was an improvement from the UNC game and the Virginia game was an improvement from the Syracuse game. I started buying back in, thinking this offense just might be able to come together in the final half of the season.
Now, after Saturday’s showing, I’m back where I started. They are who they are. The success is sporadic. The flashes are fleeting. And the potential is likely to remain unrealized.
10. Anyway, back to Pitt-Duke. Here’s a weird stat: Duke and Pitt came into Saturday’s game as the ACC’s Nos. 2 and 4 rushing offenses, respectively. There was such an expectation for a run-run-run affair on Saturday that Narduzzi claimed the game might be over in two and a half hours, and I don’t think he was entirely joking; that’s what should happen when you put two run-heavy teams on the field together. So what happened? The game took three and a half hours as the two quarterbacks of the two run-first teams combined to throw 77 passes.
77 passes? From two running teams in freezing temperatures? Now I've seen everything.
Continued...
