That was not my point. Do you want a lethal injection or firing squad? Either way - Pitt's defense was getting destroyed by Okie State.
Lack of talent don't blame PN yet
- Thread starter revampedpanthers
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Which I was agreeing with, but took it the next step. We suck against the run this year and we weren't much better last year.
I know this sounds absurd but early on the defense had chances to stop Ok St and force some punts. The missed tackles were absurd. Ok St was 9-9 on 3rd down conversions in the first half. The defense could not get off the field on 3rd down. Early on, they did a good job on 1st and 2nd down. Also, the DBs were in position on a number of plays to make a big play, bat the ball down, etc.. and they simply didn't make the play. Sometimes it was due to Rudolph putting the ball exactly where it needed to be(he is a stud) but it was also due to the DB's turning around way too late. Our DBs seem to be in good to decent position most of the time but they NEVER find the ball until it is too late.
The DLine and LBs had a number of chances at a sack on 3rd down and missed a tackled on Rudolph allowing him to keep play alive and extend drives. This happened more than I care to ever watch again. Early, we actually got some pressure on Rudpolph only to fail to make the sack by missing the tackle.
2nd Drive for Ok St we had them pinned at their own 1 on a 3rd and 13 and we let them run for a first down. They basically were conceding the drive and just trying to get some room to punt the ball. Instead our LB's miss about 8 tackles and they rush for a 1st down. Being down 7-0 with the ball a mid field is a big difference to being down 14-0 and being totally demoralized with no momentum. Not saying Pitt wins and Ok St probably still breaks the game open but I thought that play was a huge turning point in the game staying competitve and it turning into a blowout.
Is that scheme? Maybe, but I am not Buddy Ryan so I normally stay away from stuff like criticizing a coach who has a history of success running defenses. In other words, he knows more about football than I can ever dream about so it doesn't make much sense to me to criticize his scheme. It is his job on the line so I find it hard to believe he is not playing the best scheme he feels gives them the best chance at success.
Now, where I will be critical of them is development of players. Yeah they are still young especially on Defense, but recruiting needs to improve, development needs to improve, tackling needs to improve, etc...
The DLine and LBs had a number of chances at a sack on 3rd down and missed a tackled on Rudolph allowing him to keep play alive and extend drives. This happened more than I care to ever watch again. Early, we actually got some pressure on Rudpolph only to fail to make the sack by missing the tackle.
2nd Drive for Ok St we had them pinned at their own 1 on a 3rd and 13 and we let them run for a first down. They basically were conceding the drive and just trying to get some room to punt the ball. Instead our LB's miss about 8 tackles and they rush for a 1st down. Being down 7-0 with the ball a mid field is a big difference to being down 14-0 and being totally demoralized with no momentum. Not saying Pitt wins and Ok St probably still breaks the game open but I thought that play was a huge turning point in the game staying competitve and it turning into a blowout.
Is that scheme? Maybe, but I am not Buddy Ryan so I normally stay away from stuff like criticizing a coach who has a history of success running defenses. In other words, he knows more about football than I can ever dream about so it doesn't make much sense to me to criticize his scheme. It is his job on the line so I find it hard to believe he is not playing the best scheme he feels gives them the best chance at success.
Now, where I will be critical of them is development of players. Yeah they are still young especially on Defense, but recruiting needs to improve, development needs to improve, tackling needs to improve, etc...
Great points - you can draw up a perfect scheme, but the player in the right position still needs to make the play.
Correct - Most of them are not good enough. Whitehead cleaned up a lot of problems as a Fr. It is imperative that he plays at that level or even a little better.
I think that is clearly part of it and a number of factors contribute to that statement of the players not being good enough.
Lack of development
Injuries
Youth
Average Recruiting
Discipline(dismissed a number of kids including multiple starters, suspended other starters like Whitehead, Wirginis)
You can't blame PN for the lack of talented Seniors on this roster, but you can blame him for the lack of promising underclassmen and what is looking like his worst recruiting class yet in 2018. How is it possible that Paris Ford can't help a team that gave up 50 in the first half?!
pittdan77
Athletic Director
What does the "right position" entail though? There weren't a lot of games that weren't competitive through all 4 quarters last year (thanks to the offense). But one that wasn't was the Miami game. Go look at the first play of that game. Miami throws a screen pass to the slot receiver. PN is asking the safety to come from ten yards away and make a play in space on a guy that was a top 5 receiver coming out of high school and is currently on an NFL roster. The safety is in position, but so what? It's like saying I'm in perfect position to stop Shaq from dunking the basketball. Even if I'm in the right position, you're asking too much of me.
What PN is asking is a difficult task for even the best safeties in college football. The play ends up going for 15 to 18 yards because that's just what is going to happen when asking a player to make that play. And Miami didn't stop until they scored 50something.
Those are the issues I'm seeing with the scheme. It trades simplicity for Herculean demands of the secondary.
You realize he practiced hardly at all during camp due to getting cleared so late? He might have had a handful of practices.
But it isn't a perfect scheme if you have guys who can't execute it in year 3.
He only has 2 full recruiting classes. The players that sign in Feb. will be his third full class. You are looking at guys who House recruited, and then of course you had the gap between when Chryst was on his way out and Narduzzi coming in.
Because he most likely is a "Partial Academic Qualifier" meaning he can enter school, join the team he just can't play. Narduzzi is doing him a PR favor buy saying he is going to Redshirt because he started late. Do you have any intuition at all?
We are only 3 games into the season. We will have a more accurate assessment come Dec.
Pitt stinks and the cupboard looks bare for the future. One marginally marquee recruit per year is not gonna cut it.
Obviously there is something wrong with that type of expectation. Because Pitt will continue to lose its fan base. The more 6 wins to 8 wins in the future the less fans will come. If your a true Pitt fan. You better hope Pitt can do a lot better than hoping to win 8 games max. Or there will be 15,000 fans in a 70,000 seat stadium watching mediocrity at its finest.
Pitt has to decide what it wants. I really believe they are at a crossroads. Many of the 30 G loyal fans are now actually wavering, that's not good. So, it's either grow the product, try to win, or like poster said, 17g is not long off. I think many are at their ends with this and have better things to do with their time if their is no end game
Pitt is an 8-5 type program. That is the reality. Heck, ND's average record the last 20 years is 7-6/8-5. Pitt fans with the attitude you described are absolutely nuts.
No you said the best we could ever hope for is a 8 win season. Which is ridiculous
I started a thread with this projection. If Narduzzi has the following records in his first 5 years. What are you talking about? I never said Pitt couldn't win more than 8 games.
8-5
8-5
5-7
8-5
9-4
Meyer won all 12 games in his first season at OSU... Luke Fickell, the head coach the previous year, won 6. If you are a great coach, you find a way to win with what you got ( if you have solid talent). A mediocre coach will claim to need at least several years to get all of his own recruits and then he'll make up some other excuse when he fails to win more games after 3 or 4 years. Fickell couldn't even win half of his games with superior talent. Urban proved he could win them all and do it right away.
Narduzzi probably should have won more games with the talent he had last year. His defense easily cost them a few games. But at least he didn't have any losses to teams that were terrible. Now PN is in an awkward position where he should be hitting at least the 9 or 10 win mark this season to prove he is the real deal. Yet, unfortunately for him, this team clearly looks much less talented and therefor less likely to win 8 games than last years team.
We shall see.
No one said that. Your reading comprehension is simply horrendous.
Also, even if pitt got to the point where they averaged 9 and 10 wins a year, people would call for PN to be replaced with someone that capsule won NT's. Remember jamie Dixon, and how many in the fanbase wanted to push him out even ten years ago because he couldn't make final fours?
Just saw someone put on twitter that Pitt played 12 Freshmen and 6 Sophomores on Defense alone Saturday.
So going back to the discussion and the points I made early, that is a whole lot of extremely young players getting a lot of PT.
So going back to the discussion and the points I made early, that is a whole lot of extremely young players getting a lot of PT.
Who cares? Then be a better coach. Coaches do it all the time, all over the country. They win with other people's players. Saban went 12-0 in his 2nd year and almost beat the Tim Tebow UF dynasty to win the SEC. The 3rd year they won the National Championship. No one expects those actual results, but that was winning at a level far above the previous coach, with their players, in the exact same time period.
Stop making excuses for "the talent left by Chryst" when that talent is largely why the team had success offensively.
Regardless of that, if he doesn't start recruiting a lot better on both sides of the ball and actually getting top kids on the field, we won't get anything better, no matter how many years he has.
This is Pitt. We are not Alabama or Florida or any other program that has a supportive fanbase and administration. Pitt is the equivalent to BC, GT. Time for a reality check.
A lot of teams play a lot of young players. Especially when you are running backups out there because you are getting absolutely clobbered at half time. It would be best if we could beat the crap out of teams like YSU and get them reps then. Of course we almost lost and it had nothing to do with "saving the playbook" for PSU. Maybe the biggest problem is: It doesn't look like any of them are all that promising from last year or early this year. On offense, none of the WRs or RBs are getting legitimate time, despite the fact the upper classmen aren't very good. Why can't these great recruits HCPN and staff have brought in playing behind Arajuo-Lopes? Why are they playing behind Darrin Hall. I'm sorry, but if our SO or FR HCPN recruits can't beat those guys out, it isn't likely they are going to be difference makers. Why can't Chris Clark beat out Rutgers 3rd string TE? Is Maurice Ffrench really the best WR HCPN has brought in? Are Davis and Sibley not good enough to average 3ypc?
At Memphis, Mike Norvell is winning; Applewhite doesn't coach at Memphis
That has nothing to do with a "supportive fanbase". Nick Saban didn't go 12-0 in his 2nd year at Alabama because the fans showed up to the games. He went 12-0 because he is a great coach and he immediately supplemented the talent he was given and coached to win.
The same is true of Urban Meyer adding 6 wins at OSU his first season.
And, like it or not, the same is true of James Franklin winning 18 games (after they won 4 TOTAL the two years before he got there) in his 2nd and 3rd years at Vandy and 11 games his 3rd year at PSU.
Good coaches win. They don't have to wait 5 years to get "their guys".
Well, it is Norvell, but that is a different situation where the previous coach had been quite successful before leaving, not an example of a coach leaving/being fired after poor performance.
If you do not think a support fanbase plays a significant part of why a program is successful, then you are dumber than a box of rocks. Facility upgrades, paying off players, etc. are part of this. Why do you think Pitt landed all those great players in the 70's and 80's? What about Calipari in the 80's?
Trust me, I mostly agree with you with a few exceptions.
Clearly the blowout contributed to having so many young guys playing on Saturday.
I am just saying that overall this is still a young team that counts on some younger players.
I don't necessarily agree that a lot of teams play so many young guys especially if they want to be good. Yes the blue blood programs who get their pick of kids certainly do but programs like Pitt need to get kids they can develop over a 2-3 year period to have them be good contributors on the back end.
But as I mentioned earlier in this thread there are a number of factors contributing to the lack of success and coaching, mediocre recruiting, lack of development are all part of it. So I am certainly not giving the Coaches a free pass. They are definitely part of the current issues.
The fact you can't read what I wrote might indicate you are dumber than a box of rocks.
Vanderbilt had 4 wins in the 2 seasons before James Franklin took over. He won 18 games in his 2nd and 3rd season. That had absolutely nothing to do with "fanbase support". It had to do with them getting a very good coach.
Urban Meyer go 12-0 in his 1st year, after Luke Fickell won 6 game, had nothing to do with "fanbase support". It had to do with them getting a very good coach.
Nick Saban going 12-0 in his 2nd year, after Mike Shula was 26-23 over 4 seasons, had nothing to do with "fanbase support". It had to do with them getting a very good coach.
Ok. This is HCPNs 3rd year. Who are the 2nd and 3rd year players who look very good?
I agree with the sentiment that this is a young team and was bound to be a bit of a step back from last years team (which should have won 10 games). I don't think you can't just assume this team will take a big leap forward though. That will be dependent on developing a lot of average talent that we haven't seen many promising signs from.
But, that is kind of the problem. In the 3rd year, it really shouldn't matter. Even if the 2015 and 2016 classes weren't great, the coaches should be developing that talent to be very good players, if development and coaching (I think we can all admit it isn't recruiting with the best of them) are supposed to be their best attributes. So, from that 2015 class, who has developed? Quad Henderson is clearly the best player, but he is not a very good WR and hasn't even developed there this year. He is a fantastic return man, but that is it. That isn't much development IMO. Jordan Whitehead came in and was our best defensive player his FR year. He regressed in a big way last year and can't even play ATM because of his pot suspension. That isn't much development IMO. After that? It is pretty damn thin. Brightwell is probably the guy who developed the most, but he shouldn't really be a starting LB for a good team. The rest of the class has some guys who play, but they are below average P5 players with Dane Jackson seemingly the only one with a shot to be something better. In 2016, Maurice French has been the most impactful. A few DL were promising, but either aren't getting on the field (despite a pretty bad group ahead of them) or aren't looking very good when they are out there.
That's right. NORVELL and he was not really on most radar few years back. He is doing good
