Welcome back my friends! Man was I happy to get that W. I'm sure we have a lot to discuss but here we go:
- I don't care how we looked or what the takeaways are but we won the game. Rivalry games are always close. It's why I don't really like playing them. We have more talent than them but we looked about even last night. Nothing will ever top 13-9 but we had more to lose than WVU tonight.
- Narduzzi is great. The ESPN comment was hysterical. I know that we question his game day decisions and sometimes recruiting but the truth is that this team is mentally tough and that is the difference in a game like this. Neve went through their minds that they were going to lose and the closed it out.
- I find it rich that the WVU coach is complaining about the refs. I thought they sucked and they sucked in favor of WVU. They deserve some credit on the overturns of targeting and the fair catch call was right, but illegal block on the defense? What in the hell is that. Glad it wasn't the difference.
- Another thing about the scheduling - this is a tough one to play first game of the year. Don't forget that when trying to form opinions about what we saw.
- I thought Slovis was fine. He looked a bit lost in the beginning but I noticed something I really liked about him. I don't think it was coincidence that we had so many big catch and runs. He threw the ball into the perfect spot on those plays and that was the good Slovis. The bad was taking bad sacks, looking indecisive, and air mailing a few throws. This was his first game at Pitt, I'm sure he was nervous. Lets' see what we get next week.
- I thought the line was mostly not good. I'm not sure if they just hadn't been hitting at full speed but their were a lot of pass pro issues and zero push up front on running plays.
- Hammond was obviously the star of the night and hopefully he's good to go for Tennessee. Izzy was at his best last year when he bounced runs to the outside when nothing was open in front of him. For whatever reason, he tried to pound his way through instead of taking advantage of his speed. Hopefully changes next game because we are going to need it.
- No Addison was very apparent last night and he is going to be my most hated Pitt player ever. However, I thought we had some good plays and I like that we are back to play action out of running formations. Wayne had the big game breaker and mufpfield came up big when we needed him. I just don't understand one target for Bart. Means - he didn't have a great game but you can see the raw talent is there. You see his drop on what should have been a TD bomb and wonder if that's what Narduzzi is talking about this week about being frustrated with the WRs. Honestly, I still have PTSD from a few years ago when we had multiple bad drops per game.
- It was really surprising to see anyone run on this team but I also think a lot of it was our young LBs being out of position. It can be cleaned up but I thought the secondary was great last night. All throws were contested and no one caught a ball bc they were wide open. In general, I thought our defense played well. We gave up 31 but if you take away the blocked punt its only 24, despite 400 yards. I thought Kamara was good for the fact that this was his first start. He lost contain a few times that lead to big runs but he'll learn. I also do not understand why Alexandre (hope he's ok) is playing over John Morgan. Morgan is clearly the better player and I thought Alexandre was headed inside. Dennis was great as always, including a big sack when we needed one. I thought Simon looked good as well.
- It's funny - before the pick 6 i said WVU got every conceivable break in the game. From recovering a fumble on their own goal line, to dropped Means bomb, to the play on the last WVU drive of the first half where the QB got hit and it ended up a third down conversion that turned into 3. This was a minimum 6 point swing. Then one of the most historic plays in backyard brawl history happened. A ball bounces off the hands from the guy that had 9 catches against us and goes to Devonshire for a pick 6. That will be one of the best plays we see in any rivalry and is up there with the Ryan Lewis pick against PSU. THIS IS THE PLAY YOU DREAM OF TO BE A HOMETOWN HERO. I know he went to Kentucky first but Duzz has really good relationships with kids, even the ones he loses and you got the absolute greatest play possible in that moment. And don't forget how all of our defense turned into willing blockers and a juke from devonshire.
- I don't like Izzy returning kicks. This is a player who's been hurt a lot. I'd rather have someone like Vincent Davis back there (any idea why he didn't play)?
