My wife and I were lucky enough to be at Clemson in 2016 to witness that miracle first hand, I'm sure many of you were as well, and many more watched it on TV.
First off, Clemson scored exactly the same number of points in both games, 42. That is curious.
Back then, our defense did just enough to win, and made some key plays in crucial situations to give PItt the chances they needed to pull off the upset. The D played OK last night as well. Holding Clemson to a respectable number of yards and forcing a good number of punts.
It was the difference in the offensive performance that doomed Pitt last night.
I remember the first game, Pitt came out really crisp. The O linemen were shifting all over the place, something we had never seen, and they did it without a single procedure penalty.
We unveiled the jet sweep as a new wrinkle and Henderson ran it will. This time, the jet sweep was stale and Clemson was ready for it. This year, our jet sweep was simply a run parallel to the line of scrimmage with not up field element.
Our offensive line in 2016 was much better than this year's version. Even though Clemson had a huge talent advantage on the D line, a team that would win the NC, Pitt's bigs held their own and gave Peterman time. This year, they were overwhelmed.
Our quarterback play in that game in 2016 was excellent. Peterman was poised and found open receivers for big plays. This year, Pickett was overwhelmed and made many poor throws and bad reads.
In 2016 we worked off the jet and hit shuffle passes to Aston and our TE for big plays. Aston was another secret weapon in the passing game, scoring 2 TD's. In this game, he was nothing more than an extra blocker, and we don't even have a competent pass receiving TE on this roster.
2016, Conner played with rage and would not be denied. Last night Ollison and Hall played well, but Clemson was laying for them on every play since Pitt was so one dimensional.
Last time, Pitt snuck up on Clemson. I'm sure Clemson took them lightly and their QB had a very bad game. Last night, no surprises, and Clemson had revenge on their minds.
I know Pitt won the Coastal, and that is fine and a nice accomplishment. But if anyone thinks that in any way portends to the future, I fear they are mistaken. Most of Narduzzi's best successes came with Chryst's recruits and Canada's offense.
Pitt's defense is arguably a tad better than Chryst's, and with a lot of key players being young, there is room for some optimism there.
However on offense going forward, especially next year, we're breaking in a brand new Oline with questionable pedigrees, two new running backs, we'll need to replace Aston, and find a TE. Our quarterback hasn't really grown this year, his field vision and decision making, and at times his accuracy have all been questionable even after playing 15 games. Big question marks there.
The OC doesn't seem to have the vision to scheme in creative ways like Canada was able to do.
But we'll see about all of that next year. This game turned out just about what I expected after watching our performance all year against the good teams.
We needed a perfect game, and some weapons that we'd never seen and some breaks on top of that. Unfortunately we got none of that.
First off, Clemson scored exactly the same number of points in both games, 42. That is curious.
Back then, our defense did just enough to win, and made some key plays in crucial situations to give PItt the chances they needed to pull off the upset. The D played OK last night as well. Holding Clemson to a respectable number of yards and forcing a good number of punts.
It was the difference in the offensive performance that doomed Pitt last night.
I remember the first game, Pitt came out really crisp. The O linemen were shifting all over the place, something we had never seen, and they did it without a single procedure penalty.
We unveiled the jet sweep as a new wrinkle and Henderson ran it will. This time, the jet sweep was stale and Clemson was ready for it. This year, our jet sweep was simply a run parallel to the line of scrimmage with not up field element.
Our offensive line in 2016 was much better than this year's version. Even though Clemson had a huge talent advantage on the D line, a team that would win the NC, Pitt's bigs held their own and gave Peterman time. This year, they were overwhelmed.
Our quarterback play in that game in 2016 was excellent. Peterman was poised and found open receivers for big plays. This year, Pickett was overwhelmed and made many poor throws and bad reads.
In 2016 we worked off the jet and hit shuffle passes to Aston and our TE for big plays. Aston was another secret weapon in the passing game, scoring 2 TD's. In this game, he was nothing more than an extra blocker, and we don't even have a competent pass receiving TE on this roster.
2016, Conner played with rage and would not be denied. Last night Ollison and Hall played well, but Clemson was laying for them on every play since Pitt was so one dimensional.
Last time, Pitt snuck up on Clemson. I'm sure Clemson took them lightly and their QB had a very bad game. Last night, no surprises, and Clemson had revenge on their minds.
I know Pitt won the Coastal, and that is fine and a nice accomplishment. But if anyone thinks that in any way portends to the future, I fear they are mistaken. Most of Narduzzi's best successes came with Chryst's recruits and Canada's offense.
Pitt's defense is arguably a tad better than Chryst's, and with a lot of key players being young, there is room for some optimism there.
However on offense going forward, especially next year, we're breaking in a brand new Oline with questionable pedigrees, two new running backs, we'll need to replace Aston, and find a TE. Our quarterback hasn't really grown this year, his field vision and decision making, and at times his accuracy have all been questionable even after playing 15 games. Big question marks there.
The OC doesn't seem to have the vision to scheme in creative ways like Canada was able to do.
But we'll see about all of that next year. This game turned out just about what I expected after watching our performance all year against the good teams.
We needed a perfect game, and some weapons that we'd never seen and some breaks on top of that. Unfortunately we got none of that.
