Let’s get back on the football track here.
Post-Gazette has a few interesting articles – this one has been repeated every single spring since I have been following Pitt football – the defense is ahead of the offense this spring. Honestly, I can’t remember one time when the reverse was said.
“Two weeks ago, on the third practice of spring football camp, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi made an announcement to his team just before their first 11-on-11 action in full pads.
“Stay off the quarterback!”
That advisory might have said as much about the value of sophomore signal-caller Kenny Pickett as it did about the gap between Pitt’s defense and offense at this point. As the Panthers enter a long weekend of three days off Friday through Sunday, they do so with one side of the ball ahead of the other.
Damn right – stay off the f’ing QB!!
That is one kid we absolutely cannot afford to lose due to injury. Everyone else on the roster is expendable – Pickett is not. This bit is interesting – and the first admission in mainstream media I can point to where a writer has said something that has been written on here a hundred times and that is this: Narduzzi’s defenses have sucked even with his rep…(emphasis mine).
I mean, we had a blitz period today that was a little scary just because of how fast they are on defense right now. They know what they’re doing, and it’s not easy to pick ’em up for an offensive line that’s as young as ours is right now.”
That all makes sense, and it’s a good sign for a defense that still hasn’t consistently lived up to expectations since Narduzzi took over the program, what with his reputation as an elite coordinator at Michigan State. When turned loose in March, a group of “crazed dogs” — as senior linebacker Quintin Wirginis described them — with 130 combined career starts, plus a bevy of young players trying to avoid falling down the depth chart, should be able to terrorize an offense searching for new answers.
I would have dropped the “consistently” above – they have been across the board bad save a few games. And the fact that they are blowing by the OL in scrimmages isn’t at all hard to believe – the problem will come when our opponents are doing the exact same thing. And it’s going to happen folks – the only light at the end of the tunnel will be what I call “Pitt’s Hope” and that is that pre-season we know the OL will start off in trouble then we “hope” a light goes on and they mesh toward the second half of the year.
Sometimes it works – sometimes it doesn’t, like last season.
pittpov.com 