Let’s start putting our thought about the upcoming game into winners, losers and scores.  As I wrote yesterday this is a tough one for me to try to figure out.  So what I’ll do personally is default back to what I felt about the team before the season started – our strengths and weaknesses.

First off for me is that I wrote our Quarterback was an upgrade and that our Defensive Line would be one also.  I still believe that and think those will be our strong points on Saturday.

I stated our Defensive backs would be a downgrade and that our OL would be a big downgrade.  Nothing I have seen has convinced me otherwise so far – pushing the Albany defenders off the LOS is one thing, having this OL do it against P5 schools is totally different.  So I believe those two units will be our weak spots.  QB Trace McSorley, his receivers and the PSU’s front seven defense are going to take advantages there.

We underestimate what high quality talent does with a team.  I don’t think our starting 22 is all that much more talented than it was at this time last year with a few exceptions – Pickett stands out there. This will be his first true test with coaches and fans’ realistically high expectations for him.  Miami was a great game but the expectation pressure wasn’t really on him that game like it is now and will be tomorrow.  He’ll do well but it may not be enough.

So we’ll be on the short end of the stick pure talent wise out on the field of play against PSU.  Because of that I think we’ll see a relative lower scoring game on our part tomorrow.  Tho odds have leveled out to Pitt getting between 8.5 and 10 points.  That sounds about right to me but I think PSU adds a field goal or two to push it up a bit.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed we can pull this one out (and we sure can)…but my head differs from my heart:

PSU – 33  Pitt – 21

Hey – I was wrong two years ago, could easily happen again.  I’m not nearly as good at predicting actual games as I am the broad strokes of the team and program.

What are your thoughts?  Comment with them then we’ll have a game thread going on starting at 7:45 PM tomorrow evening.

HTP!

Here are the all-important Game Notes… especially because it took me 20 minutes to find somewhere to buy a game program last Saturday. You might want to print out the rosters for the game.