Anytime a Pitt team loses, pretty much any sport — football, basketball, intramural frisbee golf on Flagstaff Hill — there’s this public rush to pull down the bright red lever and let the sirens wail.
Sorry, not feeling it.
Not on this sunny Saturday afternoon at Heinz Field, anyway.
“This hurts,” James Conner was speaking in the softest of tones shortly after the Panthers flopped in the second half, fell hard to Iowa, 24-20, and failed to open the season 4-0. “And now we know this feeling. We don’t want to feel it anymore. We want to change this program.”
I think they will. Call me crazy or burn a couch in my front lawn — oh, wait, that’s another school — but what I witnessed over the course of this game was what should have been been expected of an undefeated team that also had gone mostly unchallenged to this point: Their strengths remained strengths, right up until the opponent wised up, sharpened up and attacked the weaknesses.
Best place to start is the defensive secondary.
Kirk Ferentz, Iowa’s traditionally traditional coach, decided to go all guns blazing after a group with two sophomores and a freshman taking regular snaps. It was the smartest move anyone made all day. Neither of the Hawkeyes’ quarterbacks, Jake Rudock and then C.J. Beathard after a halftime injury switch, was anything special. And not one of their wide receivers had more than two catches. But it didn’t matter. Ferentz kept pumping the ball downfield play after play after play in hopes of either a fortunate grab or a flag. And to his credit, that approach produced tide-turning completions of 62 and 44 yards, as well as an 80-20 edge in penalty yards.
“I don’t think we’d been tested like that, certainly not in that way,” Paul Chryst replied to my question on that topic. “Obviously, we have to do a better job playing the deep ball. We’ve got to correct it. We’ve got to clean it up because there’s more to come.”
Better believe it. Ray Vinopal, the secondary’s lone senior and defensive captain, said the Panthers expected this after beginning to get exposed last week at Florida International:
Vinopal’s reference to a teammate there was to freshman Avonte Maddox, who was beaten on that 62-yarder by Damond Powell impressively pulling the ball in with one arm. And that’s instructive because, in Grade 1 of secondary school, the defender is taught to tug on the jersey and take the flag rather than concede the big play.
Maddox, you’d hope, will learn.
All of the Panthers, you’d hope, will learn.
Because breaking down this secondary’s performance, as both Chryst and Vinopal suggested, was about the same as that of the collective: They were right there, they could have made the right play, and they just didn’t.
Flipping the flipcard to the offense, Chad Voytik’s day might also been seen as instructive: At the half, he was 12 of 14 for 130 yards, and his scramble-to-the-left, across-the-body, 23-yard flick to Kevin Weatherspoon set up the Pitt field goal that took a 17-7 lead into the locker room. He wasn’t great, but then, he doesn’t need to be great in this offense. It’s as well as he’d played collegiately, even more composed than in the first half up at Boston College, and it was as bright a sign as any to that stage.
And then, in the second half, with Iowa ramping up its pressure on James Conner up front even as it double-teamed Tyler Boyd all over creation, Voytik started forcing plays that weren’t there. He went 7 of 15 with a game-ending pick.
“Nothing changed,” Voytik insisted. “Our play-calling didn’t change. Their defense didn’t change that much. We just didn’t execute. That’s all there was to it.”
Voytik’s most egregious error was failing to spread the ball around, as he’d done effectively in the first half. So by game’s end, while Boyd had 10 catches for 153 yards, no one else had as many as Manasseh Garner’s three. And most confounding, the tight end, J.P. Holtz, again was ignored, only this time completely. He wasn’t even targeted once.
“That’s just how the plays went,” Voytik said to that latter point.
But it isn’t good enough. And Voytik, you’d hope, will learn.
Conner, of course, is the biggest cog. And all he was missing from his first half, in which he bruised Iowa for 102 yards, was striking a Heisman pose after each first down. He looked no less unstoppable than against Delaware, BC or FIU.
Until he was. Conner wound up with a decidedly mortal 157 yards on 29 carries, including a critical no-gain on Pitt’s last real chance to retake the lead.
Ferentz acknowledged additional second-half focus on Conner — “If you’re playing Pitt, you better know who he is” — but Conner, like Voytik, faulted basic execution:
That’s really it. And this is why I can’t get all worked up over this one. Pitt outgained Iowa, 435-311, and lost. Pitt got mostly strong showings from their stars and lost. Pitt faced a blah non-conference foe from the Big Ten and lost. They fell a drive short.
No reason to picture that drive going over some cliff.
September 20, 2014
Column: Pitt’s problems don’t run too deep
by Dejan Kovacevic • Columns • Pitt
James Conner bursts away from the Iowa defense for some of his 157 yards Saturday. — PETE MADIA / PITT ATHLETICS
DEJAN KOVACEVIC, DK ON PITTSBURGH SPORTS
Anytime a Pitt team loses, pretty much any sport — football, basketball, intramural frisbee golf on Flagstaff Hill — there’s this public rush to pull down the bright red lever and let the sirens wail.
Sorry, not feeling it.
Not on this sunny Saturday afternoon at Heinz Field, anyway.
“This hurts,” James Conner was speaking in the softest of tones shortly after the Panthers flopped in the second half, fell hard to Iowa, 24-20, and failed to open the season 4-0. “And now we know this feeling. We don’t want to feel it anymore. We want to change this program.”
I think they will. Call me crazy or burn a couch in my front lawn — oh, wait, that’s another school — but what I witnessed over the course of this game was what should have been been expected of an undefeated team that also had gone mostly unchallenged to this point: Their strengths remained strengths, right up until the opponent wised up, sharpened up and attacked the weaknesses.
Best place to start is the defensive secondary.
Kirk Ferentz, Iowa’s traditionally traditional coach, decided to go all guns blazing after a group with two sophomores and a freshman taking regular snaps. It was the smartest move anyone made all day. Neither of the Hawkeyes’ quarterbacks, Jake Rudock and then C.J. Beathard after a halftime injury switch, was anything special. And not one of their wide receivers had more than two catches. But it didn’t matter. Ferentz kept pumping the ball downfield play after play after play in hopes of either a fortunate grab or a flag. And to his credit, that approach produced tide-turning completions of 62 and 44 yards, as well as an 80-20 edge in penalty yards.
“I don’t think we’d been tested like that, certainly not in that way,” Paul Chryst replied to my question on that topic. “Obviously, we have to do a better job playing the deep ball. We’ve got to correct it. We’ve got to clean it up because there’s more to come.”
Better believe it. Ray Vinopal, the secondary’s lone senior and defensive captain, said the Panthers expected this after beginning to get exposed last week at Florida International:
Vinopal’s reference to a teammate there was to freshman Avonte Maddox, who was beaten on that 62-yarder by Damond Powell impressively pulling the ball in with one arm. And that’s instructive because, in Grade 1 of secondary school, the defender is taught to tug on the jersey and take the flag rather than concede the big play.
Maddox, you’d hope, will learn.
All of the Panthers, you’d hope, will learn.
Because breaking down this secondary’s performance, as both Chryst and Vinopal suggested, was about the same as that of the collective: They were right there, they could have made the right play, and they just didn’t.
Flipping the flipcard to the offense, Chad Voytik’s day might also been seen as instructive: At the half, he was 12 of 14 for 130 yards, and his scramble-to-the-left, across-the-body, 23-yard flick to Kevin Weatherspoon set up the Pitt field goal that took a 17-7 lead into the locker room. He wasn’t great, but then, he doesn’t need to be great in this offense. It’s as well as he’d played collegiately, even more composed than in the first half up at Boston College, and it was as bright a sign as any to that stage.
And then, in the second half, with Iowa ramping up its pressure on James Conner up front even as it double-teamed Tyler Boyd all over creation, Voytik started forcing plays that weren’t there. He went 7 of 15 with a game-ending pick.
“Nothing changed,” Voytik insisted. “Our play-calling didn’t change. Their defense didn’t change that much. We just didn’t execute. That’s all there was to it.”
Voytik’s most egregious error was failing to spread the ball around, as he’d done effectively in the first half. So by game’s end, while Boyd had 10 catches for 153 yards, no one else had as many as Manasseh Garner’s three. And most confounding, the tight end, J.P. Holtz, again was ignored, only this time completely. He wasn’t even targeted once.
“That’s just how the plays went,” Voytik said to that latter point.
But it isn’t good enough. And Voytik, you’d hope, will learn.
Conner, of course, is the biggest cog. And all he was missing from his first half, in which he bruised Iowa for 102 yards, was striking a Heisman pose after each first down. He looked no less unstoppable than against Delaware, BC or FIU.
Until he was. Conner wound up with a decidedly mortal 157 yards on 29 carries, including a critical no-gain on Pitt’s last real chance to retake the lead.
Ferentz acknowledged additional second-half focus on Conner — “If you’re playing Pitt, you better know who he is” — but Conner, like Voytik, faulted basic execution:
That’s really it. And this is why I can’t get all worked up over this one. Pitt outgained Iowa, 435-311, and lost. Pitt got mostly strong showings from their stars and lost. Pitt faced a blah non-conference foe from the Big Ten and lost. They fell a drive short.
No reason to picture that drive going over some cliff.
And hey, Akron awaits.
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