The Downside - Pitt | Syracusefan.com

The Downside - Pitt

SWC75

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- We came out slinging from the “empty backfield”. It illustrated the limitations of the empty backfield. The quarterback has no protection and all he can do is “throw darts” to the first guy who looks open. It’s a formation that limits you to short passes- unless you send your quarterback on a roll-out to avoid the rush, which means he has to throw on the run, which makes it hard to throw accurately far downfield. Pat Narduzzi devised a blitz designed to tear up the empty set and it did so. Dungey got sacked three times for 20 yards lost and was forced into some bad throws until the second half adjustments got him back on track.

- I loved the adjustments, especially the throws to Pierce over the middle. But I kept wondering when we were going back to our bread and butter: Ismael and Phillips. Pitts’ concertation on them opened up the running game the passes to Pierce. They had to be shifting to stop those threats and it should have opened things up for our best options. We threw once down the stretch to Ismael and it produced what turned out to be the winning touchdown. But we could have done more of that. There’s still a sense that once we start doing something, we keep doing it beyond its effectiveness and are slow to exploit what it opens up.

- The shovel pass on 4th down was a terrible play call. The idea of a shovel pass is that the defense is going to spread out to cover other options so a pass to the middle might surprise them and leave the receiver with room to maneuver. On 4th and 1, everybody going to be in the box and the receiver is going to think he’s in grand central Station during the rush hour. it’s not even clear Pierce would have gotten the first down if he’s caught it. And it’s not a “Safe” play I it gets intercepted, which could easily have happened.

- We still make too many mistakes. Today they were primarily 5 yard penalties but they came at odd and critical times, out of time outs, on third or 4th downs, etc. Often it’s stupid things like lining up wrong or not getting off the field fast enough when being replaced.

- There were some strange no-calls when we seemed to have caught Pitt jumping or substituted. There were also some strange spots.

- Does the Clemson-Wake Forest score tell us about Clemson, or does it tell us about Wake
 
" The shovel pass on 4th down was a terrible play call."

Similar to the play that cost Seattle the Super Bowl a couple of years ago.
 
" The shovel pass on 4th down was a terrible play call."

Similar to the play that cost Seattle the Super Bowl a couple of years ago.
I really don't think it was a bad play call. Pierce had been a beast and that same play had worked twice before. I'd Dungey hadn't thrown it poorly-or if pierce had made the play-then it would have been a first down.
 
The bad early was Pitt was reading Dungey's eyes and he was staring down his receivers. ED got better and more comfortable as the game went on as he HAS to look off once in a while or at worst look the other way for a second and then look quickly to his prime target. The better the O-line plays the more he can do so along with stepping into his long throws.

The ease of how Pitt scored on that 2pt conversion bugged me. They averaged 5 per rush and that isn't exceptable either.
 
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What to folks make of the unusual DL formation that Pitt employed on occasion, where the front 7 were in a upright position a yard or 2 back from the LOS, constantly jockeying? Was it in response o the empty backfield we employed in the 1st half, where there was no threat to run? or was it intended to confuse Dungy and our blocking schemes? It seems that they employed it less in the 2nd half when we went to our ground game.
 
I really don't think it was a bad play call. Pierce had been a beast and that same play had worked twice before. I'd Dungey hadn't thrown it poorly-or if pierce had made the play-then it would have been a first down.

It was the only call that would give Pitt a chance to send the game into overtime.
 
I think that 4 the down call also was terrible. They are hunkering down in the middle hoping to make a stop and we don't get any movement on the line at all in hopes for that play to work. I feel we overthink a lot at certain times in the game.
 
Additional downside items:

Yards were good but it didn't result in points again.

We basically had five 3 and outs in a row against a bad Pitt D. I wouldn't expect 5 total in a game vs Clemson.

Related to that scoring 3 points the first 25+ mins of the game.

Dungey completed some passes that killed any YAC a few of which would have been huge gains.
 
It was the only call that would give Pitt a chance to send the game into overtime.
No, that's not true. They could have stopped any run that we called. While our running game was more consistent yesterday, it was still consistently inconsistent. I think it's a good idea to trust the people that are playing the best in those situations. That was Pierce and Dungey.
 
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