2019-2020 Pitt Super Panther Sports Thread (With a New Logo)

[willeyeam]

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[willeyeam]

[Freddy Rumsen]

Just another great example of Pat Narduzzi failing to prepare a team for a game.

Get lost.

[skullman80]

Same old Pitt.

[willeyeam]

That was really bad. Narduzzi needs 9 wins next year or it's time for change.

[skullman80]

I think I'm done with Pitt for a while.

[Dickie Dunn]

FIRE NARDUZZI

[Stoosh]

This is Narduzzi's most indefensible loss since...well, since UNC last year. But contextually, this feels worse. Contextually, this may have been the worst loss of his career because this was just set up for them to win. Bad loss last week, coming home to face a one-dimensional team with a crappy defense and also starting its backup QB. One more chance to show some faint sign of progress on offense and build maybe a little momentum going into the bowl game.

Nope. This is Pitt, and Pitt is allergic to things like progress and momentum.

I know Lyke has seemingly stood firmly behind Narduzzi as head coach of this program and i don't expect a change would be made, though I do wonder if all bets would be off if they lose whatever craptastic bowl game they'll wind up in now. In fact, if they lose the bowl game, I'd consider making a change and here's why.

If they lose the bowl game, it'll be two straight seasons where they had eight or even nine wins within their grasp in the last quarter of the season, and they ended each with the football equivalent of a wet fart. And I even give them a pass for two of those late-season losses - they weren't beating Clemson in the ACC title game last year, and they walked into a buzzsaw last week at VT what with the Foster lovefest, the weather, and VT surging. But I can't look at where they were after the Wake game last year, and where they were after the UNC win this year, and say, yeah, 7-6 was fine last year and fine this year. Even 8-5 this year is now going to feel mostly like a joke, unless the offense comes out in the bowl game and looks like it did against UPS or Clemson in 2016.

I'm at the same point with Narduzzi that I reached with Wanny after the Cincy/Gilyard game, when I was certain they had peaked with him as a coach, and anything more was an insurmountable obstacle that another coach would likely have to scale.

For Narduzzi, that obstacle appears to be nine wins in a season, which - when you think about it - wasn't even the f'ing high water mark under Wanny. So that's where we're at...five full years into Narduzzi’s tenure, hoping for nine wins while playing in an imminently winnable Coastal Division, which is the closest thing a Power Five conference has produced to those 2008-10 Big East conferences.

"Hail To Pitt, I guess", right, Pat?

If they lose the bowl game and they fire him, I won't care. I love what he's done with the defense, but other coaches can come in and build a similar defense. I'm tired of watching a bunch of other programs at the same relative level as Pitt do more on offense and win more games against better competition with either the same or even less “talent”.

I hate the idea of starting over with a new coach, but I think i hate it less than the idea of watching another year absolutely punchless, anemic offense.

[Morkle]

Gonna have to say, it's time for Pitt to move on from Narduzzi. It seems to be a better DC than anything else.

[Dickie Dunn]

He should have been replaced three years ago.

[Freddy Rumsen]

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Bunch of arrogant underachievers. Entire team taking on the personality of their coach.

Good point

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Nope. This is Pitt, and Pitt is allergic to things like progress and momentum.

Better point

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

At least kessman didn't suck

[Dickie Dunn]

BC fired Addazio yet Narduzzi is still employed. Wake up Lyke.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Nard dog aint going nowhere

I do not like him but I recognize that next year might be a good year to measure progress considering the schedule is crap.

[Morkle]

But why do you measure progress on a crap schedule year? I have a strong feeling he's going to end with 7-8 wins as usual and here we are, having this discussion again. If that's the best they can do, I think they're admitting that by not firing him, imo.

[Dickie Dunn]

[slappybrown]

But why do you measure progress on a crap schedule year? I have a strong feeling he's going to end with 7-8 wins as usual and here we are, having this discussion again. If that's the best they can do, I think they're admitting that by not firing him, imo.

Because if Pitt schedules like most every other P5 team — three cupcakes and one P5 for out of conference — we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all, as he probably has multiple nine win seasons. It’s crap in that 95% of schools schedule the same way, so I don’t think it’s wrong to measure against that schedule or to consider a good season next year as somehow less than. If he goes 7-5 next year he’s in big trouble heading into 2021.

[Dickie Dunn]

Pitt could play nothing but FCS teams and would still finish with 7 wins.

[NAN]

I'm typically a patient guy. And I've supported Narduzzi. But the way his teams have laid an egg at the end of the last 2 years, and also having no bowl wins, his seat better get warm.

Moreso because while it is difficult to get any support as is, laying an egg at the end of the season makes it that much more difficult. And I don't think Lyke is going to stand for that.

I do think he gets next year, but if they win 7 or 8 games with the schedule they have next year, I think she moves on. We've had some stability after the who Haywood and 20 coaches in 3 years debacle, so Narduzzi did provide that. But it is getting old just constantly underachieving, even for a diehard like me.

[NAN]

But why do you measure progress on a crap schedule year? I have a strong feeling he's going to end with 7-8 wins as usual and here we are, having this discussion again. If that's the best they can do, I think they're admitting that by not firing him, imo.

Because if Pitt schedules like most every other P5 team — three cupcakes and one P5 for out of conference — we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all, as he probably has multiple nine win seasons. It’s crap in that 95% of schools schedule the same way, so I don’t think it’s wrong to measure against that schedule or to consider a good season next year as somehow less than. If he goes 7-5 next year he’s in big trouble heading into 2021.

Imagine if last year we had 3 soup cans and ND, instead of UCF, PSU and ND, we probably would have been 9-3 and in the top 25 going into the ACC Championship game.

Instead, we were 7-5, lost any buzz have actually winning our division, and then end up 7-7.

[Stoosh]

For teams like Pitt, the crappy schedule next year can help a ton with perception and buzz even if some of it is artificial, provided they actually take care of business and win those games. Look just at this past preseason for proof.

The ACC's preseason darlings this past summer - at least those not named Clemson - were Virginia & Syracuse. Syracuse won 10 games and Virginia won 8 games in 2018. While each time did it with dynamic QBs, decent offenses and solid defenses, much of the buzz came because of their win totals, regardless of the fact that those numbers were bolstered by soft non-conference schedules.

Syracuse was 3-1 OOC in 2018 with wins over Western Michigan, Wagner, and UConn. They lost at home to ND.

UVA was also 3-1, winning at home against Richmond, Ohio, and Liberty and losing at Indiana.

Syracuse and UVA also won their respective bowl games. Syracuse won the Camping World Bowl over WVU; UVA shut out South Carolina in the Belk Bowl. The fact that Cuse beat a Will Grier-less WVU team that was literally days from losing Holgorsen, or that South Carolina was a milquetoast 7-5 going into that bowl game didn't hurt the preseason hype around either of them.

Nor did the fact that Pitt beat both Syracuse & UVA in 2018 on the way to their Coastal Division title. Heading into this season in fact, that mattered so little to the national media that Barrett Sallee and the clowns doing this past weekend's UVA-VT game were still pushing the narrative that Pitt somehow backed into that Coastal title. In reality, Pitt won it outright with a conference game left to play. But that's also what happens when you follow up your division-clinching win by getting boat-raced in your regular season finale by a beatable opponent, then get killed in your conference title game, and turn in another lackluster bowl game.

Narduzzi HAS had to deal with some nightmarish OOC schedules. In 2017, they had to play at #4 UPS and then come back the next weekend to host #9 Oklahoma State. While 'Cuse and UVA were racking up wins over cupcakes in 2018, Pitt was hosting then-13th UPS, then had to go to 13th-ranked UCF AND to #5 Notre Dame. This year, it was back to Penn State and home against then-15th UCF. Pitt won just one of all those games.

The next two years, Pitt gets a break but they need to deliver.

In 2020, there's no reason why they shouldn't at least be 3-1 in OOC. They play ND but it's here. The rest are home against Richmond & Miami-OH, and at Marshall. Duke, GT, Syracuse, VT are at home. UNC, UVA, Miami, and FSU are on the road, but UVA will be without Perkins and the latter two are still kind of a mess. If the big names come back on defense and - most importantly - if the offense can get to at least AVERAGE, they could still go 6-2 in conference, assuming they Pitt and blow their usual one ACC game/year that they shouldn't. That's 9 regular season wins, even if they lose to ND. Win the bowl game, and that's 10.

Now you've got buzz going into a 2021 season with another prospective 3-1 or even 4-0 OOC, with New Hampshire, UMass, and Western Michigan at home and a trip to Tennessee.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

Here's the thing, though. In hindsight, this OOC schedule was manageable and the team went 3-1. The problem is that the 1 loss was due in part to a gutless coaching decision followed by a 4-4 record in a very very marginal coastal division.

[Stoosh]

Here's the thing, though. In hindsight, this OOC schedule was manageable and the team went 3-1. The problem is that the 1 loss was due in part to a gutless coaching decision followed by a 4-4 record in a very very marginal coastal division.

Good point.

Looking at it this way, the 4-4 in-conference is ultimately what doomed them this year and this is really the big reason why even if they win their bowl game, this whole season feels like a letdown to me. It would be progress in form only (8-5 is better than 7-6 or 7-7 last year), but it feels a lot like this team just had to drag itself kicking and screaming to that point. Last year, while they still went 7-6, I could at least live with the idea that four of their losses came against some really difficult competition and they at least took care of almost all the business they needed to take care of in-conference.

This year, it feels like most of the rest of the division caught up to them or may have passed them by.