Early Road Game With Traditional Rival of Yore
What’s this Heather Likes stuff? Oh yeah, Heather Lyke is the University of Pittsburgh AD. She’s their Sandy Barbour. I bet RD would go for her athletic looks. Just a hunch.
Heather came to Pitt from Brick Dick U., where she was also AD, but as an undergraduate at Michigan her sport was softball. She was captain of the Mishugganah Wolverines’ softball team before she earned a J.D. at University of Akron School of Law.
I think this overachieving Heather is a good catch for Pitt, until she decides to wait for an opening in Ann Arbor. She also favors getting the Pitt-PSU rivalry going again, but that’s not Lykely to happen for another decade, if at all.
But I digress…
Yeah, we have a football game coming up this weekend. I’m one scared turkey! This is the next-to-last game in the renewed, home-and-home series with Pitt, and it’s over yonder on Heinz Field, where Penn State fans will be found in abundance. Pitt (1-0) is coming off an expected 33-7 win over FCS Albany (0-1) of the Colonial Athletic Association, whereas your #13 (really?) Nittany Lions (1-0) blew a 14-point lead over Sun Belt Conference Appalachian State (0-1) to win in OT, 45-38.
Like App State, Pitt has a precocious sophomore QB — this one named Kenny Pickett. The kid led his team to a 33-point first half before the Pat Narduzzi brain trust started playing Paternoball and handing the task of protecting the lead to his defense. The D-Boys proved equal to the task, shutting out Albany for three quarters after an early score. You might remember Pickett from Pitt’s upset win over Miami last year in his first start. However, he’s human — having turned the ball over twice in the second half of the Albany game.
Remember me making fun of WR Maurice Ffrench llast yyear? Wwell, hhe’s bback! Ffrenchyy returned the opening kickoff 91 yards against Albany. I’m sure your mind is flashing back to the 100-yard return debacle last week. Let us all hope our kickoff coverage unit learns something during this week’s practice sessions and that Ffrenchy leads off with two big Fs.
By the way, Penn State fans all remember Vinny Testaverde and that 1987 Fiesta Bowl. Well, sacre bleu! His son Vincent, a fifth-year senior, quarterbacked the Great Danes in the tilt with Pitt.
Pitt ran for 238 yards behind the only remaining Qadree at Pitt, Qadree Ollison, who himself racked up 73 yards on just seven carries.
What can I say about the Pitt defense? Not much, but they did record five sacks and six TFLs against Albany, who they held to just 60 yards rushing. They did seem vulnerable to the pass, giving up 263 aerial yards, while recording two interceptions.
Da Wedda
It is fortunate for the big guys on both teams that a cold front will whip through da Burgh during the week. Temperatures, which have been running in the sweltering 90s are expected to be in the low 70s and high 60s on Saturday. A 60% chance of showers and thunderstorms is forecast.
Da Bottom Line
And now, for the Official Turkey Poop Prediction, which I’m totally going to pull straight out of my cloaca today. I really feel shaky about this game.
The bookies’ consensus favors Penn State by 8½ points, with an over/under of 57. I haven’t looked at the money line but for my money, I sure wouldn’t want to touch this one with a ten-foot pole (or even a six-foot Pole). The spread works out to suggest a final score of something like 33-24 in favor of the good guys. Although I’m not seeing clearly — after all, these are old turkey eyes, not eagle eyes — I would take Pitt and the points, methinks, probably, maybe. I’d also take the over. But that’s all mind-betting, because I ain’t touching this!
(Your favorite turkey will return after the game — which I have to miss because of a damned board meeting — with his usual pearls of bird-brained fowl wisdom. I’ll have to watch the replay, so y’all will know the results before I do.)
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psudrozz says
keep going back to your comment last week about what the App St game will teach us: nothing.
And I think you’re mostly right about that. We don’t know yet what can and cannot be fixed with a one game sample.
The line opened at -7.5, and quickly shot up to -9 at my book. I’m staying away until this team can get some seasoning.
Still, it’s Pitt hate week and my prediction:
PSU 42
Pitt 21
The Nittany Turkey says
Oh, all right! It has been pointed out to me that I made no prediction. As I stated heretofore, I am in a complete quandary, so let me pull one out of my ass. Penn State 34, Pitt 33.
—TNT
K. John says
I am really not looking forward to this game after last week’s near debacle. A lot of people have praised the defense for its early game performance but ridicule it for its 4th quarter collapse but miss a key point in the process. Appy State’s O settled down, identified some holes and stopped committing stupid penalties. Prior to the 4th, Appy State killed multiple drives with penalties that were mostly away from the ball and irrelevant to the play at hand.
While penalties were the biggest part, what about the rest? How did they do it? A lot of it was blocking and Appy State was most effective when they went away from their fancier techniques. Once our linemen were blocked, they stayed blocked. That was a consistent theme throughout. Other than Hansard, we are small across the board and rely on too many players that have not developed functional strength at this point in their career.
On top of that, linebackers consistently blew assignments in the run and passing game making a suspect secondary have to do a ton more work. BSCAF over at Black Shoe Diaries did a good write up on the Xs and Ox. This was pretty representative of what I saw. All of this is the result of holes that have been recruited into the roster. They exist on offense as well. At least there, Moorehead adapted to minimize their impact.
Defensively, Pitt is going to ground and pound. There are better at nearly every position group while we are worse almost across the board except at QB on the O-line where we held firm. Pitt was more competitive than people give them credit for last year. I would expect them to shorten games forcing us to score whenever we have the ball. Offensively, the line had their hands full from time to time with the ASU front seven. Pitt’s is a different animal but is more than capable of minimizing the run game without sacrificing deep coverage. Our receivers continue to disappoint with the exception of Hamler.
I don’t think the defense is going to be on the field a lot which really puts us at an disadvantage late against a Pro-Style offense. On their end, Pitt will use a similar approach they used last year but to better effect. Without the presence of Barkley, Gesicki and Hamilton, I worry they will somewhat easily be able to take away the deep ball and the inside run forcing the offense to the perimeter forcing us to rely on the throws where Trace’s precision is at its worse. Appy State did this well at various times last week. We’ll still move the ball but it tends to kill any chance at additional yardage. I see no reason to revise my 7 and 5 prediction on the season. This will be another competitive game through four quarters, but I don’t think we’ll get lucky this week.
Penn State 17
Pitt 24
The Nittany Turkey says
Clearly, not much cause for optimism in your assessment. I’m still on “too soon to tell”, still looking for some signs of life. We don’t know much, but I think we have enough data to support a best case 9-3 season. If the Lions lose to Pitt as you predict, they still have the favorable home schedule, and they haven’t lost at St. Joe since 2015. I think the streak will likely end this year. They’ll have to lose to either tOSU, Moo U. Iowa, or Wisconsin, or some combination of those schools. If they are 4-4 when they go to Ann Arbor, they’ll probably lose there, too. And I wouldn’t put them past not giving half a shit and losing the sad season-ender to Maryland if all that goes down. So, worst case. 5-7. Realistically, they’ll wind up somewhere in between, like 7-5.
Holy shit, I just worked my way through to agreement with Swami K. John.
—TNT
K. John says
I wouldn’t be so down on this team, this week especially, if not for the schedule. I am down on our chances so much this week because Franklin doesn’t have time to fix anything. He and the staff need to prepare this team for a night road game against a rival (gasp) who have several built in advantages over dear old State. I would have much preferred a meeting with cupcake U in between Appy State and Pitt. With that said, Saturday’s game will go a long way to understanding how they are going to do against Michigan State, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin. All have similar offensive styles but amp up the talent to varying degrees.
Big Al says
Franklin’s Penn State teams have played some of their best football in the two weeks following last minute comeback wins (e.g. UCF, Minnesota, Iowa). Something about that type of win seems to reinforce the players’belief in “the process” and energize them. I expect that trend to continue this week against Pitt.
But the forecasted heavy rain for Saturday night complicates things Rain usually favors the slower team which is Pitt. I’m still going to predict a sloppy, narrow win for the Lions – 31 to 28. Franklin’s carriage doesn’t turn into a pumpkin until Sept 29. At that point, I hope, 2018 won’t become deja vue all over again for 2014.
The Nittany Turkey says
I want to believe history will repeat itself and they’ll play well. I just don’t get any warm feelings yet. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.
—TNT
Joe says
I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking through this game other than feeling that the key is putting pressure on their QB. We didn’t do that last week and I’ll blame that on Givens doing something stupid and being out of the lineup, thinking Appalachian State was more of a running team than a passing team, sloppy coverage and sloppy tackling. Yeah I think the weather may play a role, but the fact that we can run and throw gives us a small edge (I hope). I also think a lot of young kids got their baptism of fire last week and found out that they have to put on their big boy pants at this level.
I think a lot of the issues we had last week will be corrected and in all honesty, I think Appalachian State is (and will be) a better team than Pitt when it’s all said and done and winning the game last week will be a big deal at the end of the season as they will be considered a higher quality non-con opponent than Pitt.
So without further ado I think it’ll be a tight game in which PS locks it up late in the 3rd quarter, Penn State wins 31-10.
Shitt on Pitt!
PS In the early 60’s, a neighbor of my parents son got a full scholarship to Pitt. He was an all everything O-tackle at our HS and was very, very good. He sent a t-shirt home for me that had the squiggly script Pitt on the front and every time I wore the stupid thing, I would get asked why I was wearing a t-shirt that said Pill! Maybe that’s why I became a Penn State fan!!!!!
RD says
Good hunch. Thankfully, the football team missed the rest of the messages. What a difference from week 1!