As seems to happen regularly with PITT football this last year was one that was neither very satisfying or particularly exciting until the last days of the last week of the last month when the personnel changes began happening. Then things started to roll into developments that we can sink our teeth into on here. Some good, some undecided but that still excites fans.
Let’s start from the New Year of 2014 and look back at the most interesting thing that happened in each month. This will be Part 1 and will encompass January until the end of September and the four games played to that date.
Jan 6th: Tyler Boyd was named as a Freshman All-American Wide Receiver for the ’13 season. That made sense considering he broke the big receiving records that a past PITT star, Larry Fitzgerald (that never gets old), had set back in 2002. Boyd racked up 85 receptions for 1174 yards and seven TDs in his rookie year, all from the arm of transfer SR QB Tom Savage. Not too many people in Western PA were surprised that Boyd did this since he had been a star at undefeated Clariton HS for the past four years. If you remember, the first thing PITT had to do after Boyd signed his Letter of Intent back in 2013 to was enroll Boyd in a Personal Therapy program to teach him how to accept losing football games. He had six chances to show that he was OK in that area. That was a good thing as in this, his second year, Boyd was a fine all-around player and teammate and has built on that to be a stalwart of the future Panther teams.
Feb 5th: LOI day came and went without any real surprises. We signed almost the expected full class with the exception of QB Wade Freebeck who bagged on us for the Vanderbilt Robber Barons. That left us with one QB in the class in Adam Bertke who looked good in the fall camp. As has been Chryst’s plan, a lot of these true FR saw playing time. On offense the FR who contributed most was RB Chris James who played in all 12 games, had 82 carries for 406 yards (4.9 ypc!) and 4 TDs which is a great first year especially considering he was playing behind our star RB Conner. WR Adonis Jennings got in some games in the 2nd half of the season, held back because of limited time in camp practices due to an injury, and had 6 catches for 55 yards (9.2 ypc). Both those guys, including the redshirted RB Qadree Ollison, who at 6’2” & 220 could fill the FB role later or more likely be the thunder to James’ lightning, will be the nucleus of the skill positions in the future.
But it was on defense where we saw the most impact from this recruiting class. DB Avonte Maddox , a future star for us, played in all 12 games eventually starting five in the latter part of the season. He had 27 total tackles. DB Pat Amara played in nine games starting two and had 18 tackles;. LB Quentin Wirginis played in all the games, mainly on special teams coverage squads and had five tackles. Wirginis has a ton of potential and is a ‘tough kid’ as stated by the staff. I don’t doubt that as I know his father from my professional life (he owns the Gateway Clipper Fleet) and he’s no pushover either.
Another guy who I thought had a good first season was DE Rory Blair who played in 11 games, starting two, and had 13 tackles with a very good 4.5 Tackles for Loss considering the amount of time he played. Add four sacks, most on the team, to that total and you can see his potential also. Just in case any PITT fan was living under a rock in the last two years here is Blair’s back story. All of these young defensive freshmen will benefit greatly with the new head coach and his penchant for strong defensive play. That is a great group of very young kids who got some real experience under their belts.
Feb 19th: Former NFL Star WR Greg Lewis was named PITT’s WR coach. This wasn’t exactly earthshaking news but it did make PITT fans feel a bit better after our previous WR coach, PSU alumni Bobby Engram, left for greener pastures after 2013. Engram had done an excellent job in the two years he was on staff, getting fine production out of both Mike Shanahan and Devin Street to the tune of almost 1000 yards receiving by both players in 2013. Last year Lewis inherited Street and then during this year’s spring practice found the aforementioned Boyd looking straight at him saying “Just throw me the damn ball”. Lewis then dropped to his knees and thanked The Lord for the big favor in giving him Boyd… on which The Lord kept delivering every game this season.
Even though our receiving numbers were not as impressive as 2013 when we had 3,074 yards and 21 TDs, the 2014 season with a rookie starting QB was a decent 2,195 yards and 16 TDs. That is with the our 2nd receiver, Manasseh Garner only having 201 yards and two TDs and dropping passes he should have caught. The big difference between experience the QBs Savage, a 4th year guy, and rsSO Voytik had shows up there. Next year we’ll have a second year starter in Voytik and have Jennings to take that #2 receiver slot.
3/16: PITT opens up the 2014 season spring practices. Read it yourself and see if it actually meant anything later on. I really shouldn’t be so cynical as I watched a few of those practices and was pretty optimistic for the following seasonal play. I actually felt Soto, Maclean and Blair were going to be a decent Defensive End squad. Silly me… maybe next year. But I absolutely love this quote about the first spring practice from Chryst: “On whether Chryst will hold more spring scrimmages:
“Right now I don’t have plans to give more scrimmages. I think we had 71 guys today (counting injured players whose practice time his limited). We’ve got to try and balance that, staying healthy. We’ve got to do a lot of team stuff. We have some guys that played a lot of snaps that don’t need to scrimmage as much as some of the young guys. So I think for the young guys you kind of hope to get maybe more scrimmage time than we did last year, but overall as a team, probably not quite as much.”
Read that three times and tell me what it actually means. Hey Coach! Looking back, a few more scrimmages would have really helped.
3/18: PITT is one of only 13 schools to be in FBS bowl games and also be invited to the NCAA tournament. I kid you not, that was an actual press release by the PITT Media Relations department. And you though Paul Chryst was boring didn’t you? Well, it is the off season and real news is hard to come by but we’ll take what we can get in terms of good news.
4/23: Spring football ends with no real surprises. We knew Voytik was going to be the starter so the only real question mark was which true FR RB would redshirt and which would play and we saw Chris James get that nod. Here is a video recap of the Spring Practices just for fun.
May 8th: DT Aaron Donald gets rewarded for his fantastic work as a four year starter for PITT by being drafted in the 1st round of the 2014 NFL draft by the St. Louis Rams. He repays the Rams by playing well enough as a rookie to be selected to the Pro Bowl… just the start of a Hall of Fame career probably.
May 10th: We saw QB Tom Savage get drafted by in the 4th round by the Houston Texans and is surprisingly the highest drafted PITT QB since Dan Marino. Whaaaaa? In addition, WR Devin Street, PITT’s all-time leading pass catcher, is taken by the Dallas Cowboys in the 5th round. Other PITT player signed as Free Agents were: Additionally, four Panthers signed free-agent contracts on Saturday night: NT Tyrone Ezell (Houston Texans), S Jason Hendricks(Cleveland Browns), P Matt Yoklick(Atlanta Falcons) and CB K’Waun Williams(Cleveland Browns).
July 7th : Boyd and Conner are named to the Hornung and Maxwell Trophy watch lists. In the follow days we see C Artie Rowell on the Rimington Trophy list; Boyd on the Biletnikoff List and Conner again on the Doak Walker list. On the 19th the 2014-2015 PITT Media Guide is released, here is the link in case you want to punish yourself.
Aug 4th to Aug 19th : Pitt holds their 2014 Fall Training Camp. There are 18 practice and scrimmage sessions in total before the season starts. Here are some info highlights: First day of camp: Indoor practice; A drone fly-over look at practice and the facilities. My favorite is when Chryst forgets which sport he is coaching. Boy, that practice got us ready to battle it out against teams like Akron.
Aug 30th: The regular season starts and we beat the crap out of the Delaware Blue Hens by a score of 62-0. It was run, run, run with Conner getting 153 yards and Ibrahim chipping in with 91. Voytik isn’t asked to do much being called on to pass only 13 times completing 10 for 83 yards. List of game videos; PITT 1-0 on season.
Sept 5th: We go into Beantown to play the Boston College Eagles and come out with a 30-20 win, kind of surprisingly. Conner blows up with 213 yards on 36 carries and the PITT fans go ballistic because of the amount of carries he had, worrying that it would beat him down in the long run. Conner silences them by saying “STFU! I can do this all year long. What, You think I’m a pussy like Rushel Shell?” Voytik shows off some of his running skills and get 47 yards on 6 carries. We lose Artie Rowell for the season which sucked but rsFR Alex Officer steps in and does a good job for the rest of the year. Here is the list of game videos: PITT 2-0 on season.
Sept 13th: We traveled down to Miami to play the Florida International University Panthers on their home field and came out with a 42-25 win. After the 1st quarter a suicide watch for PITT fans on the Hot Metal Bridge was in effect as we fell behind by 16-0. PITT fans experienced their first complete meltdown of the year, more followed of course because we are PITT, and these comments in the Open Thread were especially awesome:
“Well, no one really expected Pitt to beat THE mighty FIU. If we play real well maybe we can keep it close and only lose by a few points. Sigh…; followed by “ That’s what Pitt gets for scheduling such tough teams so early. It’s a good thing the Little Sisters of the Poor weren’t available….”; and “Well here is the test of Pitt’s testicular fortitude!”
Hey, we got balls just like everyone else does! We fell behind FIU by a Conner fumble in the redzone, Voytik dropped for a two point safety and then a tipped pass by FIU that was caught by a different receiver for a TD. Of course we went on to score 42 points to their 9 the rest of the way but that didn’t help the bad feelings we were left with. Voytik kept running with 89 yards and Conner racked up 177 and 3 TDs even though he fumbled twice in the redzone. Here is the game video: PITT 3-0 on season.
Sept 20th: We hosted the Iowa Hawkeyes and blew, terribly blew, a 17-7 halftime lead for the 24-20 loss. Our three young guys on offense played well; Voytik was 19/29 for 250 yards. Conner ran 29 times for 155 yards (5.3 ypc) & 1 TD and Tyler Boyd had his best game of the season with 10 catches for 153 yards (15.3 ypc). It wasn’t enough as our defense just couldn’t seem to get Iowa off the field in the 2nd half. Iowa had a 94 yard TD drive in the 3rd quarter and a 52 yard drive for a TD in the 4th, and the latter burned 7:47 off the clock. After that TD PITT went 4 and out on their next possession and then threw an INT the last time we had the ball. Here is the list of game videos: PITT 3-1 on season.
Sept 27th: This was the one, the game that kept the ‘how the Hell could we…‘ once a season streak alive and that turned our opinions of the season on its head with an absolute disaster. My favorite comment about the game was :
“I am taking applications for a new team. Must provide a solid team that competes week in and week out. Fan experience that fits the college “experience”. Should possess the skills to beat the team that you are supposed to, occasionally be a top 25 team and now and then upset a top ranked team. Will consider all resumes.
Akron came into Heinz Field and completely dominated the Panthers in every way possible for a 21-10 loss by PITT. The Zips stuffed Conner by overloading the DL and made Voytik try to win the game by passing the ball, which didn’t happen. Conner had only 92 yards on 25 carries for a dismal 3.7 ypc. His longest run was only 12 yards and Boyd had a off game with only 72 yards receiving. Our defense gave up 382 total yards and worse of all allowed Akron to convert 7 of 14 3rd down attempts. Again a poor showing by the PITT defense that would replicate itself later on.
But what made this game hard to take is that it seemed like the PITT players didn’t play like they felt they could win the game, almost as if the wind was taken out of the sails with the Iowa loss. This game followed in the footsteps of 2013’s loss to a poorer Navy team and 2012’s loss in the opener to YSU. In each of those games the team didn’t seem 100% invested in winning, which became an occasional recurrence during Chryst’s time as our HC. Here is the list of game videos: PITT 3-2 on season.
End of Part 1. We’ll take a look at the rest of the season and dramatic news generated by the coaching changes in late December. If I drag writing Part 2 out long enough I’ll include tomorrow’s bowl game results also.