Pittsburgh Preview

Well that was a disaster.

We continued our road losing streak and our troubling trend from last year of throwing away double digit second half leads.  Special teams were awful.  Obviously, you can't give up two kickoff returns.  The defense was mostly awful.  35 points allowed on 10 possessions is fairly terrible.  The offense was pretty good (38 points on 13 possessions) but sputtered in the 4th quarter, and of course there was the key fumble when had a chance to restore the 10 point lead late.  Hard to blame the offense for its performance over the whole game, but that's yet another huge mistake with the game on the line.

Pretty much nothing went right.

Pittsburgh is coming off their own debacle.  A 44 point curb stomping at the hands of their supposed rival, I guess.  Not sure if Penn St. feels the same way, but Pittsburgh hates them.  I guess we can relate.  In any event, Pitt looks terrible too.  We are actually favored by about a FG.  I have no idea what to make of this game, and that's only compounded by the location at Pitt.  That stadium annually produces some very weird results, both in college and pro games.  I consider it, along with Iowa, as college football's bermuda triangle of sorts.  Both places lived up to the billing last year, as Miami and Ohio St. were upset in shocking fashion and, in Ohio St's case, knocked out of the playoff.  But Pitt and Iowa have been pulling upsets like that for a long time.

This, of course, would be no "shocking" upset.  But still, weird things happen there.

More importantly, we don't know much about either team, except that neither is very good.  We might still be pretty good (we'll see how USF turns out), but my guess is we are a 6-6 or 5-7 or 7-5 kinds team.  If I'm right, this could end up being a crucial game in terms of making it to a bowl.  We already have one loss.  Clemson and UGA look like 2 more.  Miami and VT won't be easy. Duke looks solid so far.  There aren't too many probable wins on the schedule.  So we need to win more than our fair share of toss ups.

Here is one.

As always, let's go jackets!