Pitt football

I like Pitt football. They’re not the team I live and die with (that’s Wisconsin) or a team that’s strongly on my radar (like Notre Dame or the Big Ten in general), but I lived in the Steel City for nine good years (1999-2007) and came to enjoy rooting for the Panther program. That hasn’t changed since I left, nor has the fact that I’d like to see them shut up a good friend of mine who is a Penn State season-ticket holder. And I find myself wondering if this is the year that Pitt can get off the treadmill of mediocrity.

Pitt has finished the regular season at 6-6 for four straight years. Each year has produced a bowl appearance, an achievement that becomes less significant with each passing year. They’ve lost three of those bowl games.

This is a program that fired Dave Wannstedt after he went 42-31 from 2005-10, and was never happy with Walt Harris after he rebuilt the team and went 25-13 with a BCS bowl trip over his final three years of 2002-04. The current run of mediocrity makes one wonder if Pitt can ever break the cycle.

Instability at head coach has been the big problem. Pitt hired Todd Graham to replace Wannstedt. After a 6-6 year, Graham bolted for Arizona State. The next hire was Paul Chryst, who after three straight 6-6 years went back to Wisconsin, where he had been the offensive coordinator. Now it’s Pat Narduzzi, who orchestrated the outstanding Michigan State defenses of recent seasons, who gets the chance to return Pitt to relevance.

That’s the context of recent Pitt football history. The fan base longs for a return of the glory days of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Tony Dorsett led the way to a national title in 1976 and Dan Marino was at the helm for some great years in 1979-82. The decision to fire Wannstedt and the agitation that existed over Harris, who left voluntarily for Stanford, indicates the Panther faithful sees that as realistic. The on-field results keep showing a program that can’t get out of its own way.

The hopes for this season are built around a fantastic running back in James Connor. He was the ACC MVP a year ago, and his 2,564 career yards place him 10^th on the all-time list of Pitt rushers. Connor will almost certainly move up to second on this list, with 3,271 yards being the magic number.

That moves Connor ahead of names like Curtis Martin, Lesean McCoy and Craig Heyward. No one is going to touch Dorsett’s 6,526 career yards, but Connor is in very impressive company in an era when the workload for running backs isn’t what it used to be.

Can he get enough help? The offensive line returns three starters, but is young, with only one senior projected to start. There’s a good wide receiver on hand in Tyler Boyd. Can Narduzzi find the quarterback to get him the football?

Pitt’s new offensive coordinator, Jim Chaney, ran the attack at Arkansas last year for Bret Bielama. It was ground-heavy and power-oriented, so Connor has the right system to play in. Regardless of how the quarterback situation works out, the bigger question is probably going to be how quickly Narduzzi can get the defense up to speed.

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