I can't even logically react to how awful that Sun Bowl game was yesterday. I mean, 3 to F-Ing Zero!?!?!?!?! If Matt Cavanaugh (pictured above) still has a job next week, I'm going to lead an open riot down the streets of Oakland. I've written it before, and there's a good chance I'll have to write it again: Cavanaugh is a TERRIBLE offensive coordinator and isn't qualified to call plays for a pee wee football team, let alone a major college football squad. I know Wanny gave Cavanaugh the benefit of the doubt in the past, but the difference then was that Wanny himself was crapping the bed as a coach, so he couldn't really act all high and mighty. Now? He has this Pitt program going in a very promising direction with a 9 win season, and yesterday with the chance to pull off a 10-win season, a top 15 ranking, and build excellent momentum going into the offseason, his coordinator craps the bed for three hours on national television. Wonderful. Just what we bleeping needed.
I can't understand this moron's play-calls. That's what really bugs me. I mean, with Jason Pinkston out against a very good D-Line, why would you call downfield pass patterns for a young raw receiver that require Stull to spend a day and a half in the pocket? What part of that is logical? And that's not even considering a few other facts that were evident before Pinkston got hurt. 1) Stull has a weak arm, 2) Stull is not accurate, 3) Stull is TERRIBLE, 4) Jonathan Baldwin cannot make plays in traffic, 5) Everyone and their F-ing mother knows Cavanaugh loves to call those useless bombs while ignoring the very effective tight ends and possession receivers Pitt has. and 6) You have one of the best running backs in the country, a guy who doesn't need a defense on their heels. He just needs them to back off a little, which can be accomplished by just completing short, easy patterns.
I briefly considered watching the DVR of the game to see how many incomplete downfield bombs Stull threw and to try and get a rough measurement on how many miles he missed his receivers by, but it turned out that my DVR was embarassed to have such a "game" on its memory, so it did me the courtesy of erasing it. Honestly, I was thrilled.
Somehow I've gotten 3 paragraphs in without mentioning the fact that Shady was basically ignored for the first half of that football game on yet another stroke of genius by Matt Cavanaugh. Seriously, we knew Oregon State was going to gear up to stop the run eventually, so why on that first drive, with the Beavers playing more honestly than they did the rest of the day, did we not just pound Shady at their 7 man front for about 10 plays in a row? There's no way OSU was going to stop him there, because they didn't yet realize that Bill Stull had transformed into the worst quarterback in college football. Yeah Shady was ineffective in the second half, but that's because OSU knew the only way Stull was going to complete a pass was if all 11 defenders fell down, and even then it was 50/50 at best.
For the life of me, I can't figure out how Matt Cavanaugh was an offensive coordinator for two NFL teams. Sure they were the Ravens and Bears, two teams that never have good offenses, but how could it possibly happen that this guy has lured three different head coaches into thinking he can be a coordinator? Is he some sort of crazy stalker guy who takes compromising photos of people and then blackmails his way into good jobs? This really seems like a much more logical reason than him being qualified for the job.
I haven't even touched on the fact that he has made pretty much zero progress as a coach with these offensive guys. I don't really know how much coaching he is supposed to do, but I'd have to assume that he is at least somewhat involved in the coaching of the skill position players, though probably not the line. If that's the case, then not only is he a terrible play-caller, but he's also a terrible coach.
Seriously, has Bill Stull made any progress whatsoever this year? Hell no! I think he's actually much worse than he was when I saw him in spring ball last year.
Has Pat Bostick, a blue chip 5-star recruit, progressed even the slightest bit? Hell no!
Is Jonathan Baldwin any different than the player he was 4 months ago? Hell no! All Baldwin does is run straight downfield and hope he can blow past his defender. He can't make plays in traffic, he can't run routes, he can't block, he's still the same player he was in high school.
Has Cavanaugh used Dorin Dickerson and Nate Byham as security blankets to help Bill Stull because of the mismatches they create with the linebackers? Hell no! I can't decide if this one is because Byham and Dickerson haven't been developed properly or because Cavanaugh's IQ as a playcaller is the same as Dickerson's uniform number, but either way, they aren't being used right.
Would Pitt have won even 6 games if they hadn't lucked into being blessed with the impossible-to-screw-up, NFL-ready Shady McCoy? Hell no!
Should Matt Cavanugh still have a job? Hell no!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment