What we all want to know is if Pitt can bounce back from the bomb that Florida State dropped on them Monday night. I wanted to take a look at the history of the Panthers and the bye week. I went back ten years to see how they have done.
Pitt has had a zillion head coaches over that span (OK, so four, but who's counting?) and each coach handles the bye week differently. Below also includes other games that may not be actually bye weeks. Some of them include West Virginia games, which seemed to happen towards the end of the year and sometimes with a great length between games. Without further procrastination, let's see how Pitt has performed since 2003 in games with a bye or long layoff:
2003 - WALT HARRIS - 0-1
2004 - WALT HARRIS - 1-1
2005 - DAVE WANNSTEDT- 0-2
2006 - DAVE WANNSTEDT - 0-1
2007 - DAVE WANNSTEDT - 0-2
2008 - DAVE WANNSTEDT - 2-1
2009 - DAVE WANNSTEDT - 1-1
2010 - DAVE WANNSTEDT - 0-2
2011 - THOSE WE SHALL NOT SPEAK OF - 1-1
2012 - PAUL CHRYST - 1-1
Add it all up and you get a less than desirable 6-13 since 2003. The good news is that the new staff at least recorded a .500 mark last season. But, that brings up a good point as well - how will Chryst and staff handle the bye?
Chryst became the Offensive Coordinator at Wisconsin in 2005 and while he was not the head guy during this period, it should be noted that he was a big part of the staff in Madison. The Big Ten did not always give a bye week, but from 2005 until he became the head man at Pitt, the Badgers went 5-1 after a bye week. That is a little encouraging.
Also on a positive note is that Matt House has an extra week to get the defense on the same page. Whether you like House or not, the man does deserve more than one game to prove himself. It's been well documented that the mistakes made in the game on Monday are largely correctable. This is good news considering they have a bye week to take care of some of those miscues. This is also a young team, as we all know, and the Panthers have what should be the easiest part of their schedule coming up.
We won't have a great idea of what this team is capable of until the coming weeks, but some extra time will hopefully allow Pitt to get some issues sorted. Let's hope that's the case because judging by comments and message boards, the natives are getting restless.
I know, I know...Pitt fans not having patience - it's hard to believe.
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