Sep 15, 2018 6 min read

Let’s give this Pitt team a little time.

Would it be a stretch to say this team is closer to what it showed in the first half against Penn State than it is to what the 51-6 final score might indicate? Pitt outplayed Penn State in the first half last week and the game turned on a dropped snap and a blocked punt. Pitt’s quarterback, Kenny Pickett, is a sophomore who was making his third start. Penn State’s quarterback, Trace McSorley, is a fifth-year senior Heisman Trophy candidate. Would you call that a slight edge for Penn State in a nationally televised game played in hideous conditions?

A 51-6 loss at home to Penn State is about as humiliating as it gets, but it’s not enough to declare the season a disaster, and it’s definitely not enough to declare the end of the Pat Narduzi era. He predicted Pitt would be playing in the ACC championship game. After beating Georgia Tech yesterday, he’s 1-0 in the conference. Pitt isn’t going to win another Mythical National Championship any time soon. Penn State might not win another one for a long time, either, but expecting to is a lot more realistic for a state school.

The hysteria from Pitt fans was loud and long all week and there was no better example than an op-ed by Murray Chass, a former New York Times and Hall of Fame baseball writer, in the Pitt News. Chass is a Pitt alum and got his start writing for the Pitt News. He reiterated what he wrote as a student “60 or so years ago” when Pitt was getting crushed every week. Chass said football had become an embarrassment to the university and it should be de-emphasized so Pitt could play teams like Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon.)

That might have made sense 60 or so years ago, but it was a classic knee-jerk reaction unbecoming of a veteran sportswriter this week.

It’s quite possible Pitt will be embarrassed again before this season is over, but, based on what’s happened in the Narduzzi era, a shocking win over a highly ranked team is also a good possibility. We’re three games in. The quarterback is a true sophomore who made his fourth start yesterday and his record is 3-1. He didn’t look good playing in the pouring rain against a highly ranked team last Saturday night, but he sure looked good when he helped beat the No. 2 ranked team in the country – Miami – last year.

Chass might have overreacted, but he also might be on his way to gaining a rational expectation for his alma mater’s football team. It doesn’t have to start playing Carnegie Tech. It needs to keep beating teams like Georgia Tech and contending for an ACC championship and be happy with that.

• Maybe the Steelers got it wrong with Le’Veon Bell.

He’s going to miss his second game and his second $850,000 check today, so he’s obviously serious about keeping himself healthy for as long as he can before becoming a free agent after this season. He’s seen huge piles of guaranteed money handed out to other players who were approaching free agency, like Aaron Donald and Odell Beckham Jr., and he wants some of that, but the Steelers offered him a very Steelers-like deal. It guaranteed him $33 million, which seems nice enough, but it’s not in the $50-60 million neighborhood Bell seems to be interested in living.

The Steelers should have traded him when they saw he wanted the kind of money they’ve never been willing to pay. Bell has the statistics to justify a $50 million contract, but maybe it’s not about his stats and how valuable he is as a player. Maybe they just think he’s not the kind of guy they’re interested in owing that much money.

Maybe they know things about him that you and I don’t and they’re gun shy about paying him now for what he might be as a 30-year old running back at the end of the 2021 season.

James Conner isn’t as good as Bell, but he showed against the Browns last week he can be a solid NFL running back. The Steelers should have written Bell off after last season and figured out a way to get a good return for him. All he is now is a major distraction.

• Steelers fans might find it hard to believe, but Cleveland is every bit the football town Pittsburgh is. The Browns have been a laughing stock for most of the time since they returned to the NFL as an expansion team in 1999, and the way they managed to turn what could have been a great comeback win over the Steelers into a tie couldn’t have been more Browns-like, but the fans are still with them.

Bud Shaw, who’s been writing columns about Cleveland sports for almost 30 years, told me on my radio show last week, despite the Cavaliers’ success with LeBron James and the Indians’ resurgence, the Browns are still the No. 1 team in town and it’s not close. So much so that the Cavs and the Indians resent the media for paying so much attention to the Browns at their expense.

• The Browns should have gone for two points when they scored to pull to within 21-20 in the last minute of the fourth quarter. Why would anybody, who had watched the game to that point, believe the Browns could win a new 10-minute mini-game, which NFL overtime is? They were looking at scoring from the three-yard line to win for the second time in 32 games and winning their first opening game since returning in 1999. What made head coach Hue Jackson think he had a better chance of winning the toss, scoring a game-ending touchdown or holding the Steelers after they won the toss and kicking a field goal, than putting it in from the three-yard line?

When he didn’t go for it, he deserved to lose.