Pitt Football: Can Panthers Compete After Ray Graham’s Season-Ending Injury?
By Matt Shetler
As a kid, almost everyone heard their coach explain to them that one person doesn’t make or break a football team.
Peyton Manning has pretty much shot that theory to pieces in the NFL this season—the Indianapolis Colts have been awful without their star.
On a smaller level, Todd Graham and the Pitt Panthers must now try and prove that one man doesn’t make a football team. On Wednesday night they watched their do-everything running back Ray Graham be carted off the field with what turned out to be a season-ending knee injury.
With Graham, the Big East Conference’s leading rusher, the Pitt offense still had problems finding consistency in Todd Graham’s new scheme.
Yet, with him in the lineup, Pitt still had as reasonable a chance at winning the Big East in 2011 as anyone else in the conference.
How will they get by without the services of their go-to guy?
For one, the philosophy must change somewhat.
Pitt did a good job Wednesday night of moving the chains and sustaining lengthy scoring drives, something they haven’t had a great deal of success doing this season. Forget the words “high octane,” for now if you haven’t already, and get used to a ball control offense that is slower and tries to sustain drives instead of worrying about speed.
That is assuming Todd Graham will adjust to the personnel the Panthers will now have on the field.
He will have to.
Opposing defenses no longer have to worry about game planning against Graham, so the focus will turn to not allowing quarterback Tino Sunseri to beat them.
Sunseri has been as inconsistent as it gets in 201,1 and won’t throw for over 400-yards a game as he did in the win against Connecticut. The rest of the season, it becomes vital that Todd Graham puts his quarterback in a position to have success.
If that means swallowing his pride and slowing the game down, then so be it.
As for contending for the Big East title, it’s doubtful, but not all together impossible.
On paper, it would be hard-pressed to imagine the Panthers winning enough games to become bowl eligible, but they still have enough talent to be competitive the rest of the way in the conference.
It begins with Sunseri. He must play well, but he may be able to lean on Wisconsin transfer Zach Brown, who is likely to assume the feature back role. Brown won’t see nearly the amount of touches that Graham did in the Panthers’ offense, but he should be able to sustain at least a semblance of a ground game.
That means Pitt will be throwing more often, which isn’t necessarily a good sign. Sunseri had success putting the ball in the air 42 times against U Conn, but that isn’t necessarily a game plan for success every week for Pitt.
Especially since Graham wasn’t the only guy lost for the year on Wednesday.
Pitt also lost junior wide receiver Cameron Sadler to a fractured sternum and freshman offensive lineman Matt Rotheram with a fractured ankle.
If things weren’t challenging enough before for the Panthers, they certainly are now.
That’s why for the Panthers to have any success the rest of the way, the game plan may need to change somewhat.
Relying on a much-improved Pitt defense and an offense that can move the chains methodically seems to make more sense at this point than trying to do anything high octane.
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