Football: Panthers to stick with Sunseri

The Pitt football team has made its decision: Tino Sunseri will be at the helm, and that’s… The Pitt football team has made its decision: Tino Sunseri will be at the helm, and that’s that.

The beginning of Pitt football’s season has quickly unraveled, mostly due to the lack of production at the quarterback position. Whether it is Tino Sunseri or Trey Anderson leading the team, the result has been the same.

In head coach Todd Graham’s opinion, the swapping of quarterbacks might have contributed significantly the Panthers’ lack of success.

“What’s contributed a great deal to our inconsistency is that you can’t play musical quarterbacks,” Graham said. “We’re not doing the switching the quarterback around. We’re just not going to do that.

“Tino, by far and away, has the biggest grasp of what we are doing offensively, and we’ve got to get it out of him. Switching the quarterbacks has caused more distraction than it has positive,” Graham added.

The new system Graham implemented requires a certain style of quarterback, namely one that can make some plays with his feet and make quick decisions with his arms. Expectations for Sunseri were probably too high coming into the year, considering he wasn’t a Graham recruit and the Graham style of “high-octane” offense is usually tailored toward his recruits.

“We have obviously had inconsistent play at that position and that has caused me to make some decisions I wouldn’t normally make,” Graham said.

The Panthers have lacked consistency and structure all season, and it’s time for them to get it together and go back to one quarterback as they head into the heart of their Big East schedule on Wednesday against the Connecticut Huskies — last year’s surprise Big East Champions.

Graham has repeatedly said it’s on the coaches to coax the best out of Sunseri, and it’s hard not to agree. Obviously, it would be best if Graham could implement his system with his players right away, but that was never going to be the case. As a coach at the Division I level, Graham should be able to get the offense on the right track by tweaking his system to better suit his quarterback, so that Sunseri can be appropriately paired with the electric running back Ray Graham.

If you compare Sunseri’s stats from last year to those of G.J. Kinne, the Tulsa quarterback who led Graham’s team last year, you’ll see that Kinne ran the ball 158 times for 561 yards, whereas, so far, Sunseri has only managed 11 yards on 70 attempts. As a fan, you probably see those stats and think to yourself that there has to be a better option to help the team. Many fans have called for the switch to Trey Anderson, and the coaching staff has tried him out in the past two games with horrendous results. On the season, the undersized Anderson is 12-33 for only 55 yards and has thrown 3 interceptions. It certainly doesn’t seem like there is much hope in that direction either.

“The idea was to get a spark and I think Trey has a great future,” Graham said. “But he just got here in August and his knowledge and understanding is just not at a point where he can play every down. I think that has been a distraction, so our focus is, ‘Let’s get it out of Tino.’ because switching quarterbacks really hurt us in our last game.”

More-devoted fans might be wondering what happened to redshirt freshman Mark Myers, who was rated the top quarterback prospect out of Ohio by Rivals.com during his senior year in high school.

“Mark was competing for the No. 2 spot in fall camp, and Trey won the job,” quarterbacks coach Todd Dodge said on Wednesday.

Simply put, Myers didn’t transition well at all in to the new offense and fell to the wayside.

“You can’t rep more than two guys [in practice],” Dodge said. “Frankly, that’s what happened with Mark.”

Despite Myers picking up some more reps in practice this week while Anderson deals with a flare-up of tendonitis, don’t expect to see him on the field anytime soon.

With neither the back-up nor the third-string quarterback able to step up and take the reins of the Panthers, Pitt should stick with Sunseri for the rest of the season.

The starting quarterback showed promise last year and still has time to succeed this year.

“Tino has shown glimpses in the Buffalo game, glimpses in the Maine game, about 75 percent of the Iowa game and about 90 percent of the South Florida game,” Dodge said.

If Sunseri can perform like he did against South Florida on a consistent basis, there would be no reason that the Panthers couldn’t challenge for the Big East title. Unfortunately, performances like the ones he had against Rutgers and Utah have been more frequent.

No matter what level of football you look at, the modern game is based around the quarterback. No team can have a real chance of winning championships without consistent good play from the quarterback position — and that’s the main thing that Pitt has lacked so far this year.

“I prepare like I’m the best quarterback in the country,” Sunseri said on Wednesday. “That’s the demeanor I have.”

The confidence is great, but with a BCS bid not out of reach, it’s time to start backing it up.