Submit your Pitt football question

Q: Did you see what Missouri did to Nebraska this weekend? Their team was struggling until they went to the spread offense a couple of years ago. Don't you think Pitt should join the 21st century and run a spread offense? Even JoePa has something called spread HD and look how good they are doing!

Pat Perri, Bakersfield, Calif.

ZEISE: I think the fact that Missouri has Chase Daniels, perhaps the best quarterback in the country, and a host of great skill position players has as much to do with the fact that they are rolling up PlayStation-like scores every week. And right back at you -- have you watched what Alabama has been doing to the rest of the SEC? How about USC? Neither of those two teams are in the "21st century" and both generally have fared pretty well this year. In fact, Nick Saban in year two has made Alabama a power again and the Crimson Tide is fairly simple: Line up, dominate the lines of scrimmage and run the football down the throats of the opponents. And you know why it works for them? The same reason Missouri's spread offense works -- or Penn State's for that matter -- is because Alabama, Penn State, Missouri, USC and every other team who is winning has a lot of good players put in a system that fits their talents. I don't think it would hurt Pitt to incorporate some of the spread formations and use Greg Cross a little bit more, but guess what -- this team beat South Florida because it lined up and dominated the line of scrimmage and played a lot of smash-mouth football. And I'd be willing to bet that if we're talking about a 10-2 or 11-1 team that wins the Big East at the end of the season, there won't be many people calling for Pitt to go to a spread. And look at Michigan and look at Auburn, two teams who have joined the "21st Century" and turned to a spread. Neither has the players to pull it off and both offenses are painful to watch.

Q: Now that college teams play 12 games, how does Pitt manage to have two bye weeks? Luck of the schedule, something unique to them, or the Big East?

Jen Webb, Pittsburgh

ZEISE: Almost all teams have two bye weeks because the way the college football calendar is laid out and Pitt actually has a third one coming up (Nov. 15th in between Louisville and Cincinnati). The key is there are 15 weekends between (and including) the first weekend for games (I think the first games were on Thursday Aug. 28th) and championship Saturday (Dec. 6th) and since Pitt played on opening weekend -- and the Big East scheduled the Panthers to play Connecticut on championship Saturday. So they have to have three weeks off (as opposed to two). The thing is teams in the conferences with championship games (ACC, SEC, Big 12 etc., etc.) have two byes and their seasons finish in week 14, so week 15 can be used for the two teams who will play in the championship game.

Q: Do you think the struggles of the first two games might have been a function of the young Pitt players not quite knowing how to play Dave Wannstedt's style of football?

Ian Leyda, Zelienople

ZEISE: No, not the style -- I think there may have been some growing pains with some of the players but the Bowling Green loss is squarely on the coaches because they played the game not to lose and the players were so uptight as a result of that they were afraid to make mistakes. I also think there was a little bit of "headline reading" going on by the players and they figured they'd show up and win without much of a fight -- then they scored two quick, easy touchdowns to open the Bowling Green game and that made it even worse. When you deal with young kids there is a lot more mental and emotional stuff going on in these games than you think and I think there was some complacency setting in. Since then, this team has been focused and sharp and they've thrown caution to the wind in a lot of cases and have played fast and free.

First Published: October 6, 2008, 8:45 p.m.