Pittsburgh opens Graham tenure with blowout victory over Buffalo

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

Ray Graham ran for 201 yards and three touchdowns as Pittsburgh kicked off new coach Todd Graham’s tenure with a 35-16 victory over Buffalo on Saturday night.

Tino Sunseri threw for 179 yards and a score for the Panthers, who needed a full half to find their legs while playing in their coach’s uptempo system.

Pitt broke it open in the third quarter behind Ray Graham, who scored on runs of 3 and 5 yards to help Pitt get some breathing room. He later added a 1-yard plunge to complete the second 200-yard game of his career.

Cincinnati transfer Chazz Anderson threw for 276 yards and ran for a touchdown for Buffalo, but also threw a costly interception in the third quarter that allowed Pittsburgh to finally break loose. Branden Oliver ran for a career-high 114 yards and a score for the Bulls.

Todd Graham has dubbed his brand of football “high-octane” and promised if his offense could run 80 plays a game it would score at least five touchdowns.

The Panthers only needed 66 snaps to produce five scores against the Bulls, but the high-octane performance will have to wait as Pitt operated in fits and starts for long stretches against a MAC team coming off a miserable 2-10 season.

Pitt operated quickly, as Graham promised, just not always efficiently. The Panthers often went just 15-18 seconds in between snaps but struggled to produce quality with their quantity.

Not that they didn’t try. Sunseri went deep on the first play of the season but overthrew an open Mike Shanahan by a good five yards, a recurring theme for most of the night as Sunseri struggled with his accuracy. He completed 16 of 28 passes, almost all of them underneath routes his receivers turned into solid if not explosive gains.