A chance for Patti to step up one more time

Every one of Nick Patti’s opportunities over the last five years at Pitt has come when he needed to step in for someone else.

And on each of those occasions, he has delivered.

There was his first significant playing time in 2019 when Kenny Pickett had to head to the sidelines after getting banged up against UCF. Patti threw a touchdown pass to keep Pitt in that game before Pickett ultimately led the Panthers to a 35-34 win.

There was the next week when Patti made his first career start and managed Pitt to a win over Delaware with a pair of touchdown passes.

There was the game at Florida State a year later when Pickett, hobbled by an ankle injury, yielded to Patti for a handful of goal line runs that produced two touchdowns.

There was the Peach Bowl against Michigan State last season when he started in place of Pickett, who had opted out of the New Year’s Six bowl to prepare for the NFL. Patti’s day was cut short, of course, after he dove into the end zone on Pitt’s second drive.

And then there was this season, when Patti’s lone appearance - aside from three garbage-time handoffs in the win at Virginia - came during the Week Two loss to Tennessee. With starter Kedon Slovis sidelined by a concussion at the end of the first half, Patti played the second half and overtime, throwing a touchdown pass and nearly pulling off the upset despite playing with a knee injury himself.

Now, with his career at Pitt nearly over, Patti has one last chance to step up in another quarterback’s absence when he leads the Panthers against UCLA in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl on Friday after Slovis announced earlier this month that he is leaving the team as a transfer.

"This is my fifth year,” Patti said after Pitt’s first practice in El Paso on Monday. “I think just being here for so long and seeing new guys come in, now I’m the older guy and I try to come out with a positive mindset every day, positive attitude, come out with confidence and I guess the guys rally around that and I’m going to try to keep it going for the game.”

Senior receiver Jared Wayne thinks that Patti brings more than just a positive attitude to the field.

“He’s a gamer,” Wayne said Monday. “He’s going to come in and make plays. He’s going to do whatever it takes to put us in position to win.”

Wayne figures to be a primary weapon for Patti after he led the team with 84 targets this season. He turned those targets into 55 receptions for 1,012 yards and five touchdowns, but while that production came with Slovis at the helm, Wayne and Patti are both confident they can put up numbers together as well.

“Nick and I have been together for four years,” Wayne said. “He’s been here my whole time, so I’ve always had a good connection with him. It didn’t take too much to get on the same page, and we kind of know each other’s tendencies. I know what type of ball he likes to throw and he knows how I run my routes and whatnot, so it was pretty easy to get on the same page.”

For Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi, who picked Slovis as the team’s quarterback in training camp and stood by the USC transfer through a considerable amount of midseason struggles, Patti is buoyed by some intangibles that should put him in position to succeed on Friday.

“The one thing I’ll tell you about Nick is, he is tough. He’s a competitor, he’s a smart football player and he’s a team guy. Our guys will play for him. He’s probably our best leader at the quarterback position and our guys really like playing for Nick.”

"Nick is a veteran," offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti said Tuesday. "He’s been at the University of Pittsburgh for a long time. He’s a winner, he’s a leader, his teammates respect him and his teammates believe in him. We are really excited and I know I’m personally very excited to have coached him these last couple of weeks as the starting quarterback. We’re excited to see Nick go out there and lead us."

Now Patti has a chance to finish what he started in Atlanta last December. The consensus among Pitt’s players and coaches is that the Panthers would have won the Peach Bowl if Patti had played more than two series.

On Friday, he’ll get a chance to show whether that theory has any legs.

“The bowl games are weird. You get a couple weeks off. It’s not game after game, it’s not a week off and then you go, so you have to train your body, you have to give yourself time to rest and get back into it. So I think getting that experience last year was great and I was ready for the game. Obviously I got hurt, but I’m ready to come back and show out this game.”