There was a point in the 2019 regular season when Pitt’s prospects were looking good.
After a 1-2 start with losses to Virginia and Penn State, the Panthers rebounded. They upset UCF at Heinz Field in dramatic fashion and then rattled off three more wins in a row to get to 5-2. The rest of the schedule looked winnable and Pitt realistically had itself in the conversation for a repeat ACC Coastal Division championship.
But the Panthers lost all of their momentum on Oct. 26, when a 3-4 Miami team came to Heinz Field, kept Pitt out of the end zone and left town with a 16-12 win. An uninspiring win at Georgia Tech and an overtime thriller against North Carolina followed, breathing life back into the Panthers at 7-3.
Then they got shut out at Virginia Tech and blew the season finale against Boston College, scoring one touchdown total in those two games, and the 5-2 start turned into a 2-3 finish and a 7-5 record that brings a few words to mind.
Like disappointment.
“7-5, we know we could have achieved way better than that,” senior receiver Maurice Ffrench said after Saturday’s loss to Boston College at Heinz Field. “We all feel like we underachieved this season, just having the playmakers we have on the offensive side and us having the defense like we do. It felt like we could have took advantage of having a defense like that and having the personnel we have on offense, that we could have been way better.”
Underachievement is another good word for it. Of the teams Pitt lost to, Virginia went 9-3, Penn State won 10 games and Virginia Tech was 8-4. But Miami and Boston College both barely claimed bowl eligibility at 6-6. And only one of the seven teams Pitt defeated this season finished with a winning record; that was UCF, who went 9-3 this season.
North Carolina and Ohio are bowl-eligible at 6-6 after winning this week, but Syracuse, Duke, Georgia Tech and Delaware all finished with losing records.
All of this despite having veteran offensive skill players, a returning starter at quarterback and one of the most talented defenses the Panthers have deployed in a long time.
“If I really had to give us a record, we should have no more than three losses,” Ffrench said. “We had so many close games that we lost, just little things - ball security, making the right throw or playing the right coverage or being in the right spot at the right time, it’s just the little inches and the little details that get you the win or the loss. Unfortunately, we’ve been on the bad side.”
The two games that will come back to haunt this Pitt team were the loss to Miami and the season-ending defeat by Boston College. The Hurricanes and Eagles both went 6-6 overall and 4-4 in the ACC this season and were the definition of the conference’s struggling middle.
Both were winnable games that Pitt lost by one score. Both were games that saw the Panthers’ offense sputter and fail. And both were home contests that could have extended momentum (in the case of the Miami game) or salvaged it (in the case of the Boston College game). Winning one of those games could have given Pitt eight wins for the first time in three years, but the reality is that if the Panthers were as good as they seemed to be in their four-game winning streak at midseason, then they should have defeated both the Hurricanes and the Eagles.
With those wins, Pitt would have gone 9-3 overall and 6-2 in the ACC. The Panthers still would have lost the tiebreaker for the Coastal to Virginia, but at 9-3, they would have found themselves in a nice bowl destination.
Instead, they’re 7-5 overall, 4-4 in the conference and looking at trips to places like Detroit and Shreveport.
“No, absolutely not,” quarterback Kenny Pickett said when asked if he thought 7-5 was an accurate representation of Pitt in 2019. “But you can’t go change it. It is what it is right now. So we have to look ourselves in the mirror, turn this thing around and go win the bowl game.”
