After loss to Virginia Tech, Pitt finds itself at the bottom of the ACC
Saturday’s slate of games in the ACC included some interesting matchups.
Syracuse got a chance to prove whether its undefeated record was for real when it hosted Clemson. Duke got a chance to prove whether it should be ranked in the top 15 or 12 when Notre Dame came to Durham.
There were two other games that were just about proving something. But whereas Syracuse and Duke were looking at opportunities to put themselves among the ACC’s top tier, these other two games featured four teams trying to prove the opposite.
They were trying to prove that they weren’t in the bottom tier of the conference.
Boston College hosting Virginia was the first of those games, with the Eagles sitting at 1-3 and 0-2 in the ACC, while the Cavaliers went to Chestnut Hill 0-4 overall and 0-1 in the conference.
Boston College won that game, so while Jeff Hafley’s group is still in the bottom four of the league, they’re at least not in the bottom two.
The second game to pit one of the ACC’s bottom teams against another, of course, happened in Blacksburg. Pitt and Virginia Tech both entered Saturday night with 1-3 records, and when it was over, one team looked like it had clearly established itself as a bottom-two team in the ACC.
That team was Pitt, and the Panthers now find themselves firmly positioned with Virginia at Nos. 13 and 14 in the conference.
It’s quite a fall for Pitt, but such is the case for the Panthers in 2023. On Saturday night, they faced a Virginia Tech team that was fresh off a road loss to Marshall and reeling in Brent Pry’s second year in Blacksburg.
Virginia Tech was suspect on both sides of the ball. The Hokies hadn’t scored more than 17 points in any of their last three games and couldn’t stop the run, giving up 649 rushing yards in losses to Purdue, Rutgers and Marshall.
This was supposed to be a get-right game for Pitt. A chance to bounce back after losing to Cincinnati, West Virginia and North Carolina. A chance to show that the Panthers were making steady improvements. A chance to show that they might not be in the top four of the ACC, but they also weren’t in the bottom four.
Instead, they didn’t bounce back. They didn’t show that they’re making steady improvements.
They showed that they are, in fact, among the bottom four teams of the conference.
Bottom two, really.
That’s where Pitt is, and it’s an undesirable title the Panthers earned honestly.
They earned it by being completely ineffective on offense, scoring just seven touchdowns in four games against FBS competition. They earned it by showing their youth and inexperience on defense, missing tackles and blowing assignments with frequency in the four FBS losses this season. And they earned it by being sloppy, committing 34 penalties and six turnovers in those four games.
On Saturday night, Pitt allowed Virginia Tech to score five touchdowns and convert 8-of-16 third downs - a remarkable accomplishment considering the Hokies had scored six total touchdowns in their previous three games against FBS teams and entered the game having converted a grand total of 17 third downs all season.
The inability to stop Virginia Tech’s rushing attack was a major issue on Saturday night, and it’s something Pat Narduzzi, Randy Bates and company will spend a lot of time focusing on over the next two weeks. But that’s all secondary to the biggest - and obvious - issue:
The offense.
True to form, Pitt’s offense was a mess on Saturday night. Phil Jurkovec struck on his first pass attempt with a 75-yard bomb to Bub Means; after that, Jurkovec completed just two more passes in the first half, and by the time Pitt took the field for its final possession of the game, the Panthers’ quarterback had a grand total of five completions to his name.
Five completed passes in nearly 54 minutes of play.
And even when Jurkovec completed 6-of-7 on the final drive, that modest success still carried the stink of the whole evening by closing out the night with a pair of check-down passes on third-and-31 and fourth-and-20.
It was a fitting end to a disastrous night, and disastrous nights are becoming the norm. Pitt’s losses to Cincinnati and West Virginia don’t have any shine (although WVU is now 4-1 after the season started with calls for Neal Brown’s job), and it seems unlikely that Virginia Tech is about to go on a heater when the Hokies have Florida State, Wake Forest, Syracuse and Louisville coming up over the next month.
It’s far more likely that Pitt has found itself where it belongs after playing the way it has:
At the bottom of the ACC.
Saturday was an opportunity to get out of that basement, but like so many would-be tackles on Kyron Drones and Bhayshul Tuten, that opportunity was missed.