There is one name the Pitt defense is focusing on this week for the season opener against Virginia and that is Bryce Perkins. The Cavaliers’ quarterback took the reins of the offense last season as a junior college transfer and he guided Virginia to an 8-5 record and a convincing win over South Carolina in the Belk Bowl.
Along the way, Perkins threw for 2,680 yards and 25 touchdowns while also racking up 923 rushing yards and nine scores. There is no way around it, he makes the Virginia offense go, and the key for the Pitt defense will be to slow him down on Saturday night.
“Well he’s a tremendous athlete and he’s a Heisman Trophy candidate,” defensive coordinator Randy Bates told reporters on Tuesday. “He’s one of the best.”
Pitt has both freshmen quarterbacks, Davis Beville and Eli Kosanovich, wearing Perkins’ No. 3 uniform to help mimic his game on the scout team all week. Though, it remains unlikely those two will be able to accurately give this defense a true look of what he is like.
“He presents a lot of challenges,” Pitt senior cornerback Dane Jackson said. “He’s mobile, he can throw the ball. When he gets out of the pocket he’s very dangerous so we just got to stay poised and stick to our assignments.”
In 2018, Pitt traveled down to Charlottesville in a pivotal game that helped decide the ACC Coastal race. The Panthers knocked off the 23rd-ranked Cavaliers by a score of 23-13.
In that game, Pitt managed to keep Perkins mostly in check. The Panthers notched five sacks as a team. Perkins was held to -7 rushing yards, his lowest rushing performance of the season, while Virginia’s 13 points was its lowest scoring output as a team as well.
Can Pitt take anything away from that showing last year?
“I would say the number one thing is we kept him around the pocket,” Bates said. "We had quite a few sacks and we were able to bring him down.”
That key will be the same this season. Linebacker Kylan Johnson is new to the Pitt team coming as a graduate transfer from Florida. He never faced Perkins or Virginia before. Johnson does, however, have starting experience playing for Florida in the SEC. He couldn’t come up with a player comparison for Perkins, as he said he faced a lot more pocket passers in the league.
“I don’t think there was a lot of mobile quarterbacks in the SEC, it was more of pocket passers, Johnson explained. “He can move better than probably some of the quarterbacks that I’ve seen in the SEC.”
For Pitt, the key will be the same as last year. Get pressure on Perkins and finish tackles. Bates is weary of that, though. August football can sometimes be sloppy, as evidence by Florida and Miami’s season opener played over the weekend. Bates took note of that game and shares some of those concerns.
“It always scares you in the first game, because a lot of drills you do are 'thud' - where you don’t bring guys to the ground and then all the sudden, ‘hey go out there and tackle everybody’ and sometimes it takes a couple of weeks for that to happen and let’s hope that doesn’t happen this week,” the Pitt defensive coordinator said.
In the end it comes down to familiarity. Pitt has a veteran defense with multiple returning starters. Virginia is a team they are used to seeing, and in the end that’s all that matters. Dane Jackson isn’t expecting any surprises from their ACC Coastal foes.
“Like you said I’ve been around,” Jackson said. “This will be my fifth time, well my first year I redshirted, but this will be like my fourth time playing against them, so not much has changed. They’re a great football team and they execute everything they do well so we’ll be looking forward to it.”
