Confidence made Hall the catalyst for Pitt's run game and offense

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It was only a few weeks ago that Pitt’s running game, much like the season as a whole, appeared to be dead on arrival.

No matter the opponent, the Panthers couldn’t get anything going on the ground. After a 200-yard game against Youngstown State, the rushing attack took a steady nosedive. 155 yards at Penn State. 103 against Oklahoma State. A bottoming-out 37 yards at Georgia Tech. Even Rice managed to keep Pitt’s run game in check, allowing just 69 yards on 33 attempts.

The Panthers topped 100 yards at Syracuse and got close against N.C. State (95 yards on 32 attempts), but those games brought the team’s rushing average against FBS teams to 98 yards per game - a total that would be in the bottom four nationally in this week’s NCAA stat rankings (as it was, Pitt ranked No. 113 at that point).

And while there were many culprits behind that unsightly stat line, the running backs as a group share quite a bit of blame. In the five-game stretch from Week Three to Week Seven, no running back had more than 36 rushing yards, and safety Jordan Whitehead was the team’s leading rusher for four consecutive games.

Pitt was struggling, its offense had no firepower and the expected bread-and-butter of the attack - the running game - was a giant void in production.

Then the Duke game happened, and Darrin Hall, who entered 2017 with 417 career rushing yards and had 56 yards against the first six FBS teams Pitt faced this season, exploded. The junior back went for 254 yards and three scores that day in Durham, a performance that ranks as the No. 10 all-time single-game rushing total in Pitt history and the most yards by a Pitt player in three years.

Hall’s running propelled Pitt to victory over the Blue Devils, and he followed that game with 111 yards and a touchdown on 25 carries against Virginia two weeks ago at Heinz Field. Not coincidentally, Hall’s second 100-yard game of the season had the same result as the first: a win for Pitt.

The running game has been a catalyst for the team, and Hall has been the catalyst for the running game.

“I just want to contribute to this team winning,” Hall said after the Virginia game. “I’m hard on myself in losses. I just want to make plays and be in a position to win games.”

Perhaps opportunity has played a part in Hall’s emergence. He had 31 rushing attempts through the first seven games of the 2017 season and carried the ball just 36 times last year (to be fair, everyone took a back seat to James Conner in 2016). In his entire career prior to the Duke game - 29 games - he had double-digit carries just four times.

But there’s more than just opportunity behind Hall’s two-game total of 365 yards and four touchdowns, according to running backs coach Andre Powell.

“The way kids mature, they mature at different rates and he’s just maturing,” Powell said last week. “He’s just doing all the things we’ve been asking him to do and we’ve been trying to get him in a groove to do and it has just worked out for him. Now he’s playing with a lot of confidence.”

“I definitely believe that I can do it, so when I do get my carries, I have to make something happen,” Hall said. And he has certainly been making things happen. His touchdown runs of 79 and 92 yards at Duke stand out, of course, but it’s the steady, consistent production that has made him Pitt’s top running back in the last two games.

Of Hall’s 49 carries against Duke and Virginia, 30 gained at least four yards, 22 gained at least five and he had six carries of double-digit yardage. What’s more, he lost yardage just four times for a total of seven yards and was stopped at the line of scrimmage just twice. The offensive line certainly shares some credit for that success, as does Hall for taking advantage of improved play up front.

“A lot of things are falling into place,” Powell said. “He just happens to be in the right place at the right time, and his confidence has gotten better, the line’s confidence has gotten better - it’s a good time to get confident.”

Concurrent with the growing confidence, Hall’s vision has improved. He is seeing holes and being more decisive with the opportunities the blocking creates - a byproduct of the extended carries he’s getting and the success he’s experiencing.

“It’s definitely slowing down and I’m trusting the O-line that they’re going to make it to the ‘backers,” Hall said. “So as long as I’m being patient and waiting for the O-line to come off the blocks, it’s just easy.”

“You just see him making plays,” head coach Pat Narduzzi said Monday. “I think he's playing a little bit faster. Sometimes it clicks - you'd have to ask him to find out, hey, what's the difference in the last two weeks compared to the last year - but he's playing at a higher level.

“Again, that's what we talk about developing. You never give up on a kid after his freshman year or sophomore year or junior year. I've seen guys throughout in the fourth year, all of a sudden they start playing the best football that they've played.

“But Darrin is a good football player. When we recruited him, we knew he was talented, and we're kind of getting what we thought we'd have, and I think he's got confidence now.”