In crunch time, Pitt leaned on its DL stars
Pitt may have entered the fourth quarter of last Thursday’s game against North Carolina with a two-touchdown lead, but the players and coaches knew better.
They knew the Tar Heels weren’t going to lay down in the face of a 24-10 deficit. So defensive line coach Charlie Partridge turned to his two best players with a message.
“Coach Partridge was just like, we have to man up and the walls are going up and somebody has to make a play,” redshirt sophomore defensive tackle Jaylen Twyman said after the game. “Big-time players make big-time plays and stuff like that.”
For Twyman and redshirt junior defensive end Patrick Jones, “stuff like that” meant playing every snap for the rest of the game. UNC ran 19 plays in the fourth quarter and eight more in overtime, and Twyman and Jones played every one of those snaps.
“It’s a blessing; growing up, you always want to try to picture yourself in those moments, and when we train with Coach (Dave) Andrews, we try to imitate that,” Twyman said. “We have the fourth-quarter workouts in January and we always try to prepare for the fourth quarter. Coach (Randy) Bates always talks about playing 60 minutes-plus in every pregame meeting, so we always try to prepare for that.”
Relying on Twyman and Jones late in the game was nothing new; those two have been stalwarts of Pitt’s defense all season long. According to Pro Football Focus, Dane Jackson leads the Panthers’ defense in snaps played, followed by Kylan Johnson, Paris Ford and Damar Hamlin; next is Twyman, averaging 55 snaps per game, and Jones, who averages 54.
Even on a team with impressive depth along the defensive line - Pitt legitimately goes two-deep at each of the four spots despite losing two starters to season-ending injuries - Twyman and Jones are still logging a high number of snaps. And those two are producing: Twyman leads Pitt and ranks No. 2 in the ACC with 9.5 sacks, while Jones is right behind him with seven (No. 2 for Pitt and tied for No. 4 in the ACC).
Jones is also No. 3 nationally with 53 pressures, according to Pro Football Focus. Twyman has 27 pressures, which ranks in the top 20 among interior lineman.
And while Jones and Twyman were relatively quiet in the first three quarters against UNC last Thursday, they stepped up in the clutch moments. Both of Jones’ tackles came in the fourth quarter and overtime. Twyman finished the game with 2.5 sacks but his two solo sacks came near the end. His first solo sack was on UNC’s field goal drive that ended regulation.
Twyman’s second solo sack was even bigger, as he got to UNC quarterback Sam Howell on third-and-11; Howell would throw incomplete on the next play to end the game with a 34-27 Pitt victory.
“I give a lot of credit to Coach Partridge,” Twyman said of the third-down sack. “He called a great pass stunt. It worked out well. We saw it on film and we executed it well.”