Pitt follows upset of UCF with close one against Delaware
Chances are, going down to the wire and needing a fourth-quarter comeback to beat an FCS team weren’t what Pitt had in mind for an encore to last week’s upset win over No. 22 UCF last week.
But that’s what happened on Saturday at Heinz Field, as the Panthers trailed Delaware 14-10 in the final 15 minutes before securing a 17-14 victory over the Blue Hens.
“Obviously, that was not the Pitt football team that I’d like to see,” Pat Narduzzi said to open his postgame remarks, and that statement was true in more ways than one. Pitt entered the game with personnel limitations; most crucially, the Panthers were without starting quarterback Kenny Pickett and top running backs A.J. Davis and Vincent Davis.
They also went into the game without one of their top corners, two top-six linebackers and the team’s No. 3 safety.
Those injury situations didn’t totally doom Pitt, though. Redshirt freshman Todd Sibley emerged as the primary ball-carrier in place of Davis and Davis, and he ran for a career-high 106 yards on 22 attempts - the first 100-yard game of Sibley’s career and the Panthers’ first since Darrin Hall had 123 against Stanford in the Sun Bowl last December.
Redshirt freshman Nick Patti, who started for Pickett, put up an admirable stat line of 271 yards, two touchdowns and one interception on 23-of-37 passing.
And Pitt’s defense, despite missing some rotational pieces, held Delaware to 170 yards of total offense and nine punts.
Plus, the regular contributors who played put up strong performances, like Maurice Ffrench, who caught nine passes and Taysir Mack, who had his second 100-yard receiving game of the season and caught a touchdown pass at Heinz Field for the first time in his two-year Pitt career.
Pitt out-gained Delaware 443-170 and averaged nearly twice as many yards per play as the Blue Hens while out-possessing them by more than six minutes.
And yet, there were the Panthers, trailing by four in the fourth quarter and needing Mack to make a contested catch on third-and-17 from the Pitt 37 in order to keep alive what would turn out to be the game-winning touchdown drive.
Somehow, it didn’t add up.
“I don’t think we came out with the emotion that we could have,” Narduzzi said. “I thought we came out flat, and blame me for that because we have to come out revved up and ready to go every week. After an emotional win like we had a week ago, sometimes it’s hard to get it going.”
Emotion and energy may have played into the situation, although Pitt has been good under Narduzzi at making sure a big win doesn’t overshadow the next week’s game. Perhaps the decision to keep Pickett on the sideline played a role; Narduzzi said it was a game-time call, although Pickett hadn’t taken any snaps in practice and Narduzzi said he warned the team during the week that they may be short-handed.
Regardless of whatever energy may or may not have been lacking, the Panthers rallied to a fourth-quarter comeback for the second consecutive week. But redshirt senior cornerback and captain Dane Jackson said the feeling after Saturday’s game was not like it was a week earlier.
“It definitely wasn’t like UCF, I can say that,” Jackson said. “It was positive, try to stay positive. Coach Narduzzi, you know, tried to keep us all up and remind us that we just won the game. We’re 1-0 for the week and we have to just keep improving.”
Pitt’s next test will be on Saturday when the Panthers face Duke at Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham for an 8 p.m. kickoff. The team will certainly be hoping to have their quarterback and top running backs on the field as they dive headlong into ACC play, with the final seven games on the schedule all conference contests.
In the meantime, they’ll try to move on from Saturday’s victory as quickly as possible.
“A win’s a win…I’m not sure how to put it,” Jackson said. “We got the [win]; we just have to go back to the film and keep getting better.”