‘Take over your trap’ by the late rapper Bankroll Fresh might not be on your Spotify playlist. The song, however, is a rallying cry for the Pitt football team when it takes to the road.
“That’s the first thing we walk back into after we win," Pitt senior linebacker Phil Campbell said after practice on Tuesday. The Panthers like to go into other team’s stadiums and come out with wins, and lately they have been pretty good at it.
‘Walk in your trap and take over your trap,’ is how the song goes, and that’s just what the team has been doing. Pitt is undefeated on the road this season with wins over Tennessee, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech, and will be looking to make it four in a row this Saturday when the Panthers travel to Durham to take on Duke in a ACC Coastal game.
“We got a new little motto this year,” Campbell explained. “We like to walk in people’s traps this year.”
Campbell explained this new tradition was started last season in Pitt’s regular season finale against Georgia Tech by defensive end John Morgan.
“It has kind of evolved to the whole team now,” Campbell said. “I think little things like that are just little advantages we have with ourselves. It’s fun to go into another opponent’s house and take over and that’s kind of like what our goal is every time. It’s a good energy to feed off of.”
“We just use it as energy to have fun and go on the road and get those wins,” Pitt junior cornerback AJ Woods said.
The Panthers will be walking into a proverbial trap this Saturday in Durham. After losing to Miami last weekend, the Panthers now sit with a 3-1 record in ACC play. The mark is still good for first place in the ACC Coastal standings, though teams like the Hurricanes, Virginia, and even North Carolina could make things interesting in the final month of the season.
The Blue Devils are in last place in the ACC Coastal, but they do present some challenges for this Pitt defense. Duke is fifth in the ACC in total offense, as they average 452.6 yards per game. Mataeo Durant is second in the conference with 973 yards and nine touchdowns this season.
“He’s a good football player, a very good football player,” Campbell said of Durant. “He runs behind his blocks well. He’s good in open field. I think that the quarterback is a good player. He can run also and he can make the passes he needs to make. They’re averaging like 200 rushing yards a game, so we definitely have work to do on defense. It will be a challenge.”
Pitt is first in the ACC at stopping the run, giving up only 103.6 yards per game. The Panthers are coming off a rough defensive performance in which they allowed 38 points and nearly 500 yards of offense to Miami.
“We pride ourselves on stopping the run anyway, so that was going to be a given,” Campbell said of going up against Durant and the Duke offense. “We’ve got to line up and we have to stop the run this week.”
Duke’s Wallace Wade Stadium might not provide the same intimidating environment like the ones Pitt saw at Neyland Stadium and Lane Stadium earlier this season, but it’s another opportunity for the team to stay perfect on the road and remain a game ahead atop the division.
“I just think we’ve been able to play really well together,” Woods said of the team’s mindset on the road. “Being able to face it and overcome the adversity that we face in the games and just stick together.”
