11/28/2021 football Edit

Pitt's 10-win season creates a legacy for 2021 team

Jim Hammett • Panther-lair

Staff

SYRACUSE, NY — Pitt’s 31-14 win over Syracuse on Saturday represented more than just another conference victory to close out the regular season. It was the tenth time in the 2021 season that this team has come out victorious.

Ten.

That’s the magic number, and the 2021 Pitt football got there. No other football team sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh has achieved ten regular season wins since 1981.

“Ten wins is huge,” Pitt junior defensive tackle Tyler Bentley said after the game. “It’s huge for this program, it’s huge for our boys. We really fought for that ten wins and it’s been 40 years, it’s about time.”

Bentley is right.

It’s been a long time coming for this program to get back to where it once was, and of course that remains to be seen. Is Pitt back at the level of the teams in the early 1980’s? Not quite, but winning ten games, being the highest ranked team in its league, and having a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback leading the team is a start.

Pitt has suffered through 15 losing seasons in the past 40 years. The program has seen nine different head coaches lead this program during that span. Pitt left its home in Oakland to move to the North Shore back in 2000. There have been uniform changes, new athletic directors, and two conference affiliations along the way.

The program that went 11-1 in 1981 is hardly recognizable, but on Saturday night with the Pitt script on its helmet and a gunslinger quarterback leading the charge, perhaps the 2021 version of the Panthers best captured what this program was once for the first time in a long time.

“It’s a legacy game, this was a legacy game and that was kind of the message all year,” Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett told reporters after throwing for four touchdowns. “This game, we clinched the championship and we know we’re going there next week, this was a legacy game to go down in history as one of the teams to win ten games, the first since 1981. It’s really special.”

Pickett has done his best this season to imitate Pitt’s last great quarterback, Dan Marino, who guided that 1981 team to 11 wins 40 years ago.

The fifth-year senior has broken all but one of Marino’s all-time school records — most touchdown passes in a career, the two are currently tied with 79 and Pickett is surely to beat that mark next weekend, and perhaps create a similar legacy for another quarterback to follow someday.

Pitt’s game with Syracuse meant something to this team. They had already clinched the ACC Coastal, and their spot in the ACC Championship game was already reserved for next week. Rather than looking ahead to that game, the team wanted to make sure it got it done on Saturday night.

“That was kind of our deal, getting number ten,” Pat Narduzzi said as his team moved to 10-2, his best mark as a head coach to date. “Just trying to use that as the motivation and get them through the week and not have them start to look ahead.”

Pitt may not have had its sharpest game on Saturday after a slow start and falling behind 7-0, but Pickett threw for four touchdowns and the Panthers defense limited a vaunted rushing attack to next to little production. The Panthers managed to stay healthy and set themselves up for a chance to clinch their first ACC Championship in program history.

“It means a lot,” Pitt linebacker Sir’Vocea Dennis on what Saturday’s game was about for this team. “It means a lot for everybody: Coach Duzz, the program, the university, it just means a lot. Just to have that legacy and being part of something like that is great. It’s definitely huge for not only me and the players, but the University of Pittsburgh.”

The 2021 team's growing legacy continues with each passing game. The Panthers have now won eight of their last nine contests since that head-scratching loss to Western Michigan, and they are inching towards one of the best seasons in school history, and at the very least, the best one in the last 40 years.

The job is not complete with another game looming next week: the ACC Championship against Wake Forest. It remains to be seen if this 2021 season was merely a blip in years of mediocrity and just a special season guided by a special quarterback or if they have turned the program back to what it once was.

For Pickett’s part, he sees a change and a sense that this type of success can be sustained. In his four touchdown passes on Saturday, they all went to players that will return to the team next season.

“I’ve been saying with older guys being out and the younger guys having to step up and play, you don’t see a dip in the level of production and you know you have some depth and guys are playing at a high level so I think we’re set up here for the next few years to play at a high level,” Pickett said of the youth of the Pitt team. “Obviously we want to finish out this year the best way we can, but I think the coaches have done a great job of getting the right guys in.”

Pitt freshman tight end Gavin Bartholomew, a recipient of one of Pickett’s four touchdowns on Saturday, sees this season as a new benchmark this program that can set for the future.

“It just sets the standard as high it can be,” Bartholomew said. “From here on out, that’s got to be the standard.”

Pitt can continue its monumental once-in-a-40-year season — or its ascend back into college football relevancy next weekend as the Panthers play Wake Forest in the ACC Championship with a New Year’s Six Bowl on the line. The stakes have not been higher for Pitt in, well, 40 years.