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The high-water mark for Pitt’s passing game was more than a month ago.
Facing Georgia Tech at home, Kenny Pickett completed 16-of-23 passes for 197 yards. Granted, he didn’t throw any touchdown passes and did have one interception, but that was his best completion percentage of the season against a Power Five opponent and the yardage total was Pickett’s most in 2018.
That’s a low bar to set - 101 FBS programs currently average more than 197 passing yards per game - but the trend is even more troubling, as Pitt’s passing yardage has only dropped since then.
174 yards in a loss at North Carolina on sub-60% completions. 163 yards the next week at UCF. 137 in Pitt’s win over Syracuse with a 55% completion rate. And last Saturday at Notre Dame, Pickett threw for 126 yards, the second-lowest passing total of his career, behind only the Penn State in Week Two when he managed all of 55 yards in a downpour.
The result: Pitt averages 145.9 passing yards per game, good for No. 119 nationally and ahead of only three Power Five programs - Kentucky (145.5 yards per game), Maryland (120.5 yards per game) and Georgia Tech (101 yards per game from a triple option offense).
And the concerning part of Pitt’s passing stats is that they keep dropping. The trajectory of the passing game has been a continuous fall since that win over Georgia Tech, and while Pickett’s 19 completions at Notre Dame tied the season high in that category, he averaged just 6.6 yards per completion - making the least of the passes he did complete.
The passing struggles likely cost Pitt a chance at upsetting the No. 5 Irish in South Bend. The Panthers lost the game by five points, a total that stands out even more when considering that redshirt sophomore kicker Alex Kessman missed two field goals.
According to Pickett, though, his unit should have never caused Kessman to step onto the field.
“If we don’t leave any of those drives to field goals and we go down and punch it in ourselves, it’s a whole different story,” he said after the game. “That’s on the offense. We have to go down there and score and not leave it up to three for the chance. We have to go do it ourselves.”
Kessman’s first miss was in the third quarter, when a 49-yard drive stalled at the Notre Dame 29. On the final plays of that possession, Pitt gained zero on a first-down run from Qadree Ollison and then only got one yard when Pickett threw a swing pass to Ollison on second down. On third-and-9, Pickett tried to throw to freshman receiver Shocky Jacques-Louis, but the pass was incomplete.
The next time Pitt got the ball, the offense drove into Notre Dame territory once again. But after getting to the 23 on a defensive pass interference call, Pitt drew a flag of its own when Alex Bookser was called for holding on first down. The subsequent first-and-20 was too much to overcome with a Pickett scramble for nine yards, another scramble that lost a yard and a seven-yard pass to tight end Will Graggs.
Kessman missed again after that drive, but Pitt’s defense gave the ball back to the offense with 10:31 left in the fourth quarter and a chance to add to a two-point lead. But the Panthers stalled at midfield when a pass to Darrin Hall on third-and-2 lost three yards. Notre Dame scored to take the lead on the next possession.
“We’re capable of a lot more,” Pickett said. “Leaving it up to three twice, leaving it up to three points, is - you’re not going to win. You have to make those touchdowns. At least one of those has got to be a touchdown. It’s a totally different game. We had them on the ropes and that would have been a knockout punch if we could have punched one of those in.”
Junior Maurice Ffrench, who had one catch for 15 yards in the game but also returned a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown, said the passing game will be an emphasis during the off week as Pitt gets ready for the final five-game stretch run.
“I would just say we have to keep growing as a unit, keep practicing hard and then eventually we’ll all start clicking together and making plays in the passing game.”
