The Pitt football team is riding a four-game winning streak and is off to a strong 5-2 start to the 2019 season. The team is starting to receive some votes in the rankings, the bowl projections are looking optimistic, and repeating as the ACC Coastal champion is still very much on the table.

Winning football games - however you do it, is always a good thing. But, Pitt really hasn’t been making it easy on the heart rate of the fans in some of these wins.

In Pitt’s three biggest wins this season: UCF, Duke, and Syracuse, the Panthers built up big leads, but had to scratch and claw to hold on for the wins.

In Pitt’s two other wins against teams it was expected to handle, the team never really pulled away and won handily. Pitt is winning, but the games are always tight and it really comes down to the ineffectiveness of second half execution.

Pitt is being outscored 103-41 in the second half this season. Twice the team has been held scoreless after halftime. In two other games, the team was held to just three points, like last Friday’s game against Syracuse. Pitt held a commanding 24-6 halftime lead, but had to hold on for a 27-20 win.

“You've got to execute, got to execute,” Pat Narduzzi said of his team’s second half struggles. “There's three third-down drops. Aaron [Mathews] has one, Nakia [Griffin-Stewart] has one. You knock people out when you convert. When you don't, you don't. Then you give the other team momentum. It's a game of momentum changes. We gave up a big play on defense."

No coach will ever complain about winning, and even the Panthers’ coach had to think of these tight games with a slight sense of humor.

“It keeps you on edge,” Narduzzi smirked. “You get a four-hour game, you might as well be on edge for four hours. Makes it fun.”

On the season, Pitt’s total point differential is 156-155. It’s been a season living on the edge, but this team is finding ways to win. Even if Pitt didn’t produce a touchdown on Friday night, Pitt still chewed up the clock in the fourth quarter to limit Syracuse’s chances at a comeback.

The consistency in the second half is one thing, but in crunch time Pitt executed the “Pitt Special” to upset UCF. After falling behind against Duke, Kenny Pickett marched the team down the field and found V’lique Carter for a game-winning touchdown.

As the games become more important and the division race heats up, the experience of playing in tight games and finding ways to win could be a positive, at least Narduzzi sees some benefit to it.

“We've been in tight games,” he said. “Some people aren't in tight games. We have been. We put ourselves there. Like I said, it's a nice thing. It's nice to be in a four-minute at the end when you know the pressure is on. In practice, you try to create those situations like a four-minute drill, two-minute drill. We had a two-minute drill before the end of the half, great drill. It's nice to be able to be put in those and still win the football game.”

Winning is all that matters at the end of the day, and this team is finding ways to do just that in recent weeks.