Re-emphasized run game is Borbely's 'wheelhouse'
In Dave Borbely’s first year as Pitt’s offensive line coach, the Panthers made history.
That was 2018, when Pitt’s run to the ACC Championship Game was carried by a 3,000-yard rushing attack that featured two 1,000-yard rushers for the first time in school history. But in the three years since then, the Panthers’ ground attack has fallen off, producing 1,544 rushing yards in 2019 and 1,319 in 2020 before topping 2,000 yards this past season.
2021 was an improvement in that regard, but the numbers were bolstered by playing an extra game; Pitt averaged less than 150 yards per outing.
Of course, the flip side of those stats is that the Panthers had a very effective passing game. In 2021, Pitt topped 6,000 yards of total offense - 6,812, to be exact - for the first time in school history and set the team record for scoring with an average of 41.4 points per game.
“You get the order and we go,” Borbely said of executing then-coordinator Mark Whipple’s offense. “And hey, we scored 41 points per game and had the greatest offense in Pitt history as far as points per game and yardage, so it’s whatever.”
Borbely followed the lead of his offensive coordinator over the last three seasons, just as he followed Shawn Watson's lead in generating that 3,000-yard rushing attack in 2018. Now Whipple is gone to Nebraska, and his replacement is second-time Pitt coordinator Frank Cignetti.
When Cignetti was first hired at Pitt in 2009, the Panthers hadn’t rushed for 2,000 yards as a team in 20 years, but they broke that streak, surpassing 1989’s total of 2,157 rushing yards with 2,344 as freshman Dion Lewis led the charge.
Pat Narduzzi’s decision to bring Cignetti in to run the 2022 Pitt offense signaled a desire for balance between the run and the pass. For his part, Borbely is looking forward to executing that plan.
"In 2018, we ran for 3,300 or 3,400 yards, we two 1,000-yard rushers for the first time in school history and, really, what we were running then is what we’re running now,” Borbely said. “So is it in my wheelhouse? Yeah. I’m very comfortable with what we’re doing now.”
The effectiveness of going back to the well for the success of 2018 remains to be seen, but Borbely and the rest of Pitt’s offensive staff see more than just play design in the similarities between that year’s offense and what the Panthers will try to do this season.
In fact, Borbely says that there was some carryover in the playbook from 2018 to the three years of Whipple, but the drastic departure was in the emphasis.
“In terms of the style of offense, yes (it was very different). Some plays in that three-year stretch were the same, which we carried over, but you can carry it over but it’s really the emphasis. We would practice a lot of those runs; we just didn’t call them, necessarily.”
To that end, Pitt never averaged more than 37.3 rushing attempts per game under Whipple (that high-water mark was set in 2021). The Panthers averaged more than that every year from 2014-18, although they interestingly had a lower rush-per-game average in 2009 and 2010 - Cignetti’s two seasons.
That was likely the result of more ball-control philosophy, with the team eating up time of possession as opposed to going up-tempo and running more plays.
It remains to be seen how this year’s offense will approach tempo, but Borbely thinks Cignetti has things headed in the right direction overall.
“The philosophy the last three years was, throw it, get a lead and run it in the second half. That was Whip’s philosophy. That’s not to say we didn’t try to run it early, but that was not the emphasis. And I think that will - to put more balance in the offense, that will be the emphasis. And I know our kids are excited about it.”