MORE HEADLINES - The Kenny Pickett Show, Ep. 12: A cold one before Miami | Slideshow: More than 100 photos from Pitt's win over Clemson | Four-star WR had a 'great experience' at Heinz Field | How the ACC sees the ACC: Week Nine rankings | New Pitt commit Kyle Louis: 'They say I'm like a missile' | What stood out in Pat Narduzzi's weekly press conference? | Coachspeak: New Pitt commit 'just does everything' | 2023 hoops target visits Pitt

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about impressive stats, plays without stats, two new commits and what’s next for Pitt.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

More than stats
It keeps getting louder for Kenny Pickett.

You see it. I know you do, and that’s why I don’t have to embed any tweets or anything like that. First of all, there are too many tweets saying nice things about Pickett; it would fill this column to embed them all. Second of all, you already know all the nice things people are saying.

And they’re right to say it. Pickett is playing great right now, and he’s shining proof that the cliche about quarterback being the most important position is true. He’s proof that a great quarterback can elevate a team.

That’s what Pickett’s doing right now: elevating Pitt.

But it’s not just stats.

I mean, the stats look great. Pickett is one of the best in the country, ranking inside the top 10 nationally in every significant quarterback stat. He’s got the numbers to put himself into any conversation about which quarterback is playing the best.

But it’s not just stats.

Pickett’s doing more than putting up numbers.

He’s putting this team on his back.

And now I will embed a tweet.

You remember this play. Third-and-7 with seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter and Pitt driving in an effort to drain the clock. Pickett drops back to pass, doesn’t like what he sees, takes off and stretches out to get just enough for the first down.

As Bill Hilgrove would say, he needed seven and he got eight.

That play was pretty darn inspiring to watch. But look again, and this time, watch Clemson’s defense. Specifically No. 47, James Skalski, the Tigers’ all-conference linebacker who came into the season with more than 200 career tackles. He’s the man on their defense, and in that particular instance, Skalski had one job:

Don’t let Pickett scramble.

I guess he probably had two jobs. He had to cover Vincent Davis out of the backfield, but when Davis set up to block, Skalski’s job became all about Pickett.

And after Davis held back to pick up any blitzers who made it through the offensive line - none did - Skalski absolutely had his eye on Pickett. Watch him move left and right; he’s pretty much in lockstep with Pickett, and it makes sense: you’ve got a mobile quarterback on a crucial third down - the last thing you want to do is let him beat you with his feet.

Except…

That’s exactly what Pickett did.

One of the best linebackers in the ACC is focused almost 100% on preventing one specific thing from happening - and Pickett made that one specific thing happen anyway.

The scene would be repeated three plays later when Pickett got the even bolder call to run a quarterback draw on third-and-5. He pulled that one off, too, with another dive forward to get past the sticks.

Neither one of those plays added to Pickett’s passing yardage. Neither boosted his touchdown total. Neither had one iota of impact on his passing efficiency or quarterback rating.

But those two plays, as much as any this season, pointed to who Kenny Pickett really is and what he really means to this team. He put the team on his back and pushed them to victory. The dives he stretched for at the ends of those two plays were plays he had to make for Pitt to beat Clemson.

I don’t know if those two plays will win the Heisman for Pickett, but they won the game for Pitt.

This is what they do, apparently
Three is a pattern, the saying goes.

One is chance. Two is coincidence. Three - that’s a pattern.

And the pattern I’m talking about for Pitt’s offense is probably one you can guess, because I talked about it last week. And I talked about the week before that, too.

Three times I’ve talked about this, because three times it has happened.

You know what I am getting at: the long drives to run out the clock and lock up a win.

Let’s review:

At Georgia Tech, Pitt was leading by 31 and took the ball with 8:03 left to play. The Panthers proceeded to drive 76 yards on 11 plays and ate up all 8:03 to end the game.

At Virginia Tech, Pitt was leading by 21 and took the ball at its own 8 with 13:28 on the clock. The Panthers went 76 yards again, this time on 16 plays with 11:28 running off. The Hokies got the ball back with two minutes to play and no chance of catching up as the chance became coincidence.

This past weekend, the coincidence became a pattern. Clemson scored a touchdown to cut Pitt’s lead to 10 with 7:56 left in the fourth quarter. The Panthers took the ball at their own 25, and while this drive only gained 49 yards, the result was the same: Pitt took every one of those 476 seconds off the clock and never gave the ball back to the Tigers.

Three ACC games, three fourth-quarter leads and absolute ball possession to keep the opponent’s offense on the sidelines.

You could actually make the case that this has happened four times against Power Five competition, because at Tennessee, the Panthers were leading by a touchdown when they took possession with 4:52 left in the fourth quarter, and they proceeded to run every bit of that time off with eight plays for 17 yards. So, really, Pitt has done it in all four of its Power Five games this season.

But let’s just stick to the ACC games, because it has happened three games in a row.

In the fourth quarters of the win at Georgia Tech, the win at Virginia Tech and the win over Clemson, Pitt ran 63 plays and gained 320 yards (5.1 yards per play) and held the ball for a combined total of 37 minutes and 42 seconds. That’s an average of more than 12 minutes of possession per game - in the fourth quarter alone.

At Georgia Tech, Pitt held the ball for 12:48 in the fourth quarter. At Virginia Tech, the Panthers had 11:28 of possession in the fourth quarter. And against Clemson on Saturday, Pitt’s offense was on the field for 13:26. Twice, the Panthers ran the clock all the way down to zero - at Georgia Tech and against Clemson - and in the one game where they gave the ball back to the opponent, they did it with so little time that there was no chance of a comeback.

It was a dominating performance. Three of them, actually. And while it didn’t help Pitt’s scoring offense stats - the Panthers have scored six points total in the fourth quarters of the last three games - it helped the win column, which is the most important thing right now.

Oh, just one more thing. On Saturday, Sept. 28, 2019, Clemson hosted North Carolina. The Tigers won that game 21-20, but the Tar Heels’ final drive nearly tied the game, as they went 75 yards on 16 plays. UNC scored a touchdown but tried to go for the win with a two-point conversion and got stuffed.

What’s notable to me about that drive is that it took eight minutes and 32 seconds off the clock. And that’s notable because, in the next 28 games, no team has gotten within 15 seconds of an eight-minute drive against Clemson.

Until Saturday, when Pitt went 7:56 on that final drive.

Actually, in the 28 games between that 2019 North Carolina game and Saturday’s Pitt win, only three teams managed even a seven-minute drive against Clemson.

And one more “one more thing.” Pitt had that 7:56 drive against Clemson on Saturday. When the Panthers went to Clemson last season, their longest drive was 3:19, and that was the only time they possessed the ball for more than three minutes in that loss.

I know time of possession isn’t a perfect stat and it definitely merits some context, but not many teams have been able to hold the ball for any length of time against Clemson - not like Pitt did on Saturday.

A developing strength
Of course, it’s pretty tough to kill the clock like that if you don’t have a good running game and Pitt..just might have a good running game?

Okay, the Panthers rank outside the top 50 nationally in rushing offense, although they average a rather respectable 171 rushing yards per game, which is better than either of the last two seasons.

That average is brought down by the win at Tennessee (45 rushing attempts for 96 yards) and the loss to Western Michigan (75 yards on 24 attempts), but I think we can set the New Hampshire game aside (252 yards on 49 attempts) and just look at the three ACC games. If we do that, we see Pitt rushing for 181 at Georgia Tech, 208 at Virginia Tech and 162 against Clemson.

That’s an average of 183.7 rushing yards per game, which ranks fifth among ACC teams in conference games this season. Last year, the Panthers were 13th in the ACC in rushing, averaging 117.2 yards per conference game. In 2019, they were 10th at 128.9 rushing yards per ACC game.

So yeah, it’s been an improvement. But I think it’s even better than that.

Because you know those fourth quarter kill-the-clock-and-demoralize-your-opponent possessions we talked about? Guess how those have happened.

Yep, the running game.

In the fourth quarters of the last three games, Pitt has recorded 46 rushing attempts for 249 yards. That’s an average of 83 yards per quarter; hold that average for a full game and you’d have an offense that rushes for 332 yards per game.

So what you’ve got is a Pitt offense that can attack with the No. 5 passing offense in the country and then, when the game enters its final 15 minutes and the Panthers want to run out the clock, Mark Whipple’s bunch can flip a switch and play like an offense that averages better than 300 rushing yards per game.

Now, a huge amount of credit - maybe most of the credit - has to go to the offensive line. Quite frankly, they are playing as well as any Pitt offensive line since 2018, and given that unit’s one-dimensional nature, you might actually have to draw the timeline back to 2016.

But we also can’t deny that Pitt’s running backs are playing really, really well right now.

Let’s go to the fourth quarter numbers again. Here’s what Pitt’s three backs have done in the fourth quarters of the last three games:

Hammond did not play at all at Virginia Tech and Abanikanda sat out the fourth quarter of the Clemson game. Pitt also got 16 additional yards on runs by Kenny Pickett, which adds up to the team’s total of 249 rushing yards in the fourth quarter.

But look at those numbers, particularly for Hammond and Abanikanda. Those are big-time stat lines, and they put up those stats when their opponents had no doubt whatsoever about Pitt’s intentions.

The Panthers wanted to run the ball in those situations. Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Clemson knew it, and they couldn’t really do a thing about it.

Hammond’s performance against Clemson was particularly eye-opening. His first carry of the game came on the first play of the fourth quarter, and he promptly ran for 18 yards. His next two carries only gained four and three, but he made up for it with runs for 10 and 13 after that, and the freshman back finished with 66 yards on 11 attempts - all in the fourth quarter.

Abanikanda had a similar line in the fourth quarter at Virginia Tech: 11 carries for 63 yards. And while Davis hasn’t been as exciting as the other two, he did break a nice six-yard carry on third-and-2 in the fourth quarter against Clemson.

I guess what I’m saying is, these guys are pretty good. They’ve been really good in the moments when Pitt needed to run the ball the most, and that makes me think that they just might able to do it over the course of a game if the situation called for it.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How do the new recruits fit?
Let’s detour from team talk for a second and discuss the newest additions.

Pitt got two commitments this week, breaking a nearly three-month drought. The last commitment prior to this week came from four-star offensive lineman Ryan Baer, who committed in the first week of August. Fast-forward to this week, and the Panthers landed a pair.

The first commitment came from Kyle Louis, a three-star “athlete” prospect at East Orange High School in New Jersey. Rivals calls him an “athlete” because he plays a variety of positions and has ‘tweener size at 6’0” and 200 pounds. But Pitt calls him a linebacker, because that’s where he’ll play when he joins the Panthers.

Is 6’0” and 200 pounds too small to be a linebacker? Maybe, at least right now. But SirVocea Dennis was 6’0” and 210 pounds when he committed to Pitt in February 2019, and he was a post-grad student at that point, so he was a year older than Louis is right now.

On Pitt’s current roster, Dennis is listed at 230 pounds.

What I’m saying is, there’s time for Louis to get bigger, and the Pitt coaches clearly think he’s capable of such growth. In the meantime, take a gander at his film. Louis is all over the field, and you can tell that his reported stats - 12.2 tackles per game, 16 tackles for loss in six games - are not exaggerated. He gets to the ball and makes plays.

Louis projects at the Star linebacker position; that’s the one that lines up on the wide side of the field and has as many responsibilities as anybody on the team, since he has to drop into coverage, fit the run and also blitz.

I think you can see why the Pitt coaches like Louis for that role, and he should be a good addition to the defense.

The other commitment came from the junior class. Zion Fowler is a wide receiver at St. Peter’s Prep - also in New Jersey - and he broke the seal on Pitt’s 2023 recruiting class when he committed on Tuesday.

Fowler first caught the attention of the Pitt coaching staff at their prospect camp in June. If you’ve ever been to one of those camps, finding a legit prospect is a real needle-haystack proposition; there’s just so many kids and about 99% of them are not FBS prospects.

But Fowler stood out from the start and was impressive all day. He was so good, even an idiot like me could tell he was a player. And by the end of the camp, the Pitt coaches confirmed it with an offer.

We spoke to Fowler last week for an update on his recruitment and he actually said at the time that Jordan Addison, who was assisting receivers coach Brennan Marion at the camp, made the recommendation for an offer and the coaches agreed.

I don’t know if Fowler is the next Addison, but he’s a fast receiver with good hands and good routes. That seems like a winning combo.

What’s the magic number?
Okay, back to the matter at hand.

So, there are a lot of possible outcomes being thrown around for Pitt’s season, up to and including the national championship (ESPN’s FPI rankings have the Panthers with a 2.7% chance of winning it all).

Let’s not get too nuts, though. Let’s start small, or, at the very least, let’s start with the most imminent goal.

The Coastal Division.
ESPN says there’s an 89.4% chance of the Panthers winning the division. That seems pretty high - you could almost call it a likelihood - but let’s go with that for the moment. Realistically, how soon could Pitt clinch the division title?

If we look at the Coastal, I think we can pretty much eliminate the three teams that already have three conference losses. I don’t think 5-3 will win the division, so that seems to cut North Carolina, Georgia Tech and Duke out of the equation.

(Mathematically, I think Georgia Tech would actually be eliminated this weekend if Pitt beats Miami and the Yellow Jackets lose to Virginia Tech.)

For the two-loss teams, here’s what the remaining schedules look like:

The scheduling quirk that has Virginia taking a three-week layoff from ACC games means Pitt won’t be able to clinch at any point over that stretch. Even if the Panthers beat Miami, win at Duke and beat North Carolina, they would still be at 6-0 with two games to play - one of which is Virginia.

At 4-2, the Cavaliers could potentially beat Pitt in that scenario and be poised to hold a tiebreaker over the Panthers pending the outcome of the season finale at Syracuse (not to mention Virginia’s final game against Virginia Tech).

So Pitt won’t be in position to clinch the Coastal Division until the penultimate week of the season, at the earliest. And that assumes the Panthers take care of business in the next three games. If they slip up once, Virginia could be in position to take control of the Coastal when the two teams meet at Heinz Field on Nov. 20.

I’m personally of the opinion even if Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong puts up numbers on Pitt’s defense, the Panthers should be more than up to the task of answering with plenty of points of their own. But it would obviously be ideal for Pitt to not have quite that much riding on the game against the Cavaliers - which means not slipping up between now and then.

If Pitt wins its three games between now and then, the Panthers could clinch with a win over the Cavaliers. A loss would push the opportunity back a week to the season-ending game at Syracuse.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will have one slip-up
That sounds negative, like I’m predicting something bad happening over the last five games. Let me try again.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will only have one slip-up
There. That feels better, doesn’t it? Rather than predicting that the other shoe will drop, I’m simply predicting that only one shoe will drop. You know, other than the shoe that dropped in the Western Michigan game. One more shoe than that. Which would be the other shoe, but in terms of ACC games, it would be the only shoe.

Enough about shoes. Here’s what I’m saying today:

If Pitt only loses one more game in the final five, the Panthers win the Coastal. Period. Point blank. That’s not a wild prediction; it’s math. Even if that loss is to Virginia, Pitt wins the Coastal with only one loss.

The key is going to be the offense since that’s the strength of the team, and my prediction is that Pitt’s offense won’t have more than one off game in the next five.

Really, we haven’t seen the Panthers suffer an off day on that side of the ball all season. Even in the loss to Western Michigan, Pitt still scored 41, which should be enough to win (it was enough to win the week prior when the Panthers went on the road to beat an SEC team).

And in the last two weeks, when Pitt only scored a combined total of 48 offensive points, I would hardly call those bad games for the offense. The Panthers might have scored under their season averages, but they more or less controlled the game, especially in the fourth quarter (as we mentioned earlier).

No, I don’t see this offense slowing down much in the final five games. Anybody can have a bad week, and that’s certainly possible for Pitt, but if it happens, I don’t think it will be more than once.

Looking at the Panthers’ remaining opponents, at least on paper, doesn’t inspire a lot of concern either. Miami is allowing 30 points per game (No. 97 nationally in scoring defense) and has given up at least 30 in all five of its games against Power Five opponents.

Duke is even worse at 31.6 points per game (No. 104 nationally). North Carolina’s defense averages 28.9 points per game (No. 91). Virginia allows 26.4 (No. 73). And Syracuse is the best of the bunch at 24.6 (No. 60), although the Orange just gave up 36 to Virginia Tech’s putrid offense.

So of Pitt’s final five opponents, three rank outside the top 90 nationally in scoring defense and the best of the group is ranked No. 60. Syracuse sits at No. 6 in the ACC in scoring defense, but the other four are all in the bottom half of the conference - including UNC, Miami and Duke making up three of the four worst scoring defenses in the league.

Stats are stats and anything can happen. We know that. But Pitt has topped its opponents’ scoring defensive averages in every game this season. There’s no reason for that to stop.

Now, we’ll see how the Panthers’ defense stands up to a challenge, because there will be a few of those on the remaining schedule. But I just don’t see the offense struggling more than once the rest of the way.