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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about big games, changing perspectives, turning points and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

This really is the big one
Okay, Syracuse was the big one.

Coming off a two-game losing streak but with six of the final seven games all ACC matchups, Syracuse was a crucial game for Pitt. The Panthers could put the North Carolina and Central Florida games behind them, improve to 2-1 in the conference and set their focus on finishing the season strong after a 2-3 start. There was a lot riding on the Syracuse game. That was the big one.

And with a dominant fourth quarter and a clutch overtime, Pitt won.

Next came Notre Dame, one last dose of the brutal nonconference schedule that had beaten Pitt up but also helped reinforce some key notions that are still guiding the team - more on that in a second - and the Panthers acquitted themselves nicely in South Bend, leading for virtually the entire game before succumbing to the Irish in a narrow defeat. That wasn’t a big one, but it was a confidence-builder heading into the real meat of the schedule.

Like the Duke game; let me tell you, that was the big one. Pitt was an underdog hosting a Blue Devils team that had beaten two Power Five opponents away from home, and while Duke came into Heinz Field with a 1-2 conference record, David Cutcliffe’s team was a dangerous one with a very good quarterback. And we saw that play out, as Daniel Jones threw for a million yards and Duke scored a million points.

But with another strong fourth quarter and a huge game-winning drive, Pitt scored a million and one. Or nine, however you want to count it. Either way, Pitt won.

And with that win, Virginia became the big one. The Big One. On the road against a ranked opponent who was 4-1 in the ACC, a Virginia team that had turned the corner with a dynamic quarterback and was that week’s favorite to win the Coastal. If Pitt was going to stay in the race for the division, the Panthers had to win in Charlottesville on a miserably rainy Friday night. That was the big one and, quite possibly, the one where Pitt’s “they can still control their own destiny” dreams would finally be dispelled.

But Pitt’s offense controlled the ground and the defense controlled Virginia, and the Panthers came out with even more control then they had going in. Pitt won.

Now we get into the real one. The Real Big One. The biggest one of all, or so we discussed at length last week. Memories of North Carolina 2015 and West Virginia 2010 and Cincinnati 2009 were all dredged up last week as Pitt got set for The Biggest Home Game Since [Insert your age-appropriate reference point here]. Beating Virginia Tech at home would put Pitt in even more control of the division and would be, some said, a decidedly un-Pitt outcome, since those kinds of opportunities seem to often go unseized.

492 rushing yards later, it was safe to say Pitt seized the opportunity. Pitt won.

And that brings us to this week, which is, my friends, really, truly, honest-to-God-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die-there’s-never-been-a-game-this-big-before Biggest One of All. Virginia Tech was a big one, but that was the game before the game. This is the game. This is the one where Pitt can put an asterisk next to its game and fully assert its dominance over the Coastal Division.

Beat Wake Forest, and you have overcome a 2-3 start with multiple blowout losses to become the best team in your division. That’s a hell of a path to follow, and now there’s just one more step.

Pitt has risen to the occasion in every Big Game since Oct. 6. Now the Panthers are about to play the biggest one yet.

What got you here will get you there
So how can Pitt pull it off and beat Wake Forest to win the Coastal? By doing the exact same thing the Panthers have done all season.

I’ve written and talked about this throughout the week, but it bears repeating again: the same mentality that kept Pitt’s players and coaches afloat during the rough times can keep the focused in the good times.

On Monday’s podcast, I said that Pitt had kept the faith and now they need to keep the focus; I think that’s a great coaching cliché - it even has alliteration, and coaches love nothing more than words that start with the same letter - but it’s also got some truth behind it. And most importantly, I think it’s got the same mindset behind it.

When Pitt got blown out by Penn State, the players didn’t dwell on it. They were frustrated, to be sure, but they didn’t dwell on it. They put that game behind them and turned the focus to Georgia Tech - a game they won.

Two weeks later, the Panthers were on a two-game losing streak, having fallen at North Carolina (which might have annoyed them more than the Penn State game) and Central Florida. But they kept the same mindset, the same mentality: they stayed focused on the next game.

Not the game before. Not the game after. The next game.

So when they hosted Syracuse in October, they weren’t thinking about getting beat up by UCF and they weren’t thinking about the next week’s trip to South Bend. They were focused on the task at hand.

It’s that whole “Go 1-0 this week” thing that Pat Narduzzi and a couple dozen other coaches like to say these days.

Just because it’s a cliché doesn’t mean it doesn’t resonate. And that’s what happened: it carried Pitt through the win over Syracuse and the near-miss at Notre Dame. It made the Duke game the most important game of the season, and then it made the Virginia game the new most important game of the season.

Last week, it made sure that the only thing the players were thinking about was beating Virginia Tech. Not the Coastal Division or ACC implications or revenge for last season - well, maybe a little revenge for last season - just simply beating Virginia Tech. That was all that mattered, and you saw the results.

Now they need that mentality again. Every big-picture goal is on the line with this game against Wake Forest, but for the players and coaches that has been the all along:

Everything is on the line with every game. They’ve won some and they’ve lost some, but the goal has always been to go 1-0 and that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

That mentality got Pitt to the cusp of a Coastal Division championship, and they’ll count on it to get them even further once again.

Perspectives change
In the age of Internet, there are some things we shouldn’t do even though we can. And chief among them is look up opinions people voiced in the past. It’s all committed to record here on the world wide web, every pronouncement, every declaration, every broad statement issued to inform the rest of humanity exactly what you think about something.

It’s all there to be found, and sometimes it can be found with comical results. Most of the time, though, it’s better to leave those sleeping dogs lie, because for every bad opinion you can find from someone else’s past, there’s a better-than-even chance they can find two from yours.

And it’s with that in mind that I think we should probably refrain from looking up old opinions on Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall. Because, let’s be honest: people have not been very kind in their appraisals of the abilities and talent levels of those two Pitt running backs.

To some extent, it’s understandable. Ollison had a breakout year as a redshirt freshman but even that season was inconsistent. Then he disappeared as James Conner’s backup in 2016 and never showed any real promise in the black hole that was Pitt’s running game last season.

Hall did even less over those years. He had one 100-yard game in 2015 but that was the lone bright spot until his explosion last season when he ran for 486 yards and eight touchdowns over a three-game stretch late in the year.

So you had one good season from Ollison and four good games from Hall. Both came into 2018 as senior running backs - which isn’t usually a good thing to be, since the truly great running backs usually leave early for the NFL - who seemed to have reached their ceilings in the past. The word “pedestrian” was used; the word “explosive” was not.

……yeah, about that.

I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who can talk down on those two backs, who now have a chance to be the most productive one-two punch in Pitt history. That’s not an exaggeration: the Pitt record for most rushing yards by a two-man tandem came in 1975, when Tony Dorsett ran for 1,686 yards and Elliott Walker had 903. That combined total was 2,589; Ollison and Hall are currently at 1,898 yards with at least three games to play and perhaps as many as four.

To cover the 692 yards Ollison and Hall would need to pass Dorsett and Walker, they would need 692 yards; if Pitt makes the ACC Championship Game, that would mean an average of 172.8 yards per game - or about 17 yards per game less than Ollison and Hall have averaged so far this season.

And when Hall rushes for another 156 yards, he’ll cross the 1,000-yard plateau, making this year’s Pitt team the first in school history to boast two 1,000-yard rushers in a season.

It’s not just about the numbers, though. It’s about the actual performances. Look at Ollison and how he’s running; he’s like a different player. For four years, Pat Narduzzi and Andre Powell lamented Ollison’s apparent inability to make the unblocked defender miss, to break a tackle, to turn a four-yard run into a 14-yard run.

This year, Ollison has gained more than half of his total rushing yards on runs of 15 yards or more. He ranks fifth in the nation in breakaway percentage - the percentage of total yards gained on 15+ runs - and ninth in the nation in yards after contact per attempt. Credit Pro Football Focus for both of those stats, and credit Ollison for being something in his fifth year that he wasn’t in his first four.

Meanwhile, Hall has been almost more impressive. He is fifth in the ACC in rushing yards per game and fourth in total rushing yards despite carrying the ball just 96 times. He’s averaging a crazy 8.8 yards per carry and scores a touchdown on one out of every 12 rushing attempts - that’s the third best touchdown rate among the top 10 rushers in the ACC, trailing Clemson’s Travis Etienne and Georgia Tech’s Tobias Oliver.

Basically, Hall has taken what he did against Duke, Virginia and North Carolina last season and made it a regular habit.

You always like to see players reach their peaks as seniors, to see their previous years of work culminate in a career-defining performance. That’s the fairy tale, but the instances where it actually works out aren’t all that common.

This time, it is working out and it’s happening in the biggest way possible. Ollison and Hall aren’t doing this alone, of course; they’re getting a ton of help from the linemen and George Aston and the receivers (of Hall’s 186 yards against Virginia Tech, just 38 came after contact; he was barely touched), but the contributions of the backs can’t be overlooked.

They’ve carried this team to the top of the Coastal. And if Pitt wins the division, it will probably be because of them. And if Pitt gives Clemson a test in the ACC title game, it will probably be because of them.

It’s hard to find any negatives in that one - other than the opinions we all shared four months ago.

TWO QUESTIONS

What’s your perspective?
I talked about the players’ approach to this weekend’s game, but what about the fans? I mean, your approach doesn’t really matter - what you think isn’t going to affect the outcome of the game - but I think it’s interesting to consider.

There’s the over-confident perspective. That’s the one who sees Wake Forest at 5-5 with blowout losses to Notre Dame and Clemson, a 17-point loss to Syracuse and a loss to Florida State - nobody loses to FSU in 2018 - and thinks, “This team is a pushover; Pitt’s going to roll and I’m booking my Charlotte hotel as we speak.” For this fan, the ACC Championship Game is a lock.

There’s the shoe-dropping perspective. That’s the perspective of the fan who is waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for Pitt to stumble out of its current winning streak, waiting for those fourth-quarter wins to go the other way for the first time since the Notre Dame game. Do not speak of the ACC title game with any level of certainty, because the worst outcome is guaranteed to happen.

And then there’s a third perspective that’s right in the middle, the baby’s bowl of porridge if you will. This is the happy medium, the middle ground between overconfidence and paranoia.

Let’s call it quiet confidence. Maybe cautious optimism is a better way to say it. Either way, the fan with this perspective believes Pitt will win because right now, this team is playing as well as it has in at least two years and possibly three, dating back to the midpoint of the 2015 season when Pitt was humming along pretty good while rattling off back-to-back-to-back-to-back ACC wins.

That team had it going on offense and defense, and so does this team. I know, they gave up 45 to Duke and 37 to Syracuse, but even in those games, the defense came up with some big plays at the end to seal the win.

So I think it’s fair to have some optimism and some confidence about this team heading into Saturday’s game. I also think it’s fair to be at least a little skeptical, just because there are still some unanswered questions.

What happens if a team contains Pitt’s rushing attack?

What happens if a team starts executing RPO’s and attacks Pitt’s safeties?

Those are still big questions, questions that could put Pitt on the spot in this game or the next game or the one after that. Personally, I think it would be best for the team to face those questions once again and answer them strongly.

That is to say, start hitting some plays in the passing game with consistency if the run game struggles, and show some improvement in handling the type of up-tempo offense Wake Forest likes to deploy.

I don’t know if things will play out like that this weekend (I’ll make a prediction shortly). But I can’t fault anyone who is confident about this team right now.

What was the turnaround point of the season?
This was an interesting discussion on the board this week, and I think it’s worth revisiting here.

We all know that Pitt’s current three-game winning streak and position of control in the Coastal Division is a long way from where things were roughly six weeks ago. Back then, as the calendar turned to October, the Panthers were 2-3 and buckling under a two-game losing streak, with the ignominy of losing to North Carolina - again - followed by a dismantling at the hands of Central Florida.

Things looked grim, as grim as they have looked in quite some time. Pitt needed a turnaround, and at some point in the next five games, the Panthers got one.

They upset Syracuse at home and nearly upset Notre Dame on the road before coming back home to upset Duke and going back on the road to upset Virginia and finally beating Virginia Tech last weekend.

So the turnaround happened, but when? When would you pinpoint that moment where Pitt’s fortunes changed?

I think there are a few. You could go as recently as the Virginia Tech game; that was the game before the game, a big game at home that Pitt had to win in order to make Saturday’s game at Wake Forest officially The Clincher. It was also a game that a lot of people seemed to think Pitt would blow; instead, the Panthers blew the Hokies out of the stadium. Winning a big game at home was a big step for the team and the program, and I think for a solid portion of the fanbase, that was the game that finally sold them on Pitt being legitimate this season.

Or maybe it was the week before that. Going into the Virginia game, Pitt had won two out of three but those were both home games against teams that seemed to be good but not all that good. Virginia, on the other hand, was a ranked opponent and had emerged as the popular pick to win the division. The Coastal was going through Charlottesville, it seemed, after the Cavaliers beat Miami in mid-October, and if Pitt was going to stay in the hunt for the division, the Panthers had to find a way to beat UVa. And they did. So maybe that was the turning point.

Or maybe not. Because that Duke game the week before the game at Virginia - that could be it. There was some confidence growing after the previous couple games, but things didn’t look good in the first half when Duke jumped out to a 21-17 lead and seemed to be unstoppable on offense. And when the Blue Devils scored a touchdown on every third-quarter drive, things seemed to be getting out of reach. But then the defense stepped up to force two punts and a field goal as the offense kept scoring. Maybe the turning point was Kenny Pickett’s 25-yard touchdown pass to Maurice Ffrench at the end of the fourth quarter to win the game. Maybe that was the spot when the season turned around.

But that would be ignoring the Notre Dame game. It was a loss, to be sure, but I think everyone realized there was more to it than that. Pitt had gone to South Bend to face the Irish, who opened as three-touchdown favorites, and stared them down. The Panthers didn’t back away from Notre Dame, they weren’t intimidated by the ranking or the atmosphere or the venue and they played the Irish down to the wire. They were every bit the equal of Notre Dame that day, leading from the final 1:26 of the first quarter until the final 5:43 of the fourth quarter - a whopping 40 minutes and 43 seconds in control of the game. Pitt didn’t win, but the Panthers showed that they weren’t going to be pushovers against every ranked opponent, and they might just be good enough to hang in the ACC.

The turnaround point can’t be a loss, though, can it? It seems like a true turning point would have to come in a win, and that’s where I’m going with it: It was the Syracuse game. And as a few people on the message board pointed out, it was one key sequence in that game.

The Orange opened the first quarter by scoring on their first drive, forcing a Pitt punt - that was fumbled - on the next drive and then scoring again in about 90 seconds to take a 14-0 lead less than 10 minutes into the game. Things were slipping away quickly.

Then it turned around. After Ffrench ran for six yards on first down, Ollison busted a 69-yard touchdown run to send a jolt through Heinz Field. And five plays into Syracuse’s next drive, Quintin Wirginis forced a fumble on Syracuse QB Eric Dungey, Dane Jackson recovered it and ran to the end zone to tie the score.

In just over two minutes, Pitt was right back in the game. The Panthers would have to overcome two fourth-quarter deficits before winning in overtime, but that combo of Ollison’s long run and Jackson’s fumble recovery put it all in motion.

And, in a sense, put everything that came after it in motion, too.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt gets it done
I hate predicting games. I really do. But I’ve done it four times this season so far and I’m 3-1 in those four (that damn North Carolina game) so I’m doing it again.

Pitt gets it done at Wake Forest. The Panthers beat the Deacons and clinch the ACC Coastal Division championship and a spot in the ACC Championship Game against Clemson.

This won’t be an easy one. I think Wake Forest QB Jamie Newman is going to make some plays and Deacons slot receiver Greg Dortch is probably going to have some good numbers. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Wake Forest score a decent amount in this game - maybe in the 30’s.

But I also think Pitt picks up where it left off in the running game. Maybe there won’t be quite as many 50-yard runs and 70-yard runs, and I doubt Ollison sets a new Pitt record for the longest play from scrimmage, but I think that him and Hall will keep it going. Wake Forest hasn’t had a great run defense this season - last week’s win over N.C. State notwithstanding - and right now, Pitt’s rushing attack is pretty much the best in the ACC by a non-Georgia Tech team.

I think they keep it going.

And defensively, like I said, I think they’ll give up yards and probably points to Wake Forest’s offense. But I think this defense can do enough to keep the Deacons out of arm’s reach (provided Pitt’s offense keeps scoring). There might be some big numbers, but I’m thinking the Panthers make a few plays when they need to.

Oh, and Alex Kessman will probably hit a long kick or two.