The 3-2-1 Column: Key games in 2020, the offense, breakouts and more

No, I’m not talking about Pitt starting training camp on Thursday, although that was pretty notable. I’m talking about the 2020 schedule, which was officially released that same day. Last week, we got Pitt’s opponents and we talked about those teams in last week’s column, but now we have dates to go with the opponents, so here are a few observations (many of which have been made by many of you already):

- The home/road balance is decidedly unbalanced. Pitt’s 11-game schedule features four consecutive games at Heinz Field to open things up and then five of the final seven on the road, including three of the final four. That’s a lot of travel, especially in November when the Panthers will fly to Tallahassee and Atlanta in consecutive weeks before closing the month - and the regular season - at Clemson.

- That game at Clemson is Pitt’s finale, but it’s not actually the end of the regular season. Every other team in the ACC will have a game the weekend of Dec. 5, but the Panthers are off. The conference gave each team two off weeks, but Pitt’s second off week is the final week of the regular season. Much like drawing literally the five longest possible road trips in the ACC and losing three Coastal teams from the schedule, that is yet another odd scheduling quirk.

- On a more positive note, Pitt does have a great chance to come out of the gates strong. I mean, that would have been in the case with the original 2020 schedule that had the Panthers opening with Miami (Oh.), Richmond and Marshall before starting ACC play against Duke; Pitt should have gone 4-0 with that schedule. Now the Panthers open with Miami (Oh.), Syracuse, Louisville and N.C. State; the Cardinals could be a challenge, but that game’s at home and I would say the goal should be a 4-0 start once again before diving into the more challenging portion of the schedule.

- Actually, Pitt goes to Boston College in Week Five, so a 5-0 start should be the target before the Week Six trip to Miami.

- If the Panthers open 4-0, they’ll likely be ranked, and if they go into the Miami game at 5-0, I’d say they’ll almost certainly be ranked, particularly if they look good in beating those first five opponents (which hasn’t always been a given in the last five years, even in wins).

- The Georgia Tech game on Nov. 14 has a chance to be a trap game. If Pitt comes out of the first eight games with a 6-2 or 7-1 record, that game in Atlanta will be sandwiched between a trip to Tallahassee in the previous week and senior night against Virginia Tech in the next week. I don’t expect Georgia Tech to be too much better than it was last year, but the Panthers will have to be careful not to overlook the Yellow Jackets (since, you know, they almost lost in Atlanta last season).

- If Pitt can get through this schedule with seven or eight ACC wins, that final week of the season is going to be interesting since the Panthers could very well be in the hunt for a spot in the ACC Championship Game, but it will be out of their hands at that point. They’ll be sitting at home in Week 13 watching the rest of the league face off, hoping that whatever record they’ve built will be strong enough to survive.

- Week 13 - assuming it’s relevant to Pitt at that point - looks like this:

Boston College at Virginia
Clemson at Virginia Tech
Florida State at Duke
Georgia Tech at N.C. State
North Carolina at Miami
Syracuse at Notre Dame
Wake Forest at Louisville

You would think the relevant games in the hunt for the top two spots in the ACC would be UNC at Miami and Syracuse at Notre Dame. But things can change over the course of the season, of course, and what we believe or expect at the beginning of the year may or may not be confirmed when the games are actually played.

Let’s just hope the games are actually played.

The key games
The goal in all of this, of course, is making it to the ACC Championship Game, and to do that, I think it’s going to take at least eight conference wins. We all assume Clemson will be in Charlotte, and the Tigers will probably get there with a 9-1 record or a perfect 10-0.

If another team can win nine or 10, they’ll certainly make it as well. But I think eight should be enough. You will probably need to win a tiebreaker in that situation, but if I’m Pitt or anybody else in the conference trying to get to the title game, eight wins is the goal. That’s the bar to shoot for.

How does Pitt get eight wins with the schedule the ACC gave them? Let’s look at it.

I think we can start with the “should win” games. Syracuse, N.C. State, Georgia Tech and Boston College: Pitt should win those four. I know, the Panthers lost to Boston College last year at home and this year’s game is on the road, but the Eagles lost AJ Dillon and will be starting over with a new head coach. And if Pitt loses to Boston College again, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about trying to figure out how the Panthers will get to eight. That will be a moot point, as they say.

So let’s call those four games wins and go from there. Where can we find four more wins on the schedule?

Obviously the two toughest games on the slate are Clemson and Notre Dame, so let’s set those aside for a second and look at the toss-up games: Louisville and Virginia Tech at home, Florida State and Miami on the road.

Those games are going to be challenges, to varying degrees. Louisville is probably the best team of those four, at least based on last season’s results and what they have coming back (a second-year starter at quarterback and a 1,500-yard rusher). That game is at home, but it will be a challenge.

Virginia Tech is also at home, and while the last two Pitt-VT games have been blowouts, we know that’s not the norm. We know that the Panthers tend to play well against the Hokies, and I’m of the opinion that last year’s game - like the one before it - wasn’t really indicative of where these two teams are, relative to each other.

Then there are the two trips to Florida. Quite frankly, I don’t know what to expect from those games. Pitt hasn’t won at Miami since 2014 when the Hurricanes had more or less quit by season’s end. And there’s no relevant precedent for the Florida State trip; the last time Pitt faced the Seminoles was 2013 when Jameis Winston had his coming-out party, and the Panthers haven’t been to Tallahassee since 1982. That doesn’t seem to resonate much for this year’s matchup.

Neither Miami nor Florida State was very good last season, and both teams have some wild cards for this season (Miami has a new quarterback, FSU has a new head coach). Those things make them really tough to project, and thus make it tough to predict Pitt’s chances against them.

Assuming Pitt takes care of business against Syracuse, N.C. State, Boston College and Georgia Tech - an assumption we have to make, if for no other reason than things become decidedly more un-fun to discuss if we start assuming they lose one or more of those games - then the four toss-up games are really the pivot point of the season.

The most challenging aspect of 2020
The ACC released its 2020 schedule on Thursday, but that wasn’t the day’s only announcement. The USA Today Coaches’ Poll also came out on Thursday, and it featured three Pitt opponents:

1. Clemson
10. Notre Dame
24. Virginia Tech

For all the talk of Pitt’s schedule being difficult, only having three ranked teams among the 11 opponents doesn’t seem that bad, right?

Well, I think it is a tough schedule, and I’ll tell you why.

Yes, there are only three ranked opponents. However, think back to what we just talked about with the whole matter of needing eight wins to get to Charlotte. You’ve got the two ends of the spectrum on Pitt’s schedule: Syracuse, N.C. State, Boston College and Georgia Tech on one end and Notre Dame and Clemson on the other.

If we assume four wins at one end and two losses at the other - or at least should-be wins and four probably-will-be losses - then we’re stuck looking straight into the sun of those four toss-up games in the middle.

And to get to eight wins, Pitt has to sweep those four teams: Louisville, at Miami, at Florida State, Virginia Tech.

That’s what makes this schedule so tough. Pitt has to go 4-0 against those four teams. Two of those teams are roughly equivalent to Pitt and two are historically strong programs who are rather unpredictable for 2020.

And the Panthers have to sweep them. No mistakes. No slip-ups. No bad weeks.

Because if Pitt slumps for a week and drops one of those games, then that loss has to be offset by a win over Notre Dame or Clemson. That’s where the revised schedule hurt Pitt. Instead of offsetting a loss in a toss-up game with a potential win against Duke or Virginia or even UNC, the Panthers will have to offset any loss by beating Clemson.

Which means, of course, that it would be really less than ideal for Pitt to lose any of those games.

This is what I really think is the challenge. To get to the ACC Championship Game in 2020, Pitt has to win the four games against lesser opponents and win the four games against more-or-less equal opponents. That’s not easy to do when you’re a team that enters the season with demonstrable flaws.

Pitt’s demonstrable flaw, of course, is the offense, and we’ll talk more about that in a minute. But the larger point stands as such:

To get to eight wins, the Panthers are going to have to be more or less perfect. They will have to be…wait for it…a legitimately good team that plays well consistently.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Will the offense improve?
This is (kind of) the camp preview edition of the 3-2-1 Column, so we’re asking the most basic question:

Will Pitt’s offense improve?

Coincidentally, conveniently and crucially, that’s also, without question, the most important question facing Pitt in 2020. If a season happens, the Panthers’ fate will be decided solely by what happens on that side of the ball. This isn’t rocket science, of course: every team wins by outscoring its opponents, and things get really difficult if you don’t have an effective offense.

But the stakes are higher for Pitt’s offense this season. I think we’re all at the point where we can comfortably expect the Panthers’ defense to play at a high level and probably put in a good-enough-to-win performance on a regular basis.

They did that last year. Even in the games Pitt lost, it’s tough to point the finger at the defense and say, “They didn’t play well enough to win.” Consider:

- 30-14 loss vs. Virginia: The Cavaliers scored three touchdowns but not one of those drives covered more than 29 yards; all were set up by poor offensive play.

- 17-10 loss at Penn State: Pitt gave up just two long drives in the game, and if you hold an opponent to 17 points, you should win.

- 16-12 loss vs. Miami: Again, if your opponent only scores 16, you played well enough to win.

- 28-0 loss at Virginia Tech: 28 points looks bad, but VT’s defense scored one of those four touchdowns and the Hokies gained a whopping total of 263 yards.

- 26-19 loss vs. Boston College: We’ll re-litigate this one in a minute, but the Boston College game was another one lost by the offense. Pitt committed four turnovers in the game, including a brutal interception in the red zone, and the offense couldn’t stay on the field at all.

Really, the defense’s worst game in 2019 was the bowl game against Eastern Michigan, and that one ended up being a win. All of this is a long way of saying that Pitt’s defense wasn’t to blame for the losses last season, and that unit should be even better in 2020.

Which means the defense should give the team a chance to win every week.

Which means the onus will be on the offense. The offense has to get better, just a little bit better, and if it does, this team can really put some wins together. If you look at the losses to Penn State, Miami and Boston College, the point differential was a total of 18 points. Pitt ended up scoring 275 points in 13 games for an average of 21.2 points per game (No. 114 in the nation). If the Panthers scored just 21 more points - enough to beat PSU, Miami and BC - that would bring the point total to 296, or 22.8 points per game. That still wouldn’t even crack the top 100 nationally in scoring, but it would be the difference between 8-5 and 11-2.

And that’s my point: the offense doesn’t have to go crazy and average 40 points per game. They just have to be a little bit better. Say, 25 points per game. 95 teams in the nation averaged 25 points per game last season. If the Panthers could become one of the top 95 scoring teams in college football, they could do some real damage.

And that brings us back to the question:

Will the offense improve?

One simple question that will decide the season.

If it’s played.

What turned the BC game against Pitt?
This comes up often enough that I figured it was worth a mention here.

Usually, people reference the Boston College game when they feel like the talk about Pitt’s defense has gone too far. When we’ve become too effusive, when we’ve heaped too much praise on the Panthers and their potential for this season, someone will come along and say something to the effect of, “Yeah well what about the Boston College game?”

And that’s understandable, to some extent. Boston College was pretty lousy last season, getting into the TicketSmarter Birmingham Bowl at 6-6 thanks to a surprise upset win on the road in the regular-season finale at…oh yeah, at Pitt.

The Eagles put up nearly 400 yards of offense at Heinz Field that day and, most notably, rushed for 264 as a team. The bulk of that production, of course, came from star running back AJ Dillon, who went for 178 yards and a touchdown on 32 carries. That was his eighth 100-yard game of the season and the 14th time in his three active seasons that he topped 150 rushing yards.

Dillon is really good; that’s why he was a second-round pick this past April. But Pitt did a fairly good job against him early on in the game against BC, holding Dillon to just 44 yards on 14 carries - 3.1 yards per carry - in the first half.

In the third quarter, Dillon broke the game open when he busted a 61-yard touchdown run, showing the speed/strength combo that made him one of the best backs in college football over the last three seasons. That touchdown swung the score in Boston College’s favor and put the Eagles ahead for good, and Pitt’s defense has to eat the blame for that.

But the tide truly turned in the fourth quarter, and that’s not on the defense.

Pitt opened the fourth quarter facing a third-and-15 at its own 20 while trailing by four points. Kenny Pickett and Jared Wayne hooked up for a 17-yard completion to move the chains and then connected on an eight-yard pass on the ensuing first down. But the momentum died on the next snap when AJ Davis fumbled and Boston College recovered.

The Eagles then rattled off a 10-play drive to set up a 22-yard field goal. It’s a credit to the defense that BC only got three points after starting its possession in Pitt territory.

The Panthers came back and answered with a field goal of their own, but Dillon took over on what would prove to be the final drive of the game. With the score separated by a touchdown and 5:26 on the clock, there was plenty of time to get the ball back and try for a touchdown to go to overtime. Instead, Boston College looked like Pitt in the waning minutes of the 2008 Backyard Brawl, with Dillon playing the role of LeSean McCoy as he carried the ball on eight consecutive snaps and gained positive yardage each time.

Dillon picked up four first downs on those eight carries and put the game away himself. That’s on the defense, right? Sure, to some extent; you always want to believe that your players will rise to the occasion when the game is on the line. But there’s also something to be said for the fact that, by that point in the game, Pitt’s defense had spent a lot of time on the field. The Panthers’ offense held the ball for just one complete drive and a total of 5:11 in the fourth quarter after losing time of possession in the third quarter by more than eight minutes.

In fact, Pitt was out-possessed by Boston College in every quarter of the game, and eventually that’s going to wear a defense down. The Panthers needed to do a better job tackling Dillon, for sure, but they also needed to simply keep him on the sidelines, and the offense failed at that job miserably.

Could the defense have been better? Yes. But did they also deserve a little bit of help from the offense? Also yes, and I would say that was even a bigger issue than the performance of the defense.

ONE PREDICTION

The surprises
Every year, there are surprises. Each season brings its share of emerging players and breakout performances as guys climb into the spotlight for the first time in their careers.

Last year, you had quite a few players on Pitt’s defense break out. Phil Campbell, Cam Bright, Jaylen Twyman and Paris Ford were all first-time stars for the Panthers in 2019. It’s a bit tougher to find a few of those guys on offense - Vincent Davis maybe? - but there’s no doubt that those defensive players had breakout seasons.

So who will it be in 2020? Who will be the breakout stars?

Defensively, most of the starters are pretty much established, but a few could still emerge. Chase Pine is the key one to watch; he’s projected to be the starting middle linebacker, and Pitt could use a breakout season from him for a few reasons. To start, the Panthers simply haven’t had an impact player at middle linebacker in a long time. But it would also be great for Pine to end his career with his best season yet. So he’s one to watch.

I will also be keeping an eye on the backup defensive linemen. Habakkuk Baldonado, John Morgan, Devin Danielson, David Green and Tyler Bentley could all be in line for breakout seasons.

The key is on offense, though, and that’s where some real opportunities exist. I think you could get to December and look back to find true breakout campaigns from players at running back, receiver and tight end.

At running back, Vincent Davis has a chance to break out if he develops into more of an every-down back, but like everyone else, I’m looking at the freshman, Israel Abanikanda. With his mix of size and speed, Abanikanda could be the best option the Panthers have in 2020.

At receiver, we’ve talked a lot about the freshmen, Jordan Addison and Jaylon Barden; I could see one or both of those guys breaking out. But I think the true breakout among the receivers will be Shocky Jacques-Louis, who should step into the Maurice Ffrench role as the guy who gets a ton of targets and catches a ton of passes. Jacques-Louis is an explosive play-maker who should be in line for a really big season as a junior.

And then at tight end, the obvious breakout candidate is Lucas Krull, and the grad transfer from Florida could really make an impact on Pitt’s offense if he turns out to be as good as advertised.