The 3-2-1 Column: Touchdowns, defense, UCF, schedules and more

One thing has to become another
Narduzzi went up to UMass, he was looking for a passing game
He was in a bind, offense was way behind
And the numbers were pretty lame

When he came upon an older man
With passes mostly out of the shot
And Narduzzi jumped on an American elm
And said, ‘Mark, let me tell you what

‘I guess you didn’t know it,
But I want to throw the ball, too
And if you’d care to take a dare, I’d like to see what you can do

‘Now you throw the ball pretty well, sir
You did it with Isabella
But I need to see
What you can do
With this here Pickett fella’

The man said, ‘My name’s Whipple
And I might soon regret
But I think I can do
What you need to do
And build your best passing game yet’

But Charlie Daniels and I digress…

How about that Pitt passing game? The Panthers are currently No. 28 in the nation in passing yards per game, and their total of 693 passing yards over the last two games breaks down into an average that would rank No. 13 nationally. As it stands, Pitt is No. 3 in the ACC in passing yards per game after three contests; raise your hand if you saw that one coming.

I’ll admit that I had no idea the Panthers could or would do this. I know Mark Whipple was brought in to improve the passing game; that much was obvious and Pat Narduzzi said it multiple times. But I was also sure that they weren’t going to go too overboard. Sure, we could look at the attempts and target numbers from Whipple’s time at UMass, but certainly Pitt wasn’t going to go to those extremes. This was still Pat Narduzzi’s team, and Pat Narduzzi’s teams will always be built from the run. Always.

Now, 129 pass attempts later - that’s 43 per game - with Kenny Pickett dropping back more than all but one quarterback in college football, Pitt’s offensive identity has been made clear: the Panthers are a passing team, and they’re actually not bad at it. Pickett has set career highs in completions and passing yards two weeks in a row, and last week was easily the best game of his career.

But as we all know, there’s one small, minor detail missing from Whipple’s offense so far.

Touchdowns.

Because for all the success throwing the ball, these Panthers haven’t exactly capitalized. They’ve scored a grand total of five touchdowns and 44 points. They’re averaging 14.7 points per game and rank dead last in the ACC (not to mention No. 126 in the nation) in scoring offense.

So that’s the next step here. I think we’ve seen week-to-week progress and development from the offense. No one felt good about the performance in the opener against Virginia, but it was better against Ohio (which was expected, given the level of competition) and then even better against Penn State (which was not expected, given the level of competition). The improvement has been encouraging, but Whipple and Kenny Pickett have to keep improving, and the next improvement, the next step in this process, is reaching the end zone.

Really, it kind of defies logic that they haven’t scored more than they have so far. Pickett has thrown two passing touchdowns in 2019; of the 27 teams that are averaging more passing yards per game, only one - Iowa State - has less than five passing touchdowns. 16 of those 27 teams have thrown for at least seven scores and 10 have 10+ passing touchdowns.

It just stands to reason that high passing totals will eventually lead to touchdowns. Of the top 28 teams in passing yards per game last season, only five - Ole Miss, Old Dominion, Baylor, East Carolina and Florida State - had fewer than 25 passing touchdowns. It’s really not rocket science: throw the ball a lot and throw it well and you’re probably going to score a decent amount.

And that’s the expectation for Pitt going forward. If the passing game continues to have success, they have to get into the end zone.

That’s coming in handy
I’ve got some stats on Pitt’s defense for the prediction section at the end of this column, so I won’t give all of those away now. But I’ll throw a few numbers out here:

- 303.7 yards per game allowed
- 19 points per game allowed

Those are pretty strong numbers, but I would add one more:

- 3 starters lost to injury

That’s where Pitt was last week at Penn State after Elias Reynolds had to leave the game with an injury. His status for this week’s game is unknown, but if he can’t go, he will join Rashad Weaver and Keyshon Camp as three projected starters missing from the lineup due to injury.

That’s a lot of talent to lose. But guess what? Pitt has been able to weather the storm with some well-built depth.

Weaver was a huge loss for the defense, but Patrick Jones, Deslin Alexandre and Habakkuk Baldonado (plus John Morgan) have all stepped in. Camp was a big loss for the defense, but Jaylen Twyman has been playing like a man possessed - he probably wouldn’t have come off the field much even if Camp was healthy - and Amir Watts and Devin Danielson are giving some good reps.

At middle linebacker, Pitt already rotated once this season when Chase Pine started and played the whole game against Ohio. And then when Reynolds got hurt in State College, redshirt senior Saleem Brightwell, who already has a whole season of starting experience at the Mike spot, stepped up in his place.

It’s not easy to lose three starters, but Pitt’s defense has been able to not just survive but thrive. The Panthers have given up 30, 10 and 17 in three games, and seven of those 30 in the opener came in the final 30 seconds. They have been stout when they needed to be and look as good as any defense Pitt has had since Pat Narduzzi arrived.

They’ll have to be at their best on Saturday; more on that in a second. But it sure does reflect well on the recruiting of the last few years that the Panthers have the depth to cover for injuries and move players in a pretty healthy rotation at all three levels of the defense.

Good might still not be all that great
So this weekend Pitt gets to host the University of Central Florida, they of the 25-1 record over the last two seasons. They of the 27 consecutive regular-season victories. They of the scoring offense that finished No. 1 in the nation two years ago, No. 6 in the nation last year and currently sits at No. 6 after three games.

They who just blew the doors off another Power Five team when Stanford made the mistake of going to Orlando last weekend.

They who blew Pitt’s doors off last year in what might have been the least competitive game of the Narduzzi era with the Panthers. I mean, that might have been worse than the Oklahoma State game a year earlier. Even in the ACC Championship Game, there was at least a brief period when it looked Pitt could hang with Clemson for a little while. At UCF last fall, there were no such moments.

So yeah, UCF has been pretty good; they were certainly better than Pitt last year. And if you thought that the Knights would fall off a bit without star quarterback McKenzie Milton, those notions should be set aside right quick because the new quarterback, freshman Dillon Gabriel, might be even better.

Now Pitt gets to host that group at Heinz Field and it won’t be easy. The Knights' offense has scored at least 40 points in 18 of its last 29 games dating back to the start of the 2017 season, and in those other 11 games, they never dipped below 31. That’s 29 consecutive games of at least 31 points. The Knights have also topped 50 points 10 times in those 29 contests and scored 60+ five times.

All of which is to say, once again, that UCF is really good. So good, in fact, that even if Pitt plays a good game, it might not be enough against this squad. That’s not to say the Knights are unbeatable, but it is to say that Pitt’s defense is going to have to play really, really well just to keep the game in reach.

This brings us back to the whole thing about the offense not being able to score touchdowns. Because the Panthers could hold the Knights two touchdowns below their season average in scoring, and that would still mean Pitt would have to score more than it has in the last seven games.

This could very well be a game where Pitt’s defense produces a good game, relatively speaking, and still gives up 35 or 38 points. The Panthers’ offense hasn’t seen that much scoring since the Virginia Tech game last year when they hung 52 on the Hokies behind nearly 500 yards of rushing offense.

Maybe the passing game finally turns yards into points; like I said earlier, eventually that transition should come. But until Mark Whipple’s crew actually does it, I can’t sit here and tell you I’m counting on Pitt to put up a ton of points. The Panthers have scored 70 total points over their last six games and just 44 in three games this season; they might need that much on Saturday.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Does it get easier after this?
I think this weekend has a pretty unique distinction:

It should be the last in Pitt’s Five Years of Hell Schedules. And what a glorious five years it was.

Notre Dame and Iowa in 2015.

Penn State and Oklahoma State in 2016.

Those same two in 2017.

Penn State, Notre Dame and UCF in 2018.

Penn State and UCF in 2019.

That’s 11 out of Pitt’s 20 nonconference games from 2015-19. More than half. After this weekend, the Panthers will have faced 15 FBS opponents in the nonconference, and 11 of them have been those games listed above.

’m going to boldly make this claim without looking it up, and if you can prove me wrong, go for it:

No other Power Five team in the country has played a schedule like that over the last five years. And without hammering the schedule complaints - of which there are many and they are well-documented - it’s not hard to say that the Five Years of Hell Schedules have adversely affected Pitt’s record.

To wit, the Panthers are 1-9 in those games so far.

Oh, and here’s another fun fact: the first nine games that Pitt played in the Five Years of Hell Schedules were all against opponents who finished in the top 20 of the College Football Playoff rankings that season.

In 2015, Iowa was No. 5 and Notre Dame was No. 8. In 2016, Penn State was No. 5 and Oklahoma State was No. 12. In 2017, PSU was No. 9 and Oklahoma State was No. 19. And last season, Notre Dame was No. 3, UCF was No. 8 and PSU was No. 12. So eight of those nine games were against opponents who finished in the top 12, and the ninth game was against a team that finished No. 19.

Five Years of Hell.

But it ends on Saturday. After Pitt gets past UCF, the Panthers will host Delaware and then dive headlong into the 2019 ACC schedule. And next year’s schedule is nothing like the previous four have been. Pitt does have a home game with Notre Dame in late October, but that is complemented by home dates with Miami (Oh.) and Richmond and a road game at Marshall to fill out the home-and-home that was started in 2016 (traveling to non-P5 teams in the nonconference is the cost of doing business sometimes).

Pitt only has one Power Five nonconference opponent in 2021, but things start getting hairy again in 2022, when the first game of the West Virginia series overlaps with the final game of the Tennessee series, and 2023, when the Panthers have WVU and Notre Dame on the road.

But that’s the long term; let’s just look in the nearer future. The start of Pitt’s 2019 season has been a real bear with an ACC opponent in the opener, Penn State in Week Three and a legitimate top-five team (even if the rankings don't reflect it) coming to town on Saturday. Things will start to lighten up after this. Delaware will be at Heinz Field next week and then the Panthers start seven games against ACC opponents, none of which looks unbeatable.

In fact, the first three weeks of the season have shown that just about every team in this conference other than Clemson can be beaten. Pitt isn’t head and shoulders above any team that’s left on the schedule, but I also don’t think any of those final seven opponents should strike fear into the hearts and souls of the Panthers (like the way this week’s opponent might).

So things will lighten up a bit, both this season and beyond. Just gotta get through Saturday.

What if two games had been flipped?
There’s ultimately no value in hypotheticals, but hey, what’s the deal with value anyway?

The idea of improvement on the offense is one we’ve been harping on quite a bit in the last couple weeks. Pitt’s offense got better from Week One to Week Two and then improved again from Week Two to Week Three. That’s clear by just about any measure other than touchdowns; yes, that’s the most important measure, but we already discussed that, so let’s just stick with the main idea that Pitt’s offense has gotten better.

I think some of that - maybe a whole lot of it, possibly even all of it - is due to natural progression. Pitt’s breaking in a new coordinator, and it's not just any coordinator; this offense went from having a run-heavy offense that asked very little of the passing game to being totally guided by the pass.

Make no mistake: this is a pass-first offense. After three games, I’m confident in saying that. The intentions and goals of this offense are clear, and they are a marked departure from what the offense tried to do last year. Or the year before. Or the year before that. Or the year before that.

It has been a huge change, and it’s not a surprise that the change has taken some time to fully catch on. Sure, the players and coaches had all of spring camp and all of summer and all of training camp, but we all know that there’s no substitute for actually doing it in a game, and I think the significance of in-game experience is double or more when making this kind of philosophical shift.

Thinking about all of that has gotten me to this question:

What if we could swap two games on the schedule?

I’m not talking about a total schedule upheaval. I’m talking about moving two games, replacing one with the other to create a more “natural” schedule that you would see in college football in 2019, not to mention a schedule that could have potentially accelerated the progress of this offense.

Of course, I’m talking about switching Virginia and Delaware.

Think about it: what if Pitt opened the season with Delaware and Ohio rather than Virginia and Ohio? The Panthers could have gotten their feet wet with this offense against an FCS opponent and a MAC opponent before going to State College in Week Three. If we assume the same level of week-to-week progress, then they should have been 2-0 walking into Beaver Stadium with the passing game at the same level it is now or possibly even a little ahead.

And most importantly, they would see Coastal-favorite Virginia in Week Five instead of Week One. Presumably, the offense will be much further ahead two weeks from now than it was three weeks ago, and I suspect Pitt would have had a much better chance at a different outcome under those circumstances.

Like I said, there’s no value in hypotheticals, but the Panthers could have a very different perspective on things by the time they get to October if those two games had been swapped. Blame it on the ACC Network, I guess.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt will continue a streak that will be pretty impressive
Here’s a shocker: I was wrong in my prediction last week. I said Pitt’s offense would score a touchdown outside the second quarter, and like a team that keeps giving up onside kick recoveries, the Panthers defied all statistical probability and only managed to score one touchdown in - you guessed it - the second quarter at Beaver Stadium on Saturday.

I really thought that was a mighty vanilla prediction, and because of that, I thought I had a good chance to being right on it. I was wrong. So I’m going a little bolder this week and making a prediction about Pitt’s defense and its chances against Central Florida’s offense.

You see, the Panthers have a streak going on defense, too, and it’s a much better one than the offense’s six-games-without-a-touchdown-in-the-first-or-third-or-four-quarters streak. By giving up just 17 points and 389 yards to Penn State on Saturday, Pitt has now held seven consecutive opponents under their season averages for points and yards.

That dates back to last season, of course, and it actually could go another two games; Virginia Tech - the game before that seven-game streak started - topped its season average for total offense by four yards against Pitt, which is a pretty negligible amount. And the week before, the Panthers held Virginia to 249 yards - or 135 less than the Cavaliers’ season average.

So if we include those two games, we get this: Pitt’s last nine opponents have, on average, been held under their season averages for total offense and scoring offense by 103.9 yards and 12.9 points.

There are some extremes in there. Penn State is averaging 47 points per game this season and scored just 17 against Pitt. And Wake Forest finished last year averaging 33.6 points per game; the Deacons produced 13 against the Panthers.

Plus, in the game before the last nine, Pitt beat Duke in a 54-45 shootout that saw the Blue Devils overshoot their season averages for yards and points by a significant amount.

But even if we include the Duke game and the two contests before it - the loss at Notre Dame and the win over Syracuse - we get a 12-game stretch were Pitt’s defense held opponents under their season averages for total offense by 75.8 yards per game and for scoring offense by 9.6 points per game.

Let’s go from the Virginia game onward, though; that’s the last nine games leading into Saturday’s showdown with UCF. The Knights are, as you might have heard, very good. They’re 3-0 and they have dominated the competition thus far. They have averaged 53 points per game (which is somehow only No. 6 in the nation) and 604.3 yards per game (which is No. 3). So even if Pitt matches its averages from the last nine games, UCF could still be good for 500 yards and 40 points.

Can Pitt’s offense top those numbers? I don’t know. They have scored a grand total of 44 points in three games, so even if the Panthers’ defense is up to the task and keeps UCF under its averages, it still might not be enough. So I’m not predicting a win here, but I will predict that Pitt finds a way to get the Golden Knights into their least productive game of the season.