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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about success, disappointment, the offense and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The thin blue (and gold) line
Somewhere, someone has found balance.

Somewhere, someone has taken a 7-7 season that ended with three straight losses and lined it up next to the first ACC division title in program history.

Somewhere, that someone has looked at the juxtaposition and settled in on the fine line of allowing for both success and disappointment to coexist.

Somewhere, someone has been able to take the totality of Pitt’s 2018 season, all the ups and downs, all the highs and lows and look at it all as one complete product and say that it was both good and bad, both successful and disappointing.

I don’t know where that person is, but they’re out there. I believe it. Because I believe in that line. I believe that the intersection of success and disappointment is a real place fans can inhabit, a place where a fan can experience both success and disappointment at the same time.

It’s hard to stay in that place, to live on that line, for too long, though. Start thinking about the season and how winning the Coastal Division was a step forward, and you’ll probably soon find yourself cursing the miserable offensive performances against Notre Dame and Miami and Stanford.

Dwell on the ugliness of the losses to Penn State and North Carolina and Central Florida, and it’s likely your mind will eventually drift to the stretch from Syracuse to Wake Forest when Pitt went 5-1 and clinched the division.

It’s tough to stay right in the middle of it, because our brains in 2018 - I guess it’s 2019 now - have been wired to come down on one side of an issue. Nuance and context and “gray area” responses to events have little room in this era where we boil the entire world down to 280 characters, as if such truncated statements could properly examine anything.

You can’t say that 2018 was both a success and a disappointment for Pitt, it seems. You have to be on one side or the other, and when you’re on one side, it can be really difficult to imagine how anyone could be on the other side.

Probably part of the reason that it can be easy to get stuck on one side or the other is that there are some fairly immutable facts supporting each perspective.

Fact: Pitt won the Coastal Division.

Fact: Pitt lost three in a row to end the season.

Both of those things are very true and both make strong cases in opposite directions. Any time you want to say, “They won the Coastal!” I can immediately come back with, “And then they lost three in a row at went 7-7!” And we’d both be right, leaving us at a stalemate.

Until we move to the middle. Until we live in that space where the two perspectives touch.

The most damning stat
There are plenty of numbers that look bad for Pitt’s 2018 offense. You can pretty much take your pick:

The fewest total passing yards since the mid-90’s despite playing 14 games? Got it.

The fewest passing yards per game since the Majors II era? Got it.

Only one game out of 14 with 200 passing yards? Got it.

Obviously the running game put up impressive stats, like the whole “first pair of 1,000-yard rushers in the same season in Pitt history” factoid we’ve referenced so often. But the passing attack? It wasn’t very…attacky…and there are a lot of numbers that illustrate that point.

Here’s the one I’m going with:

In 14 games, Pitt was held to one or zero touchdowns six times.

It’s college football in 2018, and in six out of 14 games, the Panthers couldn’t manage even two offensive touchdowns. That’s not exactly a high bar to set; scoring only two touchdowns probably wouldn’t win you many games in a season, so it’s no surprise that Pitt was a perfect 0-6 in those games when it scored one or zero touchdowns.

In case you’re trying to keep track, Pitt scored one offensive touchdown against Penn State, one against Central Florida, one against Notre Dame, none against Miami, one against Clemson and one against Stanford.

And some of those games make this problem even worse - like the Notre Dame and Stanford games. Pitt lost those two by a combined total of six points. The Irish beat the Panthers 19-14 (Pitt added a second touchdown on a kickoff return) and the Cardinal, of course, won by a final of 14-13.

Just one more touchdown in each of those games - which should not be a Herculean task - would have added two more wins and turned the 7-7 into 9-5 with a very respectable road win over a top-ranked opponent. And that’s doubly frustrating considering the defensive efforts in those games.

Instead, the offense sputtered and Pitt lost.

It’s not just this season, though. The Panthers also lost three games in 2017 when they score one or zero offensive touchdowns (Penn State, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech). So in the last 26 games, 14 of which have been losses, Pitt has been held to one or zero offensive touchdowns nine times.

I don’t know about you, but that seems pretty bad.

For context, I went searching for the last time Pitt won a game with one or zero offensive touchdowns, and I had to go all the way back to 2009 when the Panthers beat North Carolina in the Meineke Car Care Bowl. The final on that one was 19-17, and kicker Dan Hutchins did the day’s work by connecting on four field goals. Dion Lewis had Pitt’s lone offensive touchdown.

Since that game, Pitt has lost 22 consecutive games when scoring one or zero offensive touchdowns. It happened twice in 2010, four times in 2011, twice in 2012, three times in 2013 and once in 2014. But after that 21-10 home loss to Akron in 2014, the Panthers had scored at least two offensive touchdowns in 35 consecutive games.

So, if you’re doing the math at home, in the last nine seasons, Pitt has been held to one or zero offensive touchdowns 22 times. Nine of them have come in the last two years.

Saying again: 13 games with one or zero offensive touchdowns over seven seasons (averaging less than two per season). Nine games with one or zero offensive touchdowns over the last two seasons (averaging 4.5 per season).

That’s damning, and it’s my pick for the most damning stat regarding Pitt’s offense from the last two years.

The AD shouldn’t force a move
There’s a follow-up sentiment to the public outcry for a new offensive coordinator.

If Pat Narduzzi won’t fire Shawn Watson, the sentiment goes, then Heather Lyke should do it herself.

Is that really a good move for the Pitt Athletic Director? I’m not so sure that it is.

While it’s not exactly uncharted territory for athletic directors to demand staffing changes - it’s not even unprecedented for this athletic director to make requests on personnel changes - I don’t know if the football program is the right place for Lyke to exercise her will.

It was one thing for Lyke to have one of those conversations regarding the softball program. By all accounts, that’s what she did two years ago after the team completed the 2017 season. Lyke was hired in March of that year, and after she came to Pitt, the softball team - a program that is close to Lyke’s heart, since she played at Michigan - finished the season with a 10-12 record in the final 22 games. That offseason, longtime coach Holly Aprile made changes to her staff.

But that was softball, and softball isn’t football. Holly Aprile isn’t Pat Narduzzi. Given the unique nature of Narduzzi’s hiring - he was hired directly by Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher more than two years before Lyke came to Pitt - the typical dynamics of coach-and-athletic-director aren’t entirely in play here.

More importantly, though, I just don’t know if an athletic director should be forcing staff changes. For one thing, I think that can create a difficult working environment. Yes, the athletic director is the “boss,” but there’s also a fair amount of autonomy - call it “supported autonomy” - for a head coach, and when an A.D. starts micromanaging a program like that, I think it can lead to problems.

Take the softball program, for instance. The Panthers went 33-18-1 in 2018 and won two games in the ACC Tournament. That was a considerable improvement, and two months after the season ended, April was introduced as the new head coach at Louisville.

She left Pitt. She wasn’t fired. She left. Was it because she was forced to make staff changes? You’d have to ask her. But she took another job in the conference; that’s not exactly something you see every day.

And on an even bigger scale, I don’t think an athletic director should force staff changes because, in the hierarchy of athletics, like most major corporations, there are levels of management, and the responsibility of the person at the top is to hire people they trust to do the job well. An executive hires managers - in this case, head coaches - who he or she believes will run the operation well enough to succeed.

Part of that is in personnel; the executive expects the manager to fill his or her staff with people who can do well, and if those people fail, then it’s on the manager and the executive will hold them chiefly responsible.

Put another way, I don’t think Patrick Gallagher will sit down with Heather Lyke and tell her that ticket sales lagged this season so she needs to fire the person in charge of the ticket office.

Instead, he will hold Lyke personally responsible, just like Lyke should and will hold Narduzzi personally responsible for the outcomes of the football program. So rather than saying, “Fire Shawn Watson,” Lyke should probably go with something along the lines of, “It seemed like the offense struggled; what’s the plan to improve in that regard?”

The implication is clear: Narduzzi has to fix the things that aren’t working. But the decisions on how to fix them should be left to the head coach. And if his solutions don’t work…well…

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Can one game make a difference?
The thought occurred to me this week, so I decided to bring it to the column:

Is there one game that could have changed your opinion of this season if the outcome had been different? We’re not counting the Clemson game; that one is too easy, and if Pitt had won, obviously there would have been a different view on the season.

But like I said, that’s too easy so we’re not accepting that as an answer. It has to be one of the other losses: Penn State, North Carolina, Central Florida, Notre Dame, Miami or Stanford. Could turning one of those losses into wins change your overall perspective on the season (assuming you’re rather disappointed with the 7-7 result)?

I think this is a tough question, and it’s really a matter of personal opinion. The Penn State game is an interesting one. We know how much Pitt fans love to beat Penn State, and if 7-7 could have been turned into 8-6 with a Coastal title and a win over Penn State, something tells me the opinions might change a bit.

North Carolina is pretty much positioned to be a disappointing loss far more than it will ever be a win you hang your hat on, at least this season. So 8-6 with a win over UNC probably wouldn’t do much for people (although 7-1 in the ACC would look quite impressive).

Central Florida and Notre Dame would have been quality wins - road defeats of top-ranked opponents always look pretty good on the resume. If a fan had to pick, I imagine he or she would opt for beating the Irish; a win in South Bend is always something special and 8-6 would look a little better with that one on it.

So Notre Dame is the leader in the clubhouse as we turn our attention to the final two losses (remember, we’re not even considering Clemson in this discussion). And while I think you can get a lot of mileage out of beating the Irish, I think the “right” answer - or maybe just my answer - is in those last two defeats.

The reason I’m focusing on the Miami and Stanford games is something I wrote about a few weeks ago (maybe it was a week ago, maybe it was three weeks ago, I really don’t know; the combination of the holidays and being in El Paso has me forgetting what day it is). At some point in December, I spent time in this column talking about the effect of the final game, how the results of the final game of the season can impact the outlook and perception for a full offseason.

One need look no further than the last trip to El Paso, when Pitt finished a nine-win season with a 3-0 loss, and despite a relatively successful year, the offseason was pretty miserable. That last game always lingers (it lingered the year before the Sun Bowl, too, when Pitt’s season-ending upset of West Virginia created a bit of buzz) and if the team’s last trip to the field goes the wrong way, that becomes a dominant memory for the offseason.

So if I had to pick one game to change, one result to flip, in order to alter the perception of Pitt’s 2018 season, I would probably pick the Sun Bowl. Give Pitt a win in that game with some decent offense - like, more than one touchdown - and while there would still be a lot of griping about Shawn Watson and Kenny Pickett and everything else, I think it would be considerably quieter. Complaints are always quieter after a win.

That’s my pick. What’s yours? Or, in something of a pre-question that I should have asked first, is there one game that would have changed your perception?

Is 2008 a parallel?
Bear with me here and let’s turn back the clock a bit.

Do you remember 2008?

No, not the part where Pitt followed the 13-9 game with a loss to Bowling Green in the season opener. And not the part where that same Pitt team went on the road and upset a top-10 South Florida team on national television. Definitely not the part where that very same Pitt team came home after multiple wins on the road and proceeded to get blown out by Rutgers. And also not the part where, yes, that same Pitt team outlasted Notre Dame for a victory in four overtimes.

And most certainly not the part where Pitt lost the Sun Bowl 3-0.

Rather, the part I’m talking about, the part I’m asking you to remember, is the offseason. Because this right now kind of feels like that did.

Which is to say, there’s a lot of misery.

Post-2008, the misery centered around a few factors. There was a pathetic performance in El Paso (check). There was an underwhelming quarterback returning for his second year as a starter (check). There was a sense of hopelessness surrounding the offense (check). And there was a need to replace the running back who was the only bright spot of the offense (check).

That all sounds pretty familiar.

Of course, one key difference was the offensive coordinator. If Matt Cavanaugh had lasted longer than Signing Day - his departure from Pitt was reported that day - then I suspect the fans’ offseason depression would have been more rampant; at this point in 2019, we only know that Shawn Watson is still on staff, and my guess is he will be in the coming season, too (but that’s just my guess).

Still, replacing the offensive coordinator didn’t assuage all the concerns about the offense. Bill Still was still returning, after all, and fans had largely turned on him by the offseason. And LeSean McCoy was gone to the NFL, which seemed to deplete all hope for the offense since he was the only real success that unit experienced.

Fans are probably a little more bullish on Kenny Pickett than they were on Stull, and Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall aren’t quite on McCoy’s level, but no metaphor is perfect.

The one element that is perfect, though, is the fanbase. Pitt fans are beside themselves right now. A strong segment of the fanbase sees no real hope, and that was the case in 2009, too. Also similar is the fact that there are some things to feel confident about.

The defense, for example, continues its long, slow development from the depths of 2016 to some pretty solid performances over the last two years (along with some duds, to be sure). And that unit returns a whole bunch of the players who contributed in 2018.

The receivers, while not really being able to fully flourish, showed promise and potential, particularly Taysir Mack and Maurice Ffrench. And there will be enough talented running backs on the roster in 2019 that the coaches should be able to find a couple who can produce.

Even the offensive line has potential, since its inexperience can be somewhat offset by the apparent uptick in athleticism.

The quarterback is a question mark, albeit one with flashes of promise.

And then there’s the coordinator. It remains to be seen how that plays out in 2019.

There are some strong pieces coming back to this team in the coming season. Probably not as strong as what Pitt had coming back in 2009, but strong enough that the Panthers should have a chance to win quite a few games.

ONE PREDICTION

The ACC portion of the schedule will be more interesting than a year ago
Finishing up with hoops here, Jeff Capel’s squad will open ACC play on Saturday with a noon game against No. 15 North Carolina. It’s a proper way to start the conference schedule, facing down a blue blood in front of a capacity crowd at the Petersen Events Center.

It might not go well for the home team, given that the Tar Heels have a win over No. 4 Gonzaga among their 10-3 record, and they’ve got a long scorer in Cameron Johnson and a double-double forward in Luke Maye; they’ll both present matchup problems for Pitt.

And that’s likely to be the common theme in the ACC this season: challenging matchups against some of college basketball’s best. More often than not, it will probably result in a loss for the Panthers, and while I, like everyone else, expect them to improve on last year’s 0-fer, I’m still not sure how many they’ll put in the win column.

That said, this game and the 17 to follow are going to be something that last year’s conference games rarely were:

Interesting.

I say that because I think we’re seeing a story unfold with the freshmen on this team. We’re seeing the development of three players who will, if they continue on their current trajectory, be stars of varying degrees. We’ve already seen the beginnings of this story, as this team learned about close losses (Iowa), rivalries on the road (West Virginia) and how important it is to show up ready to play every night (Niagara).

That last one really stands out, because I think that was such a key lesson for a young team to learn. They needed to know that in college basketball, no team can be overlooked. Few teams are talented enough to take anything for granted, and these players, high on the success of nearly beating Iowa and then overcoming some poor play to handle Duquesne, needed to be reminded of the demands the game will make.

Best of all, they learned the lesson. Pitt followed the Niagara game with a loss at WVU, but since then they have beaten Maryland-Eastern Shore by 35, New Orleans by 42 and Colgate by 14.

The Panthers entered those games respecting their opponents and then proceeded to trounce them. That’s growth. That’s learning. And it’s fun to watch.

The ACC might not always be fun to watch - losing never is - but it should probably be pretty interesting because we’ll be watching the continuing saga of Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Au’Diese Toney. There was similar intrigue last year with guys like Marcus Carr and Parker Stewart and Shamiel Stevenson et al, but this season feels…different.

The ceiling is higher and the potential is greater, and if Johnson, McGowens and Toney keep growing at their current pace, these next 18 games should provide plenty of intrigue for the present and the future.