The Panther-Lair.com 3-2-1: 3 things we know, 2 questions, 1 prediction

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What do we know? What do we wonder? And what do we predict? Find out in this week's Panther-Lair.com 3-2-1 Column.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

75% defense isn’t enough
Pitt’s defensive shortcomings in the loss to North Carolina can pretty much be summed up in two drives:

The game-winner and the game-sealer.

And on both drives, there’s really no excuse for how Pitt played. In each instance, the Panthers had multiple chances to turn the game, either to prevent UNC from scoring the game-winning touchdown or stopping the Tar Heels and getting the ball back to Pitt’s offense for its own potential game-winner.

On UNC’s game-winning drive, the Tar Heels never even faced a third down, as the eight plays of the possession consisted of two incomplete passes, a run for no gain and then a 17-yard pass, a 14-yard run, an eight-yard run and a three-yard touchdown pass (a net 34-yard punt before the drive didn’t help).

Then, on UNC’s drive to seal the game, the defense really did blow it. The Tar heels nailed a perfectly-executed screen pass on the first snap of the possession, taking advantage of a Pitt defense that was far too eager to make a big play and get the ball back. That play gained 24 yards, but then UNC gave five yards back on a false start and took a three-yard loss on a big play from defensive tackle Amir Watts; even though time was ticking down, second-and-18 was a good spot for Pitt’s defense to be in. Except UNC running back Jordon Brown found a big empty space on the left side of the Panthers defense and ran through it for 23 yards.

Even after a timeout on third-and-2, Pitt still couldn’t stop UNC, giving up a 10-yard run to really really seal the game.

So those two drives weren’t good enough. They were downright bad, in fact, almost as damaging as Quadree Henderson’s fumble at the 1 or the kickoff return for a touchdown the Panthers allowed.

But…

Prior to those two drives, Pitt’s defense was playing pretty well. That unit gave up two touchdowns in the first three quarters, one of which was set up by a fluky pass against Jordan Whitehead. UNC had 366 yards in the game and 113 came on those final two drives. The Tar Heel rushed for 96 yards in the game and 58 of those came on the final two drives.

UNC only faced one third down on those drives and converted it, but for the game, the Tar Heels were 5-of-12 on third down, including a 1-of-6 mark in the first half. And after UNC recovered the Henderson fumble and returned it to the Pitt 34, the defense stepped up, allowed the Tar Heels to gain zero yards and forced them to kick a field goal from that same spot.

For 75% of the game, Pitt’s defense played well. But this season, 75% isn’t good enough, not when Pitt’s passing game continues to sputter, not when the offense has a key turnover and not when special teams gives up a touchdown.

Pitt’s defense is far from perfect, but it needs to be closer to perfect than it was Thursday night if the Panthers are going to have a chance in the final two games.

The two that got away
Every losing season usually involves some version of the same question:

What could have been?

When we look back on the 2017 season, either at the conclusion of the regular season, later in December or years down the road, we’ll probably circle back to a few games - in particular, Syracuse and North Carolina.

Like Ohio in 2005 or Bowling Green in 2008 or Rutgers any number of years, those two games will ring out for years, symbols of the separation between an okay season and a bad one, the likely difference between going to a bowl for the 10th consecutive season and sitting at home in the postseason for the first time since 2007.

We’re not assuming losses against Virginia Tech and Miami; those games look like serious challenges for Pitt, but we’ve watched college football enough to know that nothing is impossible. And we’ve definitely watched Pitt to see some pretty unlikely results play out - both for and against Pitt.

Still, the most probable scenario is that the Panthers will fail to sweep their final two games, ending the season either at 4-8 or 5-7 and out of the bowl picture. That will be a disappointment, to be sure, but the reality is that the 2017 season has already placed itself firmly in the category of disappointment.

Because when it comes down to it, Pitt’s bowl hopes shouldn’t be living solely on the hopes of sweeping Virginia Tech and Miami. The Panthers should already be eligible for the postseason, and the fact that they aren’t is what has already rendered this season a disappointment.

Of course, if Pitt can rally and pull off two upsets to end the season, that disappointment would wane a bit, and the potential exists that the Panthers could put in confidence-inspiring performances even in losses, giving the fans some hope for the future despite a losing record.

But even if the Panthers rally in these two final games with wins or inspiring performances, the disappointment will linger because the simple fact is, Pitt should not have lost to North Carolina or Syracuse. There are many reasons that the Panthers lost those two games, from injuries to untimely turnovers to questionable decision-making, but the end conclusion is the same: Pitt shouldn’t have lost.

Even in a season with significant personnel issues, a transition year that was bound to have its rough patches, Pitt still had plenty of reason to expect to pretty safely reach six wins. And that’s without stretching the “what-if” game to include the losses to Georgia Tech and N.C. State - two instances where the team had a chance to win. Those games should have been the potential seventh or eighth wins - much like Virginia Tech this weekend or the finale against Miami - if Pitt had taken care of business against Syracuse and UNC.

To Pat Narduzzi’s credit, he doesn’t have too many of those kinds of games on his resume. You can make a case that Pitt should have beaten North Carolina last year or had a chance against Virginia Tech at Heinz Field, but those teams were equal or superior to Pitt’s talent; I don’t think the 2017 versions of Syracuse or UNC enjoyed such an advantage that the Panthers shouldn’t have reasonably expected to win.

As time passes, the minutiae of 2017 will fade - the quarterback discussion will become more vague and general, for example - but we’ll come back to one point:

While 2017 was a rough season with a lot of challenges, Pitt still should have had a relatively smooth path to bowl eligibility.

It’s hard to win in Blacksburg
Everybody likes to think they have a home-field advantage, and some are more tangible than others. Virginia Tech’s seems to be pretty tangible right now.

In a little less than two seasons under Justin Fuente, the Hokies have lost just two games at Lane Stadium; last year, they fell to Georgia Tech 30-20, and this year Clemson won in Blacksburg 31-17. Everyone else Virginia Tech has faced at home this season (Delaware, Old Dominion, North Carolina and Duke) and last year (Liberty, Boston College, East Carolina, Miami and Virginia) has fallen.

And while the tail end of Frank Beamer’s career as head coach at VT saw the Hokies go 2-4 at home (including a loss to Pitt), that was the outlier as his time dwindled down. For most of Lane Stadium’s 53 years as Virginia Tech’s home, the Hokies have been really, really tough to beat there.

Since recording their first win on October 2, 1965, Virginia Tech has averaged less than two home losses per season. Pitt has only won twice at Lane Stadium; the first win came in 2002 when Brandon Miree ran for 161 yards and a touchdown and Larry Fitzgerald caught five passes for 105 yards and three scores to lead the Panthers to a 28-21 win.

The other Pitt win in Blacksburg was two years ago. In his debut season, Pat Narduzzi took the Panthers into Lane Stadium and watched as his defense made a couple of big late-game stands to secure a 17-13 win.

In Pitt’s five other games at Lane Stadium, though, Virginia Tech has been victorious, either in blowouts like the 45-7 game in 1994 or slugfests like the 19-9 game in 2013.

So it’s tough to win in Blacksburg, but it’s not impossible. Fuente’s loss to Georgia Tech last season stands as one of his two defeats at home, but it’s also one of three losses in unranked teams (the other two happened on the road: at Syracuse last season and at Georgia Tech this year). So the second-year head coach is not completely without losses to unranked teams, it just hasn’t happened very often - and it has only happened once at home.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How will Darrin Hall fare against a tough run defense?
No question about it: Darrin Hall has been on fire. His 486 yards and eight touchdowns over the last three games are the best numbers a Pitt running back has put up since James Conner went on a tear against Georgia Tech, Duke and North Carolina in 2014.

But while the 2017 version of Duke ranks in the top 50 nationally in rush defense (150.5 yards allowed per game), Virginia and UNC are not quite at that level: Virginia is No. 82 nationally (178.9 yards per game) and UNC is No. 113 (211.3). Granted, those numbers are inflated by Pitt’s production against those teams - the Panthers rushed for 176 against UVa and 267 against UNC - but the main point remains: the Cavaliers and Tar Heels aren’t very good at stopping the run, and Duke is just okay.

Virginia Tech, on the other hand, is pretty good. The Hokies are giving up an average of 135.7 yards per game on the ground, but they’ve been effective at stopping an opponent’s bell cow, allowing just one player to reach 100 rushing yards through 10 games, and that one player was West Virginia’s Justin Crawford, who rushed for 106 yards on 13 carries in the season opener.

Since then, Virginia Tech has clamped down on leading rushers, allowing some big games for team yardage - WVU had 221 rushing yards, Clemson had 146, Boston College had 153, Miami ran for 210 and Georgia Tech’s triple-option gained 261 - but holding the top dogs in check.

Plus, Virginia Tech has only given up six rushing touchdowns all season; that’s two fewer than Hall scored in the last three games.

So how does this one break? Virginia Tech is likely to enter Saturday’s game with absolutely no fear of Pitt’s passing attack, and the Hokies will focus almost all of their attention on stopping the run. Can Hall keep up his success against that kind of defensive emphasis? If Pitt’s going to be successful, Hall is going to have to find some running room. And if he can do it against this defense, the junior back will put himself firmly in the realm of the top players at his position in the ACC.

Is the transition from concept to reality tougher than you expected for Pitt hoops?
We all said it throughout the offseason:

“With the kind of turnover the Pitt basketball team experienced, this is going to be a tough year. The team will be young and have some serious growing pains, but they should grow and be better for the experience.”

That’s what we all said, right? Without having seen any of the players on the team - other than Ryan Luther - there wasn’t much else to go on when discussing what the 2017-18 season might bring. So we all understood that it would be a difficult year and wins might be tough to come by, but the process would be worth observing.

That seemed to be the tacit agreement among those who watch this team.

Until reality hit like a Navy warship piloted by a grizzly bear. Then all of those conceptual thoughts of “I’m willing to give them time to grow” turned into something else, something along the lines of, “I knew they were young, but losing to Navy? Montana?”

While everyone signed up for losses and knew to expect them, when the losses hit, it still seemed to be a surprise. It shouldn’t be a surprise any longer; that’s what this season is going to be. Losses to teams that would have seemed like long shots - or even impossible - five years ago and close wins against teams like UC-Santa Barbara: not a bad team by any stretch (although their free throw shooting was pretty horrid) but a team that Pitt historically should have beaten.

If we learned anything in the first week of Pitt’s season, it’s that the Panthers are going to be heavily-reliant on a handful of players. Ryan Luther has to play well every night. Jared Wilson-Frame has to play well every night. Shamiel Stevenson has played himself into that group. And Marcus Carr is in that group, too; the loss to Montana on Monday had as much to do with his off night as anything else, and Pitt had to fight until the bitter end against UCSB as he struggled again (Parker Stewart chipping in 12 points and UCSB hitting just 10-of-22 free throws helped cover for Carr’s absence).

Every team relies on a few key players; that’s normal in basketball. But even on Pitt’s 2016-17 squad, where Mike Young and Jamel Arts were The Offensive Weapons, the Panthers were still likely to get double-digit add-ins from guys like Sheldon Jeter, Chris Jones, Cam Johnson and Luther on any given night.

This year’s team doesn’t have an Artis or a Young, and it also doesn’t have the supporting cast. So the ceiling for the top players isn’t as high, thus increasing the need for secondary scoring - but that element of the team is missing thus far. Pitt got 14 bench points against UCSB, 29 against Montana and 21 against Navy, but the changing lineups had as much to do with the Montana and Navy bench production as anything: Stevenson came off the bench to score 19 against Montana and Carr had 12 as a bench player against Navy.

This team should improve over the course of the season, and perhaps some of that improvement will be among the bench players (one would think that Kevin Stallings will settle into a starting five of Carr, Wilson-Frame, Stevenson and Luther plus one other at some point). But the first week is probably a good indication of what this season will look like.

Which, again, is what we all expected, isn’t it?

ONE PREDICTION

There will be a quarterback competition this spring
No one knows what the last two games will bring at the quarterback position. Maybe the North Carolina game shifted Pat Narduzzi’s perspective from “Avoiding mistakes at QB” to “Trying to get a spark at QB.” Maybe the final two weeks will finally see Kenny Pickett get back on the field for the first time since the N.C. State game more than a month ago.

And maybe not. Maybe Narduzzi will stick with Ben DiNucci, riding the not-quite-hot-but-at-least-not-turning-it-over hand of the redshirt sophomore who has started the last four games and thrown for two touchdowns over that stretch.

All of that remains to be seen, and quite frankly, might be undetermined until the games actually start.

In the meantime, though, I’m fairly confident that when spring camp comes, the quarterback competition will be open. DiNucci will be the incumbent starter, but both he and Pickett will be given every chance to win the job. That was more or less the case with DiNucci and Max Browne this year, but in that competition, there still seemed to be an underlying assumption that Browne would win it.

I don’t expect any such assumption next year (unless the assumption leans toward Pickett). DiNucci has experience and is older; Pickett lacks that experience but has a higher ceiling. I believe the coaches will look to fully explore the reaches of that ceiling.

We’ll continue to debate and discuss the usage of the quarterbacks in 2017 and probably will eternally wonder if the coaches could have explored Pickett’s ceiling in games this season. But I think they will get a very good look at it in the spring.

In some respects, this could be some of the value of retaining Shawn Watson as offensive coordinator. The quarterback competition will have a better chance of producing solid results early in the season if the participants are able to spend spring camp and training camp focused solely on improving and competing - rather than learning a new offense and a new philosophy and everything else that comes with a new coordinator.

So keep Watson, let him evolve the offense over the offseason and then see what happens with Pickett and DiNucci splitting reps and competing. The cream should rise to the top in that scenario, and - ideally - the quarterback position will be better for it in 2018.