Eleven seconds.
That’s how much time was on the clock when redshirt junior quarterback Nicco Marchiol found senior tight end Grayson Barnes in the end zone to tie the game. Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium erupted in awe as West Virginia achieved the improbable.
From down 10 to a college rival in the dying minutes of the fourth quarter, the Mountaineers had fought all the way back to force overtime. This included a 13-play, 87-yard drive against a Pitt defense with no answers.
They looked exhausted and out of gas by the time West Virginia had tied the game. The only light at the end of the tunnel — the game only getting to a tie and a quick chance for a breather — turned into a train coming to run them over.
With Pitt opting to go on defense first in overtime, its defense surrendered another touchdown to put the Pitt offense in a do-or-die situation. The team had surrendered every ounce of momentum to the home crowd, and Holstein and his unit stalled out.
The offense’s last play was an incomplete pass on fourth and 24 — that should tell you everything you need to know about that drive.
If you only turned on the game at overtime, you would have had no idea how Pitt managed to get into extra play. West Virginia, as the underdogs, bullied Pitt on both sides of the ball in the final seven minutes and overtime. But they never would have had a chance to win were it not for that touchdown with 11 seconds left.
Perhaps West Virginia fans finally have their own version of the “13-9” numerical insult that has tormented them for years.
With this, Pitt suffers its first loss of the season, dropping it to 2-1, but for many, this loss won’t count the same as the others. This is a crushing, deflating loss that the Panthers and this program will have to live with for a while.
Forget Pitt having a bye week upcoming, giving it an extra week to sit in the misery of this loss — it won’t even have a chance to avenge this loss next year. This iteration of the Backyard Brawl marks the final chapter until 2029, when the series returns and is slated to run through 2036.
For nearly every player on the field — on both sides — this was their final Brawl. For the Mountaineers, it will serve as one of the highlights of their college football career, feeling the intensity of a fired-up crowd cheer them on as they topple a hated rival.
For the Panthers, the memory of over 62,000 in navy and gold jeering them off the field will haunt them. The sound of a Mountaineer crowd singing an altered, taunting version of their beloved Sweet Caroline will echo on.
But if you set aside how much weight this loss carries based solely on the history, it should also cause some concern for the Panthers for the rest of this season.
Pitt’s offense started slow in this one and looked especially discombobulated early on. On the first play of the game, redshirt sophomore quarterback Eli Holstein was sacked and lost the ball in the process. Though Pitt maintained possession, it set the Panthers up for a second and 21 one play into their first drive.
Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi put that on preparedness.
“I don’t think we played our best game, by no means,” Narduzzi said. “We left a lot of plays, left on the field. It starts with me. I guess I didn’t have them ready to go.”
That’s a huge yikes, man.
Coming out flat and unprepared for any game is a problem. Doing that in a game that carries the intensity, history and spectacle of the Backyard Brawl? That’s just simply unacceptable.
Narduzzi said there was plenty of blame to go around for this loss, starting from the coaches and down to the players. But regardless of how you want to divvy up said blame, it leaves the Panthers with a lot of questions after failing their first true test of the season.
Yes, injuries did play a big part in this game. Senior running back Desmond Reid’s absence left a huge void in both offense and special teams, and several other injuries were sprinkled throughout this game.
It was an incredibly humbling experience, though, for a Pitt team that had outscored its first two opponents a combined 106-26 in its first two weeks. The Panthers were unprepared, undisciplined and left a ton of points on the field. And even with that, both the offense and the defense had a chance to close the game out in regulation and couldn’t capitalize.
“I told you we’re going to see the best version of West Virginia,” Narduzzi said. “Ohio [last week] saw the worst version — we saw the best version.”
West Virginia’s “best” didn’t show up for a full 60 minutes. But when it did, it included a defense that held Pitt to only a pair of field goals following consecutive interceptions in its own territory. It also involved the Mountaineer offense establishing a run game and the aforementioned game-tying drive with their backs against the wall.
Preparedness against that would have gone a long way.
It’s a long and tough country road back home for the Panthers. No matter if and when they bounce back on the field, this loss is the dark cloud that will hover over them for the rest of the year.
In years where the Backyard Brawl is played, it’s the biggest game on the calendar. If Pitt fans had to pick between going, say, 7-5 and winning the Brawl or going around 9-3 and losing it, I think a decent amount would pick the former.
The hatred runs that deep on both sides, and this is why it’s a crime against the college football community that this series is taking a hiatus.
When asked about how to not let a loss like this lead to a spiral as they enter a bye, a battered and bruised Holstein set the stage for what conference play has in store.
“It’s a rivalry game, obviously. Again, we want to win, but it’s not an ACC game,” Holstein said. “We still have our whole ACC schedule ahead of us.”
Winning out is probably Pitt’s only hope of truly salvaging this season, and that’s a position I’m sure West Virginia fans loved to put Pitt in.
“We’ve got to win out. There’s no option now,” Holstein said.
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