Last week was a disaster for Pitt football.
It was the kind of game that makes most players reflect. In their first away game of the season, the Panthers seemed rattled by a raucous crowd in West Virginia.
The offense’s first play was a strip sack that they pounced on just in time. They could only muster six points off two interceptions in Mountaineer territory. The defense, meanwhile, surrendered 31 total points and was steamrolled twice late in the game — an 87-yard touchdown drive in the dying seconds of regulation that pushed the game to overtime and an overtime drive that saw the Mountaineers put Pitt on the brink.
As soon as the Panthers plugged one hole on the sinking ship, another one appeared, and 62,000 fans cheered their demise as they walked off the field.
It was the first true test of the season for Pitt — and it failed.
It was also the kind of game that puts a longtime head coach like Pat Narduzzi on the ropes. He bluntly admitted he did not have his term ready to play coming into the Backyard Brawl, arguably the biggest game in the calendar for Pitt, given the history and rivalry of the series.
He was also confused about his own roster. In his postgame availability, Narduzzi expressed the same amount of confusion that members of the media did when asked about the absence of redshirt sophomore wide receiver Catarius “Blue” Hicks.
“I was asking the same question, like ‘where’s Blue? Where’s Blue again?’” Narduzzi said when asked after the game.
Narduzzi’s confusion and willingness to admit they weren’t prepared — while perhaps incredibly honest — did nothing to inspire or galvanize the fan base in the aftermath of their defeat. He, like his team, simply looked lost. And with a loss like this on his résumé, questions are growing as to whether he’s still the man for the job.
With the first of two bye weeks positioned right after the Backyard Brawl, the break is either a blessing or a curse, depending on how you look at it.
It gives a banged-up Pitt team time to get healthy — including the crucial senior running back Desmond Reid — before they have to get back on the field. The Panthers severely missed their explosive playmaker down in Morgantown and can’t really afford to lose him for any extended period of time.
However, it also forces the Panthers to sit in this haunting loss for 14 days before they can get a chance to re-prove themselves.
But no matter how the players, the coaches or the fans decide to look at it, this extra time off provides one last deep breath before the months-long storm they have to face.
Redshirt sophomore Eli Holstein admitted that the West Virginia loss was hard to take, but he maintained focus on the upcoming ACC schedule.
“It’s a rivalry game, obviously. Again, we want to win,” Holstein said after the game. “But it’s not an ACC game. We still have our own ACC schedule ahead of us.”
In setting the stage for a bounce back from the West Virginia loss and finding something meaningful out of this season, Holstein kept it pretty simple.
“[We’ve] got to win out, obviously,” he said. “There’s no option now.”
Holstein is correct. Winning out is their best chance of keeping their fate in their own hands. But the road to doing that is much easier said than done — not just because of how many wins Pitt will need to string along in a row, but because of some of the opponents remaining on their schedule.
Luckily, the Panthers do have a few home games to help ramp up, including a 3-0 Louisville team before taking on a reeling Boston College squad.
Then, the road gets rough for the Panthers, going on the road to face No. 7 Florida State and then away at Syracuse. They return home to play NC State and then hit the road to Stanford.
And even if they do make it to 8-1 by the time mid-November rolls around, they have a daunting final stretch. Their last three games see them host No. 24 Notre Dame, visiting No. 18 Georgia Tech and then coming back home to face No. 4 Miami.
But the challenges down the stretch for Pitt come off the field, too. Its collapse last year, where the team started 7-0 before losing six straight games, including a Bowl loss to end the year, still lingers over this roster.
After fans witnessed that kind of failure, it will make a sturdy record heading into the final weeks difficult to trust, and it is up to the Panthers — both players and coaches — to show that those demons were exercised.
That’s no easy task.
So, enjoy the bye week for now, because starting next Saturday, life’s going to come at us pretty fast.
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