With his team down six points and with the collective gaze of more than 40,000 anxious spectators on him Saturday, wondering what exactly he might conjure up in such a pressurized situation, with about a minute left and four yards standing between his players and the end zone, Mark Whipple had something in mind – both a play and an outcome.
A referee walked up to Pitt’s 62-year-old offensive coordinator to remind him, in case he needed it, that the Panthers were not in a goal-to-go situation, that they could still finish a yard short of the goal line and keep their dreams of a win against the sport’s No. 15 team alive. Whipple, though, didn’t need any kind of reassurance.
“Don’t worry about it,” Whipple said, according to junior offensive lineman Jimmy Morrissey, who was standing near him on the sideline. “We’re going to score on this play.”
Morrissey, one of the team’s captains, had heard all he needed to.
“I was juiced up,” he said. “I was like ‘Let’s go. We’re going to score.’”
Whipple’s self-assuredness was rooted in the craftiness and effectiveness of the play that followed, an almost exact recreation of a fourth-down call the Philadelphia Eagles made in their Super Bowl LII victory in 2018 that has been canonized as the “Philly Special.” The play – a pass from, in the Panthers’ case, a wide receiver to the quarterback, who breaks away from the offensive line to the right flat – was similarly successful for Pitt, tying up the score in the final minute and, after an extra point, handing it a potentially season-defining 35-34 victory against Central Florida, snapping the Knights’ 27-game regular-season win streak.
The most predictably unpredictable program in college football continued to be just that, winning a game few outside of its own facility expected them to and altering the national championship picture in the process, just as it has done several times over the past three years.
This time, it did so in fittingly and gloriously wacky fashion.
“It’s called a Pitt Special and it was special today,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said after the win.
The play itself took just three seconds off the clock, but unfolded ostensibly in slow motion, as a team from the western part of Pennsylvania showcased its interpretation of a play made famous by a squad from the opposite end of the state.
In a deliriously back-and-forth game, one in which they led by 21 only to give up 31 consecutive points and then charge back from that seemingly unrelenting flurry to win, the Panthers were faced with a fourth and three from the Central Florida four yard line. Quarterback Kenny Pickett was lined up in the shotgun and approached his center before veering to the right, barking out instructions along the way. As Pickett did that, Morrissey, keying on whatever element of surprise remained, snapped the ball to running back A.J. Davis, who was standing just behind the 10 yard line.
Davis caught it and darted to his left. Right as he was doing that, in perfect harmony, wide receiver Aaron Mathews broke away from his position behind the left tackle and moved to his right. As the two ran past one another, Davis pitched it to Mathews, who continued rolling out to his right. With two defensive players charging toward him, Mathews, from about the 11, tossed a pass to an open Pickett, who had leaked past unsuspecting defenders into the end zone, secured the ball in his outstretched hands and held it snugly against his body as he fell to the turf, sending the Heinz Field crowd into a frenzy.
“We were all pumped up about it,” Pickett said. “I know Aaron was. I have a touchdown catch before he does. He was a little pissed off about that. We switched roles for a play, so I’ve got to get him one next week.”
Not only does Pickett now have as many or more touchdown catches than all but one player on his team, but Mathews, thanks to his heroics, has more second-half touchdown passes than Pickett this season and owns a higher passer rating than Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa and countless other quarterbacks across college football.
It was, in some ways, a more difficult play than the one the Eagles successfully ran almost two years ago. Though it came in a far less consequential game, Pickett didn’t have the yards of room that Philadelphia’s Nick Foles did on his touchdown catch, meaning both that a college team defended the play more effectively than the New England Patriots and that someone unaccustomed to playing quarterback had a smaller window into which he could fit his pass.
The sequence of events, as it so often is in a sport as meticulously diagrammed as football, didn’t come without careful rehearsal over weeks of practice, all designed for a moment players and coaches alike weren’t sure would ever arrive.
Pickett, on Oakhurst, N.J. native who grew up an Eagles fan, said Whipple introduced the play during the second week of the team’s training camp in August. Ever since, Mathews said they practiced it at least once a week, even if just in a walk-through.
Though it was the Eagles who brought it the level of fame it has garnered, players said they watched film of a slew of teams utilizing the same motion. From all those viewings became something quite apparent.
“It was successful every time, so we were like ‘We may as well have this in our back pocket just in case we need it,’” Pickett said. “It paid off today.”
Only one of those times did the Panthers’ offense try it against their first-team defense live in practice. How did it transpire? Well, it depends on the narrator – or, more accurately, what position they play. Morrissey and Mathews both said it worked, albeit in a different way than it did Saturday, as Pickett was blanketed by defenders, but the 6-foot-4 Mathews had more than enough room to keep it and gallop into the end zone.
Defensive back Damar Hamlin remembers it slightly differently.
“We shut it down,” Hamlin said with a smile. “But I’m going to let him [Mathews] have his moment.”
Regardless of how the trickery went in that instance, it worked when it needed to. A decision that requires a palpable level of trust, especially when made by an offensive coordinator in his first year with the program, was executed seamlessly in a moment that required nothing less than that. A wide receiver who hadn’t thrown a pass in a game since his senior season at Clairton in 2014 connected with a quarterback who often jokes with teammates that he has the best set of hands on the team, with precious little evidence previously to verify that claim.
With everything riding on that play and with all the variables that, when mixed together, could have gone so spectacularly wrong, Pitt’s players embodied the very traits their coach had wanted to see in them when what became a 12-play, 79-yard touchdown drive began almost four minutes earlier.
“I just told them, ‘Hey, this is what we play for. This is what football is all about,’” Narduzzi said. “Our kids stood up.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: September 22, 2019, 3:03 a.m.