The trajectory of Pat Narduzzi’s nine-year tenure as the head coach of Pitt football has been anything but a straight line. He has added a dose of much needed stability and lifted the program to highs rarely seen since the glory days of the 1970s, but his near decade leading the Panthers has featured some troubling lows, as well.
At multiple junctions, Narduzzi’s ability to raise Pitt’s profile has been called into question, and multiple times, he’s answered those questions with an emphatic rebound. Fresh off a 3-9 campaign that marked the worst of his head coaching career, those questions have, once again, been raised.
With his back against the wall, it’s time for Narduzzi to answer again, and there are lessons from the past that indicate the 2023 campaign can be a stepping stone toward better things in 2024 and beyond.
The long road to an ACC championship
Narduzzi’s first two teams at Pitt both won eight games, more than in any of the previous four seasons. He did it with the help of plenty of holdovers from Paul Chryst’s last team — Avonte Maddox, Tyler Boyd, James Conner, Dorian Johnson, Adam Bisnowaty, Dontez Ford, J.P. Holtz, Ejuan Price, Lafayette Pitts and others.
After logging landmark victories over Penn State and then-No. 2 Clemson during the 2016 season, Narduzzi entered the offseason looking to keep the momentum going. The Panthers lost a slew of starters, including Conner, quarterback Nathan Peterman and Scott Orndoff, so Narduzzi attempted to give his offense a quick fix, bringing in former five-star prospect Max Browne from USC.
Browne’s play fluctuated, but he was ultimately limited to six games, and after letting Ben DiNucci take the reins for five unsuccessful weeks, Pitt fell to 4-7 going into a Week 12 bout with No. 2 Miami.
Freshman Kenny Pickett, his redshirt already burned, was thrust into a starting job, and that’s where his legend began — with a 24-17 victory over a No. 2-ranked team. He played well, accounting for 253 total yards and three total touchdowns, but it was the defense that powered the victory.
A week removed from allowing 157 rushing yards to Virginia Tech, Pitt shut down the Miami ground game to the tune of 45 yards on 23 attempts. The Panthers forced their opponents to pass and tallied five sacks, a forced fumble and 11 total hurries by the end of the afternoon.
The Hurricanes passing offense featured more athletic weapons than Pitt’s defensive secondary, but the Panthers stuck to their guns. They challenged Miami quarterback Malik Rosier to take advantage of open receivers downfield in the face of frequent blitzes.
Even without the ideal personnel to execute this daring scheme at its highest level, Narduzzi trusted in the strength of his defense — a quick, aggressive front seven — to cover for a secondary that was still catching up. Rosier failed to capitalize on the big-play opportunities available, and the Panthers walked away with yet another win that shook college football to its core and much more.
Upsetting the Hurricanes proved to be a launching point for the 2018 season, another reclamation project that required Pickett, in his first full season as a starter, to find himself. Behind a dominant rushing offense, the Panthers recovered from a 1-3 start that featured two deflating blowouts and made a run to the ACC championship game.
Pickett himself delivered a 316-yard passing performance at Wake Forest to clinch the Coastal Division and a spot in the 2018 ACC title game.
Another slow start gave way to another remarkable, season-changing win for Pitt in 2019. One week after collapsing on the goal line late in the fourth quarter at Penn State, Narduzzi, offensive coordinator Mark Whipple and Pickett pulled out a gutsy wide receiver pass to Pickett for a touchdown that snapped No. 15 UCF’s 25-game winning streak.
The UCF win kicked off a streak of six victories in seven games that powered the Panthers to the postseason, and they capped 2019 with a Quick Lane Bowl victory over Eastern Michigan.
On the field following the win, stars like Jaylen Twyman and Patrick Jones II pledged to return for another year. Safety Damar Hamlin earned another year of eligibility, and Paris Ford declined to enter the NFL draft that offseason. Pickett was going to enter a pivotal third year as a starter, too.
Some big-game experience under their belts and momentum built, the Panthers were in line for a significant leap the following year.
But the COVID-19 pandemic created unexpected challenges, and Narduzzi and the Panthers arrived at another crossroads in 2020. A 3-0 start proved to be only momentary respite from the grind of playing football in a pandemic.
Twyman opted out before the season began, and Ford followed in early November. During a stretch of four straight losses, capped by an embarrassing 45-3 loss to then-No. 3 Notre Dame, multiple injuries, a suspension and COVID protocols decimated the roster before the Panthers had to make a long road trip to play Florida State.
Pickett played hampered by an injury and new, inexperienced faces had to cover for high-profile losses, but Pitt dominated a blue blood in recession nonetheless.
The 41-17 victory was appreciated at the moment as a massive one for the Panthers. They won three of their next four games to close the year, and from that game, a slew of major contributors — Matt Goncalves, Calijah Kancey, Erick Hallett II, A.J. Woods and Brandon Hill, among others — emerged, while entrenched stars like Pickett and Jordan Addison played true to their pedigree.
During the 2021 and 2022 seasons, many of those same names that stepped up to fill gaps against Florida State became cornerstones of one of the best two-year runs in Pitt history. College recruiting and roster-building cycles can appear small in a vacuum, but those 20 wins and an ACC championship were years in the making.
What’s required in the next rebuild
Save for a few exceptions, any meaningful contributor to the 2021 ACC championship season is now graduated or in the NFL, and Pitt is essentially back to where they were at the end of 2017. A green quarterback, Nate Yarnell, earned a late starting opportunity mostly out of desperation and made the most of his chances. On the other side of the ball, a defense that had lost its identity is looking for a way back to dominance up front.
College sports have rebuilds in the same way the pros do, and despite an industry increasingly demanding fast and constant growth, Pitt has stuck to its roots as a high school development program. That comes with some costs, like when you graduate a wealth of NFL-capable talent and can’t replace them all in a single offseason.
But just as in 2017 and 2020, the steps back that the Panthers’ record took were indicative of a core still finding itself. Pitt simply does not recruit at the kind of level necessary to reach 2021-like highs year in and year out, but this program can reach that level again eventually if it allows growing players to take their licks on the field.
The good news for the Panthers is they did plenty of that during the 2023 season.
On offense, transplanted experience has not served the Panthers well, but the development of high school recruits has. Transitioning from a string of transfer stop gaps at quarterback to homegrown Nate Yarnell proved fruitful down the stretch in 2023, and the leap he’s able to take while moving from mid-season reliever to full-time starter (as Pickett did in 2017 and 2018) will play the biggest role in determining where the 2024 team goes.
The defense got away from its identity as a stout run-stuffing and splash-play-making unit in 2023. Bigger and older defensive linemen failed to create the kind of disruption that shorter, faster ones had in the past, and there was a trickle-down effect that lowered the ceiling of the unit as a whole. Pitt is getting back to its roots with a smaller but faster group of defensive linemen and personnel at the other two levels that has been primarily built through high school recruiting and coming along quickly.
The Panthers are all but certain not to return to their pre-2023 form, but they now have the room for the potential cornerstones of their next great team to take a step in their development. Pitt’s first ACC championship wasn’t built in a year or even two, and the next title-contending team will need the same kind of time.
Stephen Thompson: sthompson@post-gazette.com and @stephenethom on X
First Published: August 8, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: August 9, 2024, 6:54 p.m.
