Tim Benz: As Pitt beat Clemson, the better team just took care of business, now it needs to keep doing so
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Saturday’s game against Clemson wasn’t the kind of showdown where Pitt’s football team had to rise to the occasion.
It was a day when the Panthers just needed to take care of business.
Pitt came in as a three-point favorite. With the higher ranking. A better spot in the ACC standings. More momentum. A superior quarterback piloting a better offense.
Frankly, all indications were that Pitt simply had the better team coming into their matchup against the defending ACC champion Tigers.
Maybe not the most raw talent or five-star recruits. But on Oct. 23, 2021, definitely the better team.
After a week’s worth of hype, all coach Pat Narduzzi’s players had to do was prove it.
Something that Pitt teams have failed to do in highly anticipated games on frequent occasions.
Yes. That would’ve been a very Pitt thing to do. But not this edition of Panthers. Not on this day, as they won 27-17 in front of an announced crowd of 60,594 at Heinz Field.
“There’s more leadership across the board,” junior linebacker SirVocea Dennis said of this year’s team. “We’re all buying in. We’re all passionate about the game. We all want to take it to the next level.”
The Panthers managed to avoid what could’ve been one of their typical missteps last Saturday by thumping Virginia Tech on the road 28-7. Some Pitt teams of previous years could have undercut the momentum of this week with a “look ahead” loss to the Hokies — such as the 2015 Thursday night home defeat to North Carolina a week before they hosted Notre Dame.
Maybe Pitt teams of previous years would’ve gotten trucked in front of a big home crowd like that same 2015 team did the next week against the No. 8 Fighting Irish (42-30 in a game that wasn’t even really that close).
Or the 2017 version that was boat-raced 59-21 by No. 9 Oklahoma State. Or the 2018 bunch that fell to No. 13 Penn State, 51-6.
But this roster of Pitt players wasn’t looking for an upset or to make a statement like those teams were. It simply was looking to complete a task that most who had watched the ACC this season realized was entirely possible: beat a Clemson club that is nowhere close to as good of a product that the school normally produces.
“We came in thinking we were going to be the better team and thinking that we were going to get a win,” senior quarterback Kenny Pickett said. “But they are still Clemson. They are a great team with a great defense. We had to come in with energy. The motto is, ‘Win at all costs. Do whatever we have to do to win.’ ”
Freshman running back Rodney Hammond Jr. was more succinct in his response.
“We’re Pitt. We’re not scared of anybody. We’re dogs,” Hammond Jr. said.
A loss on Saturday would have been framed as just another example of the Panthers “PITT-ing,” as critics and jaded members of the fanbase like to say.
Now the Panthers need to avoid another interpretation of that phrase. The one where the Panthers erase all the good vibes they’ve built up with an upset loss to Miami next week. Or Duke. Or North Carolina.
Perhaps this collection of Panthers is immune to those kinds of foul-ups, even if their predecessors weren’t.
Perhaps the most difficult hurdle en route to an ACC Coastal Division crown has been cleared. And much like what they did against Clemson on Saturday, the Panthers just need to get the job done against a remaining regular-season schedule devoid of any other conference teams currently ranked in the top 25.
Perhaps.
As Pickett and company look for only the second 10-win season for the school since 1981, decades of history indicate they won’t.
Recent results this year suggest otherwise.
Narduzzi and company have five more games to go. All against teams they’d be favored to beat as of now. That starts with a home contest against the 2-4 Miami Hurricanes on Oct. 30.
“We’ll get ‘em down. We’ll be OK,” Narduzzi said when asked about preventing the players from flying too high emotionally coming off the win. “They know how important the next one is. Every game gets a little bit bigger. … We’ll move on to the next one.”
Over their final five games, if the Panthers perform in the same manner they did Saturday, they’ll find themselves in Charlotte for the ACC Championship game Dec. 4.
For once, that sort of optimism about Pitt football doesn’t come off as forced or manufactured. It no longer feels like something they could do. It feels like something they should do.
If they just continue to take care of business.