CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- Pitt lost its second consecutive game, 31-30, to Boston College at Alumni Stadium on Saturday, and in the most Pitt of ways.
After missing two field goals earlier in the game, Pitt called upon Alex Kessman to make his first field goal from 58 yards to send the game to overtime. And he did it, tying the game at 24-24:
But then when the team needed to tie the game in the first overtime with an chip shot extra point, Kessman's kick went wide right and the game was over:
He finished 1 of 3 on field goals, 3 of 4 on extra points.
"Kessman made a long one to get us to overtime after we took a sack and made it hard on him," Pat Narduzzi said afterward. "Kids fought their tails off in overtime and we came up a little short with that extra point. It's just disappointing but we'll stick together and continue to move forward. Fourth down and 20 was a stretch and Kenny wasn't moving really well. They were blitzing a lot when they saw him hobbling a little bit. It was a good move to do that and get us to overtime. Kessman said, 'I got it' and we went with it."
Narduzzi said he made sure to console Kessman after the game, as did plenty of his teammates, emphasizing that without his made field goal the team wouldn't have been in overtime in the first place.
"No question about it," Narduzzi said when asked if he talked to Kessman after the missed extra point. "I already grabbed him and half our team has already gone in there and grabbed him. It's hard to finish a game like that. It's disappointing and that's stuff that happens, but he got us there."
And he's right to not put in all on Kessman. Saturday's loss that dropped Pitt to 3-2 on the season, 2-2 in the ACC, was the textbook definition of a team loss.
Yes, it's disappointing that Kessman's first missed extra point of the season came in the most heartbreaking of moments. But the fact is that he shouldn't have had to tie the game with a 58-yard field, and he shouldn't have had to lose the game at the end. A lot of elements went terribly wrong for all three of the Panthers' units in another sloppy loss against a mediocre Boston College team.
"You don't say a lot," Narduzzi said of what he had to say to his players after the loss. "They played their tails off and fought. It's never easy to go on the road in the ACC and get a win. There's no easy games on our schedule. I just told them we stick together. There's no finger pointing. Point them all at me, it doesn't matter. Our kids played hard and tough and that's all you can ask for. It's not easy on the road. I thought our kids came in with a great attitude and gave it everything they had."
This loss was much bigger than a missed extra point. But that miss did symbolize what Pitt's issue has been in 2020, and has been for years.
Inconsistency.
Examples for the offense were easy to find in three penalties that wiped away 40 yards of from plays Kenny Pickett made or Carter Warren's false start that wasted fourth and two opportunity in the fourth quarter. The same could be said for Pitt's defense giving up three touchdown passes from Phil Jurkovec to Zay Flowers, all of which were big plays of 25, 44 and 77 yards.
The same defense that averaged giving up averages of 177 yards and ten points per game through the team's three wins has now given up averages of 393 yards and more than 30 points per game through Pitt's back-to-back one-point losses.
To put it simply, this once vaunted defense was shredded.
Jurkovec, the Pine Richland graduate, finished completing 19 of 35 passes for 358 yards and three touchdowns with zero interceptions. Flowers finished six catches for 162 yards and all three of Jurkovec's touchdown passes.
Most of that came when Flowers was left in single coverage against the Panthers' top cornerback Jason Pinnock. Pinnock was also beat by N.C. State's Emeka Emezie for the game-winning score last week, and had a rough go running in single coverage.
"Zay's a good football player," Narduzzi said. "That big pass in the second half took the wind out of us. Great throw by Phil and Zay took it in. We'll have to look at the coverage and look at the leverage of our corner to see what we did and didn't do. We had a chance, guys got to make plays and coaches got to make better calls. It starts with me, we just have to keep getting better. That was a good football team that won a lot of football games this year. It is what it is."
Leverage was absolutely the problem against Flowers, as Pinnock continued to get beat at the line, allowing for Flowers to get the release he wanted and run the designed route for Jurkovec to target. Narduzzi even mentioned the importance of his corners winning at the line on Thursday when he was asked about how his secondary can deter big plays moving forward.
Here's the 77-yard bomb that took the wind out of the Panthers sails on the second play of the third quarter. Watch how Pinnock misses on his jam of Flowers and whiffs with his inside hand as Flowers cuts inside of him. A cornerback in man coverage, especially with no safety help behind him, cannot allow a receiver to cross their face. It's the cardinal rule, and Pinnock got beat badly. Once Flowers had inside position all Jurkovec had to do was make the perfect throw:
Narduzzi acknowledged that much of what happened on those surrendered big plays was getting beat at the line like Pinnock did there.
"We got beat physically," Narduzzi said when asked about the big plays. "It comes down to technique and getting beat at the line. There were no coverage busts to my knowledge. We'll look at the tape and see what our checks were and what we did but it's hard to say while on the sideline when the game moves so fast."
The tape shows that he's right on it not being about coverage busts. Here's Flowers' third touchdown that put Boston College up in overtime. Once again it's Pinnock left in single coverage with no safety help, and once again Flowers puts on a double move that ends in a post route with Pinnock giving up his leverage for the score:
The question in response to that is natural; 'does making it an issue of getting beat physically alleviate the coaches since the scheme was in place and the player just got beat?'
The answer is no. Not anymore.
That's because it's this very scheme that put both Pinnock and Marquis Williams on islands last week when the Panthers gave up three touchdown passes to Devin Leary and the Wolf Pack on similar situations.
It's clear this is the mismatch that opponents can now target against this defense. Pitt's aggression on defense had paid off for the defense to the tune of 19 sacks over its first four games. The defense got five more sacks against Boston College, with Patrick Jones leading the way with three sacks, Rashad Weaver with one, and both Chase Pine and SirVocea Dennis splitting half-sacks.
But Weaver's was the biggest of the game. After Pickett threw an interception that gave Boston College the ball at Pitt's 15 yard line, giving the Eagles a chance to go up by ten with a touchdown.
In stepped Weaver with an initial bull rush that contained Jurkovec from escaping to Weaver's side, then a swim move that got him to the quarterback, allowing him to literally take the ball from his hands and get Pitt back into the game:
It was a great play, maybe Weaver's greatest of his career. But there weren't enough of those types of plays to overcome Pitt's being flat out beat by Boston College for several big plays.
But look at that play again and you'll see a simple four-man rush from Pitt. That left seven men in coverage, which is more than enough to leave one or two safeties back to help players like Pinnock against weapons like Flowers.
If it could work for the defense's biggest moment of the game, it should also work as a concept to protect the defense's most exploitable weakness throughout it. But the defensive approach hasn't adjusted to that notion, and the results yield the same disappointments as they did last week.
That's a problem with the Panthers' overall approach to their game. And it's a lot bigger than a missed extra point from Kessman.
• Pickett finished the game completing 25 of 48 passes for 266 yards and two passing touchdowns to go along with his 36 rushing yards on 14 carries and a rushing touchdown. Despite his one interception that almost sealed Pitt's fate in the fourth quarter, Pickett was the most consistent factor in its efforts to overcome its own issues.
"Kenny's a tough son of a gun, I'll tell you that," Narduzzi said of his quarterback after the game. "I'll go to war with that guy any day. He's tough and he played his tail off. He turned it over one time in the red zone but our defense stepped up and stopped them. Kenny played pretty good and we'll look at the tape, but he's tough."
• Owen Drexel got his first start at center as Jimmy Morrissey moved over to guard to replace Jake Kradel, who Narduzzi says suffered an injury this week. The offense allowed one sack despite Morrissey starting his first game at guard.
"Owen got his first start at center and we felt that was our top five," Narduzzi said. "Kradel got a little banged up in practice this week. He thought he could play but I told him we needed him healthy for the rest of the year. He's tough and he wanted to go, but Jimmy Morrissey moved to right guard and I thought the offensive line did a nice job with that in mind. I don't remember the last time [Morrissey] ever played guard. He did a nice job in there and so did Owen Drexel."
• Pitt was on the wrong side of two controversial calls involving Boston College fumbles in the red zone. The first was a fumble forced and recovered by linebacker SirVocea Dennis on Boston College's first drive of the game. But it was overturned after a replay and the Eagles ended up scoring a field goal on the drive.
The second fumble was initially called with the runner being down, but Phil Campbell came up with the football on a strip that looked like it would be overturned when the replay showed several angles with the running back not being down when the ball was out. The call would stand, and the drive would end with a touchdown.
Narduzzi addressed the calls that occurred on two drives that would end with ten points for Boston College in a game Pitt lost by a single point.
"No explanation," Narduzzi said when asked if the ACC officials offered him any justification for either call. "I thought both were fumbles. Second one I didn't think there was a doubt. I don't know how they overturned the first one with the video evidence. But coaches will coach and officials will officiate and we seem to be getting beat in the booth. Great job by our defense ripping the ball out and giving us a chance but replay saw it a different way."
This is the second straight week Narduzzi has made comments that were critical of calls made by ACC officials in a Pitt loss.