Pitt's rushing offense struggled again against Miami in its 31-19 loss at Hard Rock Stadium Saturday. The Panthers' running backs finished with 44 yards on 20 attempts (the official rushing total was 22 yards because of three sacks on Joey Yellen).
After another poor performance on the ground, Pitt now averages 2.9 yards per carry and 107 rushing yards per game on the season, both being 13th best in the ACC.
Pat Narduzzi offered praise of Yellen's first start for the Panthers Saturday, but noted that the running game has to help more to pick up the slack when Kenny Pickett can't play.
"Offensively Joey, heck of a first start for him," Narduzzi said Monday. "Didn't know what you were going to get out of him. Happy with the way he performed overall. Obviously the fumble creates one of those short fields for our defense. Offensively we’ve got to run the football. Twenty-two yards, disappointing there. There's some details that we haven't cleaned up. I don't think our O-line did a great job of blocking them. Give those guys credit on the other side of the ball. They're an athletic crew that did some things up front."
Now Pitt has to face No. 3 Notre Dame at Noon this Saturday Heinz Field, a team with a defense that's also the ACC's third best defense against the run.
"We face a great Notre Dame team," Narduzzi said. "No. 3 in the country, coming into our house, coming to Pittsburgh. We know it's always been a good game, a game our kids will look forward to. Their talent across the board, offensively, defensively, haven't watched a lot of special teams at this point. They are big, strong, physical. A typical Notre Dame football team. Defensively Clark Lea, ACC linebacker coach at Syracuse, based out of a 4-3. Up front, sound across the board. Safeties are active like our safeties are. They make a lot of tackles. We're going to have to play our best to get a ‘W’ on Saturday."
For Pitt's rushing offense to make an improvement against Notre Dame's defense, Narduzzi knows the answers will have to come in a variety of ways for his offensive line. The issue isn't as much about Vincent Davis or Todd Sibley not finding holes, as much as it is Pitt losing the trench wars.
"The run game has to get better," Narduzzi said. "I don't think we blocked very well. For the first game, we didn't win a lot of scrimmage (battles) at all. We had decent games run-wise. Two previous games we out-rushed the opponent. This game we obviously didn't, which was disappointing. We didn't block them very good up front. Didn't give our tailbacks a whole lot of time. Sibley early had some lanes to run through, lanes that my old butt could probably run through. Did a nice job carrying up through there. But the holes closed fast as the game went on. We didn't do a great job blocking. I think it will be a wake-up call in that room that we got to block them.
Miami's defense was able to control the line of scrimmage and hold Pitt's rushing offense to 22 yards, the lowest the Panthers have recorded all season by 70 yards. Miami ranks seventh against the run and Narduzzi knows that Notre Dame has a chance to be even more of a problem than the Hurricanes' defense.
"Again, not going to be an easy task against one of the top defenses in the country," Narduzzi continued about Notre Dame. "They're big, physical. We're more of an attack team. They're more of a read, react up front with their D-line. They're going to make it hard to rush the ball as well. We're going to have to be really good up front."
But Narduzzi has to find specifics about how his offensive line can play better and what to focus on in practice this week.
"Every play might be one breakdown," Narduzzi said about what he's seen on tape with his offensive line's struggles. "We have to get more movement up front, stay on blocks. We have to sustain blocks, is a big thing, sustaining blocks. You can be on a guy, but you have to finish the block. We didn't do a good job finishing. Again, give those other guys credit. They're being coached on the other side to disengage, get off of blocks. Good job by them. We want to be better than that."
Not sustaining blocks is certainly a theme this season that can define Pitt's rushing problems. Pitt's offensive line hasn't had a commanding performance since beating up on Austin Peay on opening day. When you watch the tape, often times you'll see linemen moving to the right spots to make a run play work. The issue is when they get there defenders are easily avoiding or shaking off blocks.
Watch this play that results in a tackle for loss on Davis for five yards. Miami's edge rushers fire off the ball but Pitt has one lineman on each player to stop them from blowing up the play. But neither wins their assignment.
On the right side of the formation you see tackle Gabe Houy put his hands on Jaelan Phillips, but you can see his feet stuck in cement as he exhibits no footwork to follow his upper body, never allowing him to establish leverage on his block. On the other side guard Jake Kradel pulls from being next to Houy to block the Hurricane's other edge rusher Jafari Harvey.
Harvey puts his shoulder into Kradel, knocking him off his pull block and both Harvey and Phillips crush Davis in the backfield. The attempted RPO that was supposed to freeze off-ball defenders is blown up before it can even begin because both Kradel and Houy can't finish the blocks they're on:
This is a theme with Pitt. Even when in the right spots to get the job done, offensive players whiff on opportunities. The same has been for receivers dropping passes as it has been for linemen missing blocks.
Pitt's best success came with Sibley in the backfield when he took four carries for 23 yards. The majority of those runs appeared to catch Miami off-guard and allowed Pitt's offensive line didn't have to dominate, but just win some situational advantages to open up a hole.
You can see Carter Warren cut block his man on the left edge while Jimmy Morrissey does just enough to keep the defensive tackle from attacking Sibley in the hole while Bryce Hargrove and Kradel get to the second level and seal their linebackers away from the run:
The answers for Pitt's rushing offense this season might not be players brought up from further down the depth chart, but finding more situational advantages for the line to catch defenses off-balance. Narduzzi noted that ultimately his offensive line does have other players on the depth chart, but that the the team only has a few that have consistently produced in practice that their comfortable with planning behind.
"Maybe we’ve just got to do a better job playing those guys," Narduzzi proposed. "Matthew Goncalves is a guy. You saw it with [Owen] Drexel a week ago. Wish he would have got more snaps just to get him going. Jake really had a couple days off, he wasn't as clean as we wanted him to be. That's tough when you play a front four like you're going to play in Miami or like you're going to face this weekend. Cannot be 100% or practice enough to get really good and be sound and solid inside. "
"But, no, offensive line, we have some guys we feel comfortable with," Narduzzi continued. "There's some young guys, it's one of those things, it's a cohesive group. If there's one position you can rotate receivers and tailbacks, but if I pick two positions you really don't want to rotate too much is that quarterback position and your offensive line. Those guys get used to playing together. You like to ride your horse all the way to the end with your five hogs. We’ve got some guys that can go in and do some things. You sometimes see it in some of our extra packages, whether it is Blake Zubovic last week [who] looked really good during practice with what he was doing. There's some young guys that are just going to learn. You give them roles where they can partake in certain situations, gain confidence, give the coaches some confidence in what they are doing as well."
Narduzzi did note that the team could see more of Sibley at running back moving forward after he averaged 5.8 yards per carry against Miami.
"I think so," Narduzzi said when asked if Sibley would get more carries. "We'll see how he practices this week. We know that position, the running back position, has been by committee. He obviously started the game off. We'll see how he practices this week. I'm happy with Todd, his cuts, the way he's reading stuff. We'll see. Next week you'll be like why is he in there too much. We'll see how they practice this week. We're still looking for guys to step up and make something happen, not only at the line of scrimmage but as we break into the secondary."
Whether it's who lines up at running back, a backup stepping up on the line or the offense being called to allow the offensive line more mismatches against off-balanced defensive alignments, something has to change if the Panthers want to find any success on the ground in a must-win game against Notre Dame.
• Narduzzi did note that both tight end Grant Carrigan and defensive end Nate Temple suffered shoulder injuries that have put them out for the year. That puts Pitt extremely thin at tight end as Danny Maraga, who caught his first touchdown Saturday, and Kyi Wright are the only tight ends left on the depth chart.
"Tight end spot, it's hard to run the ball when you don't have tight ends," Narduzzi said. "Danny Moraga has done an outstanding job, physical guy. He's getting better every week because he's getting all the reps from practice. A little short on the tight end thing. Wish we could go get a free agent."
• If you're wondering whatever happened to Lucas Krull, the transfer tight end from Florida, keep wondering. Narduzzi wouldn't rule him or linebacker Wendell Davis out for the season, even though neither have played in weeks and no indication has been given on when they could return.
"Not season-ending right now," Narduzzi said of Krull's and Davis' injuries. "It is taking a while. I've been told it's not season-ending. We'll continue to say our prayers at night before we go to bed and hope those guys get healthy quick."
• Naduzzi noted defensive tackle Keyshon Camp as "day to day" when asked. Camp has missed the Panthers last two games against Boston College and Miami.