Use whatever negative term you like to describe the complete destruction Pitt suffered at the hands of Notre Dame in the 45-3 beatdown witnessed at Heinz Field on Saturday.
Steamrolled. Obliterated. Outclassed. All of that applies.
"They played like the No. 3 team in the country today," Pat Narduzzi said of Notre Dame after the game. "They made plays on the ball. We had three interceptions. We lost the field position war big time. You're never going to win a game, you're probably going to lose big when you throw three interceptions. Joey didn't have a great day. But like I said, you’ve got to give their offense and their defense and their special teams credit. They made plays and we didn't. But time of possession, 40 to 20, we couldn't sustain drives offensively and put our defense in tough situations and when you do that against the No. 3 team in the country you're going to have problems winning football games."
Pitt was dominated in all three phases of the game as the loss dropped the Panthers to 3-4 on the season and 2-4 in the ACC.
Notre Dame's offense out-gained Pitt in yards 434-162, forced three turnovers to Pitt's none, and ran up the score until calling off the dogs at the start of the fourth quarter. Pitt even had a punt blocked and scooped up for a touchdown by Isaiah Foskey as it tried to get out of the first half only down 21-3.
"They're as good a football team I have seen walk on the field in the last six years," Narduzzi said, further complimenting Notre Dame's performance. "They're talented from front to back on both sides of the ball and we got beat by a better football team, period. I'm sure the tape will see that. I'll watch the tape and we'll evaluate it and probably have more answers for you when we get together again."
Being honest, this Notre Dame team probably would get run out of the building by the national champion Clemson team Pitt beat in 2016. But after losing by the second biggest loss in Narduzzi's tenure (51-6 vs. Penn State in 2018), it's understandable why Narduzzi can't say otherwise.
Notre Dame's starting quarterback, Ian Book, had three touchdown passes across four games before Saturday. He finished completing 16 of 30 passes for 312 yards and doubling his season total with three more touchdown passes.
Book led Notre Dame to be the first team to put up more than 40 points on Pitt this season, and the fourth consecutive opponent to score more than 30 against a defense that was supposed to be the best of Narduzzi's tenure.
Not only that, but Book is now the fourth straight quarterback to throw for the most touchdown passes of his season against Pitt. Book's three was his most Saturday, D'Eriq King's four last Saturday was his most for Miami last week, Phil Jurkovec's three touchdowns were his most for Boston College, and Devin Leary's four touchdowns for N.C. State represented half of all his passing touchdowns this season.
Again, this was supposed to be the defense that defined the best that Narduzzi could produce. It's his sixth season after multiple years with winning records and the program was coming off Pitt's first bowl win under Narduzzi last season.
But maybe that's the point.
Things have only gotten worse for Pitt once the losing started against N.C. State back in September. Similar issues that have prevented Pitt from having a nine-win season under Narduzzi resurfaced in that loss. Narduzzi doubled-down on his defensive philosophy after that loss, only to see his secondary get picked apart by Boston College. He further emphasized that the defense needed to just play the game plan harder and faster before the loss to Miami, where Pitt's defense gave up big play after big play.
True to form, Narduzzi delivered the same message leading into Saturday's game against Notre Dame. Pitt stuck to its guns and got blown away for three more big touchdown passes that exposed the Panthers' secondary.
There's a line where persistence changes into stubbornness, and after the Panthers' fourth straight loss, Narduzzi's approach looks more like the latter. If no changes are coming, the disappointment in this season that's taken root over the past four losses could sprout into the biggest disappointment of Narduzzi's tenure.
Sure this season is in the middle of a pandemic and the team lost its best player in Jaylen Twyman when he opted out, but the breakdowns, lapses and complete failures stem far beyond a missing defensive tackle.
Even the team's biggest names left on the roster have come up short when Pitt needed them. Here's Paris Ford playing a deep zone in the middle of the field and mistiming his jump on a pass over the middle opening up an easy touchdown from Book to Ben Skowronek:
Skowronek had himself a day, catching only two passes, but taking both for touchdowns of 34 and 73 yards. And again, doing so in ways that sound like a broken record for Pitt's struggles on defense.
"We have to come together and be one unit," linebacker Chase Pine said of Pitt's defense after the game. "We can't be out there giving up plays at three different levels. We have to play for each other and it's more of a family thing. We gave up a ton of points and that's on us. We have to be better moving forward."
Here's that 73-yard touchdown where he just moves Marquis Williams out of the way, catches the ball and runs through Pitt's secondary for the score. Williams stands at 5-foot-9, 175 lbs. and is abused by Skowronek at 6-foot-3, 224 lbs. We've seen this type of play beat Pitt from N.C. State's big-bodied receiver Emeka Emechie to start Pitt's four-game skid:
Sure, there's contact initiated by Skowronek that would qualify for offensive pass interference that's not called, but Narduzzi's barked about not getting those calls all season and knows that Pitt has to adjust to it.
When asked whether the issue was the lack of pressure or poor coverage on the back end, Narduzzi tried to make it seem as if the blame was shared.
"There's a little bit of both," Narduzzi said. "The one they hit, the big one, we brought pressure, we hit the quarterback right as he released it. So, again, I would have to watch the tape and see how our paths were when we did blitz. We did blitz on that down. We were in cover three. And you got a 6-3 receiver on a smaller corner, I think, a little push off, whatever, a little lean on a guy, and No. 11 makes a big play. And then Erick [Hallett] came out of the middle of the field and he's got to finish it up and at least give us another yard to stay in down there."
Let's take an objective look at where the actual problem was for both of those touchdowns.
Book does have a clean pocket that he steps up in for the first pass touchdown pass to Skowronek, but the pass was still thrown over the middle right where your star safety is designed to prowl for those kinds of passes. Those are the plays Minkah Fitzpatrick comes up with for the Steelers when he's targeted. The problem came on the ball being misplayed in the secondary.
The pass rush was coming on the second score. At some point the coverage has to be able to hold up when the ball travels 45 yards through the air and being thrown just three seconds into the play. Those are usually the desperate heaves a secondary can prey on to create turnovers. But for Pitt, those plays have become the team's worst nightmares.
The problems come in Pitt's secondary. The same secondary that Narduzzi's scheme leaves on islands and isolated to fend for themselves game after game despite being shredded week after week.
What makes this loss even more embarrassing for Pitt is that Notre Dame's defensive philosophy shares plenty of similarities with Pitt. Both programs play aggressively as a defensive front and leave defenders in single coverage to fend for themselves. But after seeing three other teams beat Pitt's defense with targeting big plays down the field, the Panthers were unable to replicate any of that success.
Sure it was redshirt freshman quarterback Joey Yellen's second start for the program in as many weeks and Notre Dame is the top ranked defense in the ACC. But it became clear why Notre Dame's defense has proven its dominance as its defense continued to make play after play.
Yellen finished the game completing only 10 of 27 passes for 101 yards and threw three interceptions.
"A number of things made it difficult," guard Bryce Hargrove said of the offense's struggles. "They're a good team and we didn't perform how we were supposed to. Obviously we've had some tough losses. Our leadership is staying positive and not giving up. We've got four games to go and we're staying positive while trying to figure out the problem."
Here's Notre Dame's best defender, linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, running with D.J. Turner down the sideline before intercepting Yellen's pass. Yellen thinks he has the mismatch with a fast receiver on a linebacker, but the ball is underthrown and Owusu-Koramoah doesn't miss on the opportunity for the interception:
Notre Dame's top defender making the play when given the opportunity and Pitt's top player in Ford whiffing on his chance. That's a neatly packed encapsulation of the why this game went the way it did.
Owusu-Koramoah is no joke, and you can expect him to be selected in the 2021 NFL Draft anywhere from the late first round to the late second round. But Pitt knew that after not establishing the running game in any of its first six performances that its best hope was making big plays with Yellen taking to the air.
"I thought we would stack it up better," Narduzzi said of his team's offensive plan. "I thought we would be able to throw the ball better. I did not think we would run the ball great on that front, which they're a top run defense in the country, I think, you know, and that's what it is. So we'll look. We'll re-evaluate. We'll regroup. I think we need an open week. I think there's only two Power 5 teams in the country that played seven games, or six games for that matter, and we just got to regroup and find ourselves."
Pitt has a chance to regroup with a bye week over Halloween weekend before flying to Tallahassee to face Florida State on November 7th. But after four straight losses and all the problems that been exposed in those defeats, that's a lot of wounds to lick.
The offense struggling without Kenny Pickett is one thing, but for the defense that was on fire in its first three games and was supposed to be the pride of the team, that's the group that has to find the most answers.
Narduzzi wouldn't pinpoint the defense's problems as fundamental, even though four straight quarterbacks have now put up their best performances of the season against Pitt's defense in as many weeks.
"I don't know if I would call it fundamental flaws," Narduzzi said of the defense's struggles. "Our defense was on the field for a long time today, almost 41 minutes. We got to make plays on the ball. We'll look at the pass. We'll look at what happened. You know, give Ian Book a lot of credit. Even when we did try to -- almost get him, almost get him, how many times did we almost get him, and he scrambled. He might have been the leading rusher. He had a nice day rushing the ball and scrambling out of there, which we knew he had escapability. He's a great athlete. He didn't make any bad decisions. We didn't force him to make bad decisions. He put the ball up where it needed to be."
When Ford came out of the game in the third quarter, you could see his discontent on the sideline even while Pitt was down more than four touchdowns. Narduzzi made it seem after the game that the decision was more of a matchup consideration than protecting his best player from getting hurt.
"It was nothing that we were taking him out for any reason," Narduzzi said. "We talked all week just by rotating those guys that we wanted to get Brandon Hill in the game and get him active. We thought with a lot of the 12 personnel we were seeing, the two tight ends that -- Brandon's a good football player. Brandon, in my opinion, is a starter at safety as well. We got a lot of faith in him, he's a good hitter and that's really what it was. But nobody wants to be taken out of the game, he wasn't taken out of the game for any reason except to give Brandon Hill a series. And I guess he wasn't happy, I'm not sure, but that happens sometimes."
Ford looked like he was frustrated and angry over the team losing yet again. It was a similar sentiment to when he wouldn't leave the field after Pitt lost by one point because of a missed PAT in overtime against Boston College.
Somebody at Pitt has to channel that frustration into answers soon. Pitt has four more games to play, two of them coming against teams currently ranked in Clemson and Virginia Tech. But even games against Florida State and Georgia Tech look like significant tests for a team that has lost its identity in the middle of what was supposed to be a flagship season under Narduzzi's tenure.
This was not only the first time Pitt was allowed to have fans in the stands, it was also the first time the team played on national television with ABC and not just the ACC Network. Laying an egg in games like this can have a lasting impact on those who haven't been able to watch Pitt otherwise.
Performances like this can't be what defines a program if it hopes to take the next step forward, catch the eyes of top recruits and attract the talent that can make the program a real threat in the ACC.
• Narduzzi said that he expects Pickett to return sometime this season. Although no specifics were given, as usual, he did at least offer that.
"Absolutely," Narduzzi said on whether Pickett would play again this season. "Absolutely. Hopefully sooner than later. He was out there today and he had a good week, he's doing really well. We'll see. Might be a stretch for Florida State, I don't know, but we'll see."
If 'might be a stretch' means anything, it means you might have to expect Yellen to make his third straight start two weeks down the road.