Pitt's offense has produced plenty of points to start the season, averaging 46 per game through two games to be the second-best among ACC teams. The Panthers' 338 passing yards per game is also second-highest average in the conference.
Sure, one of those games is against UMass, but putting up 41 points against Tennessee in an SEC stadium is still impressive. And that's without a dominant run game that Pat Narduzzi was hoping would emerge this year. The Panthers average 159.5 rushing yards per game, good enough for tenth in the ACC.
But that's not where Pitt wants this run game to end up, especially with an offensive line full of upperclassmen as starters and a running back duo in Vincent Davis and Israel "Izzy" Abanikanda who both flash plenty of potential. Neither have solidified a position as the primary running back, as Davis has taken 25 carries for 65 yards and two touchdowns while Abanikanda has ran 19 times for 73 yards. Those are averages of 2.6 yards per carry and 3.8, neither being game changers to truly balance Pitt's offense.
But when asked about Pitt's lack of a consistent run game, Narduzzi wasn't willing to accept that classification of his Panthers' ground game.
"Well, consistent run game is based on how you define it," Narduzzi said Monday. "I define a consistent run game with four minutes to go in the game and we had to run it and we're not going to throw the ball in the air and throw an incomplete pass to stop the clock and, when they have got one time out left, we ran the ball. If we wanted to come out and start off on a first and ten after we fair catch the ball, 25-yard line, and just run it, I feel like we could, but we are trying to mix it up and be balanced."
I get Narduzzi's point on wanting to be balanced, but to balance the Panthers' offense he and Mark Whipple would need to find success in the run game, not throw the ball more. But Pitt's strength is the pass, and establishing balance just to say that you can is pointless if you end up ignoring that strength in search of that balance.
So instead of looking at play calling and when Pitt is running the ball, let's look at how it's running the ball. One factor I noticed, just like I did with my analysis last week, was how Pitt's offensive line was consistently one block from putting together a solid run play on several reps.
Here's one time in the first quarter Davis was tackled for a loss. You can see the problem happened on the right side where Gabe Houy whiffed on Tyler Baron. Houy looked like he wasn't expecting to be on Baron by himself, but there was nobody else around and it was his lone responsibility to seal that edge for Davis:
If he seals that, Davis might get a solid gain.
Make no mistake, Pitt's offensive line didn't have a bad game. Their maturity kept Pitt's offense relatively clean on penalties with only a single false start and a delay of game. But in a loud environment with more than 82,000 fans in Neyland Stadium, plenty of offensive lines would've made more mistakes both on procedural penalties and holding penalties. Through two games, Pitt's offensive line has yet to be called for holding once.
"You know, Coach (Dave) Borbely does a great job," Narduzzi said. "It's a discipline and they are locked in all the time. I really like our offensive line. They are paying attention to the details. Again, we can get a lot better at blocking and picking up some different stuff. You know some of the blitzes you see, you are seeing safeties come up the field and blitz off the edge."
Narduzzi went on to explain the difficulties of offensive linemen being able to identify moving defenders around the box while also trying to communicate in a loud stadium and keeping an eye on the ball to start the play with a silent snap count. It was clear he wanted to illustrate the many intricacies that go into playing on an offensive line in front of a hostile crowd.
"There's some situations that I think people overlook in the big world of things," Narduzzi continued. "And for an offensive line, they did a heck of a job in that atmosphere of picking up what they had to pick up with their eyes, you have to go from here to the ball whether it's a five technique, or a safety coming off the edge and they brought a few of those, which probably is a good game plan in a silent atmosphere knowing you're on silent cadence."
Sometimes the slightest hesitation or missing the silent count by half a second can make the difference between winning and losing your assignment on a run play. Here's a play where Carter Warren lost such a rep to Matthew Butler, who crossed his face and pushed into the hole where Abanikanda was headed:
Just the slightest miss, but against good opponents, they can prove costly.
But when Pitt needed its run game to close out Tennessee, both the offensive line and Pitt's backs stepped up in a major way. It was similar to how the run game picked up in the second half against UMass, and a confidence builder for the Panthers.
"I feel like we can run the ball when we need to and again we have to do a better job executing some of the things up front," Narduzzi said. "We saw more than we thought we would see and they threw more blitzes than we thought might happen but you can't prepare for which ones and when. I know Coach Whipple felt like, as many points as we scored against an SEC team, he felt like, man, it was just one play off."
Here's a six-yard run by Davis in that fourth quarter drive where you can see the run game come together. Marcus Minor and Warren team up to seal off a crease for Davis to hit on the left side, opening up to gain a first down and afford Pitt another opportunity to move the chains and run the clock:
And the spin move by Davis in the hole helped too.
While Narduzzi wouldn't issue official grades on Davis nor Abanikanda, he did think their performance was satisfactory.
"I think they both had winning performances," Narduzzi said of Davis and Abanikanda. "They both played well and ran the ball hard and protected well and flipped some guys upside down. I think Kenny (Pickett) got sacked once, and if he didn't slip it would be one sack on the day. I think one was a two-yard sack. They protected well and when they had the opportunity, you know, they ran the ball well and they had the right reads. Again sometimes where some safeties are coming off the edge and that's a part of the game of football."
Watch how on another conversion on Pitt's final drive, Abanikanda can rely on Pitt's offensive line to open up a solid lane for him to run through and pick up good yards. Minor seals his ma to the outside, while Owen Drexel brings his man to the left side as well. If you look close at Jake Kradel, No. 53, you can see him fight hard to maintain his spot as the right guard and give Abanikanda that space to work:
The potential is there, it's just about turning it from being occasional to consistent.
Pitt has a chance to do that with back-to-back games against Western Michigan and New Hampshire before ACC play begins against Georgia Tech. But if the Panthers want to make a real push in the ACC this year, having a reliable run game that it can turn on for more than a drive or two would be a major factor to closing out opponents as the season wears on.
