One moment defined Pitt's embarrassing 44-41 loss at Heinz Field on Saturday to Western Michigan better than any other.
A Pitt defense that led the ACC in interceptions, turnovers and sacks in 2020 had a chance to give Kenny Pickett and the Panthers' offense the ball back in the third quarter with the game tied at 27. Pickett had already thrown four touchdowns despite no semblance of a run game against Western Michigan, a 14.5-point underdog from the MAC that should've posed no threat.
Instead of Pitt forcing a punt or creating a turnover, Broncos' sophomore quarterback Kaleb Elegy fired a deep ball down the middle of the field to his receiver Corey Crooms who was wrapped up by Pitt safety Erick Hallett II. But coming in late to deliver a big hit was fellow Pitt safety Brandon Hill.
Hill sure delivered a big hit, but it was on Hallett, knocking him off Crooms, who took his good fortune and walked the rest of the way to the end zone untouched. Hallett would suffer a shoulder injury and wouldn't return to the game, as Western Michigan took the lead and Pitt was down another member of its already whipped secondary.
If you need the visual to understand how bad it looked, here you go:
It was one of several bumbling moments in what may have been the worst Pitt loss in Pat Narduzzi's tenure. It was the first home defeat by a Narduzzi-led Panthers team to a non-power five conference team and it came in a game where Pitt's 41 points were the most in a losing effort since the Panthers' 51-48 setback to Duke in 2014, the last year of the Paul Chryst era.
Eleby torched Pitt's defense by completing 23 of 35 passes for 336 yards and three touchdowns. The performance was strongly aided by Western Michigan head coach Tim Lester, who knew exactly how to set up all of the Broncos' passes over the middle against Narduzzi's defense.
And he did it by studying the tape of Pitt's defense from Narduzzi's first year coaching them in 2015, when Lester was the offensive coordinator for Syracuse during a 23-20 win by the Panthers.
"I've watched that game three hundred times this week," Lester said. "I knew where they were going to come from, and how they're going to fit, and what our matchups are going to be, and what variety of matchups we're going to need to keep the safety off-balance."
Lester had Pitt's defenders so off-balance all game that his offense could run the simplest of plays to torch Pitt's secondary to the point that the Panthers' safeties were knocking each other out. Eleby and the Broncos' offense simply ran run-pass options all game long, hitting slant route after slant route for first downs as the offense finished converting 7 of 17 third downs.
And it came on a plan Lester formed from watching game film of Narduzzi's defense from six years ago.
Yikes.
Narduzzi mentioned the potential of RPOs being a threat for Pitt in his pregame press conference Thursday, but you wouldn't have thought that watching the game.
"It comes down to RPOs," Narduzzi said after the game. "They were running it, and our backers were getting sucked up. They were throwing skinny posts, we call them glance routes, we call it almost kind of a slant route … and that's stuff we practiced all week. But give Skyy Moore credit and Crooms, I think. Those are two guys that had a lot of catches, and they made the plays that we didn't. Had a couple missed tackles on a long one where Brandon Hill comes in, knocks our safety out, knocks him off the play, and just can't happen."
Moore finished with 11 catches for 124 receiving yards and a touchdown to go along with Crooms' eight catches for 161 receiving yards and a touchdown. Pitt's secondary and cover linebackers were scorched by a MAC offense with a sophomore quarterback that hadn't beaten a power five conference team since 2016.
And all that wasted a career game from Pickett.
In his fifth year at quarterback, Pickett had never thrown more than three touchdowns in a game. At some point, it would make sense if he had to throw four or five touchdowns to keep Pitt in a tough game against Clemson, Miami, North Carolina or some daunting ACC opponent this year.
He threw for six touchdowns against Western Michigan, completing 23 of 31 passes for 382 yards with a single interception, while his 49 rushing yards not only led the Panthers, but was more than the combined yards of anyone else who ran the ball for them. All of that on a day where Pickett increased his career passing yardage at Pitt to 8,923, passing Tino Sunseri and Dan Marino to have the second-most in Pitt history behind only Alex Van Pelt.
Pickett even came back from a first quarter hit that made him have to visit Pitt's locker room after writhing in pain on the field. If you know Pickett, you know he's taken his fair share of licks for the Panthers over the years. For a hit to take him off the field, it had to be something seriously painful.
Still, he marched back onto the field before the end of Pitt's next drive and delivered his best statistical performance of his college career and led Pitt to posting more than 40 points for a third consecutive game, something the Panthers have never done in a program that began in 1905.
And they still lost. That's how low Pitt sank Saturday.
"It starts with me," Narduzzi said. "Obviously I didn't have them ready to go, and we'll go back and watch the tape. There will be a strong message delivered. It was delivered after the game here, and we'll address it as coaches, and we've got to get better. Again, it starts with the coaches. We obviously didn't do -- we got out-coached today, and we've got to do a better job."
The coaching platitudes after a tough loss are expected, but this was a different kind of Pitt loss than any other over the years. Pitt's been blown out by top-ranked opponents, embarrassed by Penn State, lost back-to-back, one-point games to underdog programs like N.C. State and Boston College, but this wasn't the same.
This was supposed to be the year the Panthers were going to put it all together and show that it can lift itself out of college football mediocrity. Narduzzi is in his seventh year coaching the program with 27 seniors, including a fifth-year quarterback who's played phenomenally. He has two coordinators in Mark Whipple and Randy Bates who each have multiple seasons coaching the program, and the ACC without Clemson looking like the unbeatable powerhouse it's been the last 10 years under Dabo Swinney.
Now Pitt has to rebound against New Hampshire next Saturday at home before it has back-to-back road games against Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech to open ACC play, and all that before it plays Clemson and Miami in back-to-back games.
This was supposed to be the year Narduzzi finally coached Pitt to at least nine wins for the first time during his tenure, avoiding the losses in games where Pitt was a clear favorite and putting together a complete season that would show the pride in the program for top-tier recruits to see and attract them to the program.
Just hours after the loss to Western Michigan, Tyreese Fearbry, a local four-star defensive end recruit from Perry who decommitted from Penn State and had Pitt on his radar, announced his new commitment to Kentucky:
Yesssirrr COMMITTED @Evolve2tenths @210ths @2_10thsRob @_Drew_55 @ArringtonMod @ImReem700 @CoachWhiteFB @UKCoachStoops @CoachBuffano @UKFootball @SnyderLinwood @TribLiveHSSN @TribStandout pic.twitter.com/lVS7b3T9OW
— Tyreese Fearbry (@FearbryTyreese) September 18, 2021
You can call that a bad omen, a message sent, or a coincidence, but it just further emphasizes the egg Pitt laid at Heinz Field on Saturday.
And throw out any notion that Pitt "overlooked" Western Michigan because of its big win over Tennessee in Knoxville just a week ago. Pitt players and coaches said all week how they knew they couldn't afford to take their foot off the gas pedal if they wanted a banner season for the program.
This wasn't about a letdown or underestimating an opponent, this was about being out-coached, as even Narduzzi admitted, and outplayed. Pitt's defense has the talent to compete but had no counters for Western Michigan's RPO offense that simply faked the run, and targeted either the flat for a wide receiver screen or a receiver running a slant on the middle.
And even when the Broncos didn't fake the run, their running backs still had a day with Sean Tyler's 14 carries for 84 yards and a touchdown and La'Darius Jefferson's 22 carries for 78 yards and two touchdowns.
There's nothing positive for Pitt's defense to take from the loss, and that's under Narduzzi, who was brought to Pitt as a defensive-minded coach who would change all that. Pitt did manage to record three sacks, but none of that matters when you give up 44 points to a team from the MAC in your own stadium.
Pitt has a week to prepare for a rebound game against New Hampshire and set a better tone to start ACC play. Narduzzi needs to have the kind of turnaround Pitt showed when it cut a four-game losing streak off with an impressive road win against Florida State last year, or this season could run off the rails with no COVID-19 excuses available for why the Panthers fell short.

JOE ROBBINS / GETTY
Kenny Pickett rolls out of the pocket Saturday at Heinz Field.
• It would be wholly unfair to omit that both Lucas Krull and Jordan Addison had career days for Pitt along with Pickett. Krull caught all three of his targets for 36 yards and two touchdowns, becoming the first Pitt tight end to record a touchdown in three consecutive games since Dorin Dickerson did so in 2009.
Addison led the team catching six of eight targets for 124 yards and three touchdowns, posting the most receiving touchdowns by a Panther since Tyler Boyd caught three scores against Duke in 2013. That went along with Jared Wayne catching five of six targets for 100 yards, as it was the second time Canadian-born junior receiver hit triple-digits for Pitt. Jaylon Barden also caught two passes for 60 yards and a touchdown, rebounding from a rough performance against Tennessee.
• Pitt's run game is still a non-existent mystery shrouded in Whipple's futile machinations. Whipple's offense has simply been based on Pickett playing the role of Superman, Pitt's receivers and tight ends being his supporting cast of the Justice League, and the run game being the citizens they save from certain disaster.
And that's not to knock the effort of Vincent Davis, who actually did run hard, pick up several blitzes and make some guys miss in space when he caught the ball. But 38 yards on 11 carries to go along with three catches for 23 yards does not make for a day that would scare any defense into trying to stop the run. There's just nowhere for him to go.
Pitt's offensive line even had a new center in Jake Kradel after Owen Drexel had his second bad snap of the game that led to a bumbled handoff between Pickett and Rodney Hammond Jr. for Western Michigan to recover a fumble inside of Pitt's 5. Kradel bumped over from right guard to center and Keldrick Wilson took his place at guard. There just weren't many holes for Davis to attack.
But what's also bizarre is how Israel Abanikanda still can't be involved in Pitt's run game even after Narduzzi compared him to Le'Veon Bell after Pitt's Blue-Gold Spring Game in April. He got a single carry for -1 yard in this game, and hasn't been given the opportunity to carry the load for the Panthers in any of their first three games, including the season opener blowout where Hammond led the team with eight carries.
Narduzzi has continued to sing praises of "Izzy," but actions speak louder than words. And your starting running backs being outgained on the ground by your quarterback through three games while they average a collective 58.3 rushing yards per game compared to Pickett's average of 313 passing yards per game speaks the loudest about Pitt's offense.
The Panthers' offense is one-dimensional and lacks any foreseeable path to create a sustainable run game three games into the season. If Narduzzi hopes to gut out some wins against Pitt's higher ranking opponents later in the season, there will need to be at least some ability to run the ball.
That has to mean a change of something moving forward, whether that's personnel, scheme, concepts, play calling, coaching, or anything. This isn't going to turn into a dependable run game by Pitt sticking to its guns and giving it a good college try with the same plans next time.
• I'm still unclear if Narduzzi knows whether Pitt should or shouldn't blitz more moving forward. Pitt has lived the last couple seasons by identifying as an aggressive pass rushing defense that sends extra blitzers and works with organized chaos to force offenses into mistakes.
But as Lester said Saturday, he saw that coming six years away and schemed around it.
"I don't know if we blitzed enough," Narduzzi said about Pitt's pass rush. "Seemed like a lot of four-man pressure to be honest with you. I don't think we blitzed enough. They do a good job of looking to the sideline and getting themselves in a good play, and we didn't adjust good enough."
Pitt still finished with three sacks from Calijah Kancey, Devin Danielson and Habakkuk Baldonado. But it wasn't enough when the Broncos' offense can own time of possession by literally doubling Pitt -- 40 minutes to 20 minutes. SirVocea Dennis said Pitt wasn't tired or exasperated in the end, but you could've fooled me.
If nothing else, Narduzzi must consider tweaking Pitt's defense or at least mix in different concepts to protect his victimized secondary. Because Eleby will look like a walk in the park if North Carolina puts together a similar scheme for presumed first round draft pick quarterback Sam Howell when the teams meet on Nov. 11.
Narduzzi must make changes underneath him in his game plans on both sides of the ball moving forward, or the changes that Pitt will need to make after this season will go from being about ideas, concepts and schemes to being about coaching personnel and the direction of the program.