Miami's Van Dyke dices Pitt's defense in 38-34 letdown loss

Pitt's pass defense continues to be the bane of its hopes to get a shot at the ACC Championship Game this year.

That got put on display as the Panthers lost 38-34 to Miami at Heinz Field Saturday. Miami's redshirt freshman quarterback Tyler Van Dyke led the way for the Hurricanes, completing 32 of 42 passes for 426 yards and three touchdowns while only throwing one interception.

Pitt's offense got on the board with its first drive of the game that went eight plays for 75 yards in less than three minutes, but Van Dyke led Miami's offense to respond with three consecutive touchdown drives off big plays that split apart the Panthers' defense.

"They made one more play than we did," Pat Narduzzi said after the game. "I thought they played hard. We lost the turnover margin by one, minus 1, probably the difference in the game. We only had one turnover. Tyler (Van Dyke) made that because I told you he was a good football player, could throw it well. I thought we just started slow, especially defensively. Just didn't make enough plays. Some cover busts early, I thought two of them. We'll look at the tape and find out."

Narduzzi did note that Van Dyke would be a legitimate threat for Pitt's defense in his Thursday press conference, as noted in my Pitt Kickoff preview article this week. That leads to a conclusion that maybe this loss and the pass defense struggles aren't about anything that involves a lack of preparation, overlooking an opponent, or Pitt underestimating the opposing quarterback.

It's simpler than that: the pass defense just can't stop an accurate pocket passer.

Think back to Pitt's wins and losses and it's a pretty clear bar for when the team has won and when it's struggled. In all six wins, Pitt won by multiple possessions against quarterbacks that favored either being more of a running threat or just weren't that talented in the first place.

But in the two losses, Pitt has allowed 44 and 38 with Western Michigan's Caleb Eleby throwing for 357 yards and three touchdowns and Van Dyke passing for 426 yards -- the most yielded by the Panthers this season.

Here's a play where Van Dyke just waited for his tight end Elijah Arroyo to work his way past Pitt's linebackers to be wide open in the end zone as safety Brandon Hill didn't commit to either Arroyo's post pattern or the deep receiver running down the sideline:

"He's been on a roll the past couple weeks," Pitt linebacker John Petrishen said after the game. "He's been getting better every week. We had a completely different game plan than what we would've had for (D'Eriq) King, their other quarterback. He had a lot of confidence coming into today's game after their big win last week. He was impressive today and he doesn't play like a freshman."

It became a theme for the game, as Miami followed that score up with a reverse-flea-flicker pass for Van Dyke down the sideline to a wide open Will Mallory for 57 yards:

After that, Pitt's defense continued to struggle with missed tackles throughout the game.  

"Crappy tackling on some of their routes," Narduzzi said when asked what went wrong with his defense. "We didn't make plays. Again, give them credit. They've got some good skill guys out there, and we didn't make plays on the edge making tackles. Just gave them too many yards there. The fake reverse, Mallory wheeled out and we didn't cover that one early, but just some little things like that, and we'll look at the tape and evaluate."

Pitt's tackling was noticeably bad, and led to Miami's offensive players recording 291 yards-after-catch of the team's 426 total passing yards. That means 68.3 percent of the passing yards Pitt allowed came after a Miami receiver caught the ball, compared to just 49.7 percent of Pitt's 519 passing yards coming after the catch.

"All of us linebackers were talking about (the missed tackles," Petrishen said after the game. "We all felt the same way about it. There's no sign as to what leads to that because we can only do so many live periods in practice throughout the week. You really just find out on Saturday's what's that like. We work on playing thud in practice and work on wrapping up, but it snowballed on us today. We got frustrated pretty quickly and when they got out on a quick lead, every missed tackle got worse."

The defense had a bad game, giving up 490 yards of total offense and getting gashed by a young quarterback. But it did come up with a few stops to give Pitt's offense chances to either tie the game or take the lead. The problem was Pitt's offense just couldn't turn up the scoring on the five drives the Panthers had the ball while being down a touchdown or less. Only one of those drives resulted in a field goal, while three others resulted in punts and another in a late fourth quarter interception.

Kenny Pickett had a record-setting day but also made untimely mistakes after receiving national praise this week for his stellar play. He finished completing 39 of 55 passes for a single-game Pitt record of 519 passing yards and three touchdowns with two interceptions. 

That was the first time in Pitt history a quarterback threw for more than 500 yards. He now has 11,492 total yards of offense, also most in program history, passing Alex Van Pelt's 11,148. He also now has 84 career touchdowns, passing Dan Marino's former program record of 83.

It was a performance with big numbers and Pickett was definitely Pitt's best player on the field, as he has been all season, but his two interceptions came at costly times. While down seven, Pickett didn't see Jordan Addison wide open and streaking for the end zone and floated a pass to Taysir Mack that had too much air on it and got intercepted by Tyrique Stevenson. That interception gave Miami a short field and setup its only touchdown of the second quarter and put Miami up 31-17 at the half.

The second interception came at an even worse time, as Pitt's defense made fourth quarter stand with a Petrishen interception and Pitt was driving at Miami's 31, down 38-34 with 4:07 left in the game. Pickett had Addison wide open at the the 5-yard-line, but threw it behind him and was intercepted by James Williams.

But between Pickett and Addison, it was less of a miss and more of a miscommunication.

"We just had a miscommunication on the route reads," Pickett said when asked of his second interception. "It's something I'll have to go watch with Jordan and we'll go fix."

"I'll say the same thing, it was a miscommunication," Addison concurred on the play. "I feel like I could've turned my head sooner to see the ball. But we'll get it fixed."

The mistake between Pickett and Addison, who finished with eight catches for 145 yards, was the last chance Pitt's offense had in the game. Miami got the ball at its own 2-yard-line, and on its next play gave the ball to Jaylan Knighton who was stuffed inside of Pitt's end zone. It appeared to be a safety, but the ACC officials ruled that he got the ball completely out of the end zone and upheld the call upon review.

The safety would've given Pickett and Pitt's offense the ball back at 38-36 with 3:43 left in the game. You could tell in Narduzzi's postgame press conference that he was frustrated with the officials, not only with the safety call, but also with how the game was officiated. He gave responses of "next question" when asked about the safety, and "no comment" when asked about the officials.

Pitt finished with nine penalties for 102 yards compared to Miami's eight penalties for 72 yards. Two of Pitt's penalties came on roughing the passer calls where a Panthers' pass rusher shoved Van Dyke after a pass was thrown, calls that Petrishen said led to Pitt's pass rushers "slowing down" their aggression because they were worried about getting more roughing penalties.

"I felt like we would get the ball back," Addison said when asked if he thought Pitt wouldn't get a chance after its final interception. "We just kept our heads high and waited for our opportunity."

The drive would come down to a third down play when Van Dyke hit Mallory for a short pass that would go beyond the line to gain until Hill forced a fumble that would roll out of bounds short of the first down. But on instant replay, the officials re-spotted the ball to give Miami a first down, which allowed the Hurricanes to take knees and run out the clock.

The loss drops Pitt to 6-2 overall and 3-1 in the ACC. That's still good to hold onto the lead in the ACC Coastal for a week, but it makes Pitt's games against North Carolina (3-3 in ACC) and Virginia (4-2 in ACC) that much more important in November, both who are nipping at Pitt's heels in the ACC standings and have evening games Saturday that could further their efforts to win the division.

• Narduzzi said on Monday that if Pitt came out in this game and overlooked Miami that his team would be "knuckleheads." I thought about making that part of the headline for this game if Pitt lost, but watching this game I did not get the sense Pitt overlooked anything when it came to Miami.

"Yeah, I think it's an on-the-field situation," Narduzzi said when I asked him about his comments and whether the loss was about preparation or in-the-moment execution. "I think it's a make-a-play situation. That's what it is. They were prepared. They were locked in. Our Friday walk-through guys were loud. I'm down at the other end of the field and I'm hearing our guys communicate, talk. Our guys were prepared. You can't prepare for everything that you don't know is coming, but our guys were locked in. I felt like we knew a lot of things that were going on. They made a few more plays than we did."

Narduzzi's players backed him up on that.

"We had a great week of practice," Pickett said. "That's just about us executing. Need to finish in the end zone."

"I wouldn't say they caught us off-guard," Addison said. "But they did a great job starting fast. That's all that really was."

Despite the loss being disappointing, this was less about Pitt overlooking anything with Miami and more about a young four-star recruit picking at the weaknesses Pitt has shown all season long. 

"After the Western Michigan game, we definitely made some schematic changes that helped us," Petrishen said. "We have to look at the film to see if there are glaring schematic issues for the defense. We hope there weren't any mistakes like that and it was more about execution that we can just correct moving forward."

Pitt did look like it made some adjustments mid-game that slowed up Miami after its three consecutive touchdowns to open the game, but it just doesn't seem like Narduzzi's defense with Randy Bates can do enough to keep Pitt's safeties from their own mistakes on the back end. Hill and Erick Hallett II have both been assets to the teams in their biggest wins, but also major struggling points in their two losses.

Hallett looked late on several throws deep down the field.

"He's been really good," Narduzzi said of Hallett. "I'm not going to talk about winning performance or losing or average or whatever it is. We'll evaluate it and look at it, but again, they've got some good speed. Certainly didn't like some of the things I saw out there. Sometimes just kind of following our linebacker on some of those 'now' routes. We'll look at it. But it takes 11. It ain't just one guy."

Narduzzi's right, because it's about Pitt's pass defense that can't stop the bleeding against offenses with effective pocket passers like Eleby and Van Dyke. That's an issue Pitt has to find a way to at least mitigate in its final four regular season games if it hopes to win the ACC Coastal, especially with North Carolina's Sam Howell and Virginia's Brennan Armstrong as two major arms still on the schedule.

• Pitt will most likely fall in the rankings steeply as well, and may even be unranked. But the rankings aren't as much of a concern as Pitt's finishing strong to win the division.

"Losing is always tough," Addison. "But we've had a tough loss before. We look forward to just coming in tomorrow to watch film and get ready for next week."

Pickett called a team meeting the day after the Western Michigan loss to address the team and push the players to not allow another week of preparation like they did against the Broncos in Sept. But the message now might need to be more about Pitt's chances to get the ACC Championship Game still being alive and how the Panthers can't allow this loss to snowball.

"Our main goal's a championship," Pickett said. "That's still on the table for us and it's the fourth quarter of the season. We have to get ready to go down there and beat Duke. It's the 24-hour rule, same as every game. After wins and losses, we shake it off and bounce back. We'll get back on the practice field, back in meetings and bring our best effort to Duke."

Next week, Pitt gets Duke, which is 3-5 overall and 0-4 in the ACC. It's definitely a chance to rebound and get back into the win column, but the Panthers have to avoid getting in their own heads about this loss and allowing what would be a crippling defeat next week. 

Last year, Pitt's last-second loss to N.C. State was its first of the season and snowballed into a four-game losing streak that wrecked the season. Pitt responded to its first loss of the season with a four-game win streak after Western Michigan, and will need the same response after this loss if it hopes to win its second ACC Coastal title in the last four years.

• Mack left the game late in the first half with an apparent shoulder injury that left him sidelined with his left arm in a sling for the rest of the game. He finished with five receptions for 92 yards all in the first half before his injury. Addison and Israel Abanikanda were Pitt's two main players injured after last week with both being in concussion protocol, but both returned to start in this game and finished healthy.

Jared Wayne took most Mack's reps afterwards, catching six passes for 78 yards and a touchdown.