MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Enough is enough is enough.
It is time for a quarterback change at Pitt.
The Panthers will stagger into ACC play at 1-2 following another Phil Jurkovec mess and an uninspired overall effort in the 106th rendition of the Backyard Brawl Saturday evening at Milan Puskar Stadium, resulting in a 17-6 loss to West Virginia, a rivalry game that had all the life sucked out of it well before the waning minutes turned to seconds of a countdown to mercy.
This game returned with a thunderous re-entry in 2022 with a thriller in front of a record crowd at Acrisure Stadium. The 2023 rendition in front of 61,106 patrons in Morgantown on this Saturday -- for all of the electrifying fanfare that was associated with it -- just didn't have that same pizzazz. Pitt is now 62-41-3 all-time against the Mountaineers, and this 41st loss will rank as one of the most forgettable.
Narduzzi didn't want to point the finger at his quarterback as the reason for it, either.
But who is going to be the quarterback going forward? The answer cannot be Jurkovec, no matter how steadfast his coach is in defending his play over the course of the start of the season or how much resistance he shows in pointing the finger at his quarterback.
"You guys are fast and you want to pull the plug on somebody, and that's not how we do it," Pat Narduzzi said. "I'm a positive guy. Try to stay positive, and you start dumping people whether it's a corner or a tackle or a quarterback, it's not good for you. We'll look at the tape. It's never one person. I know you guys want to point the finger at one person. We all have a part in it. It starts with the game plan and we'll get it right."
Jurkovec was not made available to reporters after Saturday's game.
Regardless of what his word may or may not have been after Saturday's showing, the honeymoon and the feel-good vibe of the Pine-Richland kid coming home to champion his home school is dead in the water.
It was Jurkovec's eight completions in 20 attempts for 81 yards and three floated interceptions on this Saturday that brought more boo birds, more jeers, and more questions about why No. 5 remained under center when it was clear the offense was not going to get anything accomplished with him on the field. In his last two games as a Panther, Jurkovec has completed 18 of 52 passes for 260 yards, three touchdowns, and three interceptions for an 84.12 rating.
On the one day where Pitt's offense needed to show something -- anything -- it couldn't.
"The difference in the game is turnovers," Narduzzi said. "They made some plays on the ball, we didn't ... It's hard to win a football game when you kick two field goals and don't score a touchdown. ... Too many penalties I guess, as well. We'll look at the tape. We'll see more when we watch the tape, but overall we're not happy."
This is going without hyperbole: The Jurkovec situation, in a matter of weeks, has become on-par if not worse than the Kedon Slovis situation from a pure football standpoint. This is slowly turning into a feel of Narduzzi and Frank Cignetti Jr. looking for a rebound after a failed relationship with a transfer portal quarterback, only for that rebound to offer worse for them. Slovis, while he was not the leader Pitt envisioned him being over the course of the 2022 season, at least got Pitt through the Backyard Brawl and kept a close game against a top-ranked Tennessee team at the beginning of last season before his troubles began.
The Jurkovec experiment is hardly off the ground, and it is now prone to a combustion.
It is crystal clear that the new fling has to be dumped sooner rather than later as Pitt heads into a top 25 matchup next week. Christian Veilleux stood on the sideline for about 30 game minutes too long on Saturday, grasping his collar while donning a red Pitt baseball cap as the backup quarterback often does, as Jurkovec struggled to, as he did against Cincinnati, generate any semblance of an offensive flow.
But ...
"We've got a lot of confidence in Christian, we've got a lot of confidence in Nate Yarnell, as well. Got a lot of confidence," Narduzzi said.
Kenny Pickett is not walking back through that right-side door on the South Side, and this is not coming from the department of hot takes, either. This is coming directly from the people who buy the tickets and pay their earned dollars to support the program directly. The Pitt faithful who made the trek down I-79 authored that by -- once again -- serenading the Pitt quarterback with boo's at more than one point in the game, just one week after that same quarterback said, to quote it directly: “I think if you’re a grown-ass man booing in that stadium then you’ve got to look at things yourself. I think that’s pathetic. But we didn’t play well enough. We’re going to be better.”
Put it back into this perspective: On the road, against the arch-rival, it was the road fans who booed their starting quarterback. Audibly. By a lot of grown-ass men and women.
Oh, and from those observing from afar, just like in our every-game live game file.
I pulled some of those comments from The Asylum:
• carmen: "I think Kenny’s 2021 masterpiece season has impacted Pat like a guy who out of nowhere has a 40 homer season. He’s swinging for the fences trying to catch lightning in the portal and has now struck out twice in a row."
• Icedog97: "I would never have thought he could be worse than Slovis. Right now I wish we had Slovis"
• efejr: "Is Tino (Sunseri) around to bail us out?"
• carl.wonders: "This is the worst QB play I can remember since Kevan Smith."
As for Narduzzi ...
"We've got a lot of faith in Phil," he said. "You've got to give defenses credit. Took the opening drive down to the three-yard line and you've got to score a touchdown, and we don't."
Pitt was no better than last Saturday on this Saturday. Pitt was not remotely close to being better. College football's governing body legalized the forward pass in 1906 and, 117 years later, Jurkovec has struggled to accomplish it on a remotely consistent basis through three games in his Pitt career that suddenly will kick up several notches with conference play beginning in one week's time.
"We'll watch the tape," Narduzzi said. "We'll watch the tape. I thought we protected him better today than we did the other day. We'll look at the tape. I'll have to watch the tape to see exactly what we've got to do. I thought the performance was better."
And, Narduzzi backed Jurkovec up as his starter for next week, for now.
"I'm going to watch the tape, but I believe so, yes," Narduzzi said.
The sixth-year senior was out-dueled by West Virginia redshirt freshman backup quarterback Nicco Marchiol, who entered the game after seven plays from scrimmage once Garrett Greene left the game with an injury. Marchiol didn't have to do much in his process of completing 6 of 9 passes for 60 yards and a touchdown, because CJ Donaldson was able to gash the Panthers' run defense for 102 yards on 18 carries with a touchdown.
Jurkovec became the first Pitt quarterback to finish with fewer than 100 yards passing since Pickett threw for 8 yards in the 2018 ACC Championship game.
But, at least Jurkovec kept it together in this game, according to his center.
"His attitude was great," Jake Kradel said. "He's a leader. Phil's a natural leader, and he didn't waver one bit. That's the thing I love about him. He's from Pittsburgh, he's gritty, he's not going to let any crowd get in his head. He played hard, and at the end of the day we've got to play hard for him."
Effort is not the question in the slightest. This is an issue of skill.
Things only compounded when it became more evident that Jurkovec was going to give Pitt absolutely zero chance to win on Saturday. It is also evident that Jurkovec does not give Pitt its best chance to win going forward. The offense lost interest in playing with and for this quarterback. The coach feels on the contrary, and that is going to be a conflicting factor going forward until change is made.
Aside from the quarterback's play, the offense once again had zero flow to it despite improved play from the Panthers' offensive line. Rodney Hammond touched the ball seven times for 40 yards on Pitt's first drive of the game, and had three carries for minus-1 yard in the rest of the half. In all, Hammond carried the ball 14 times for 49 yards. Pitt tallied 211 yards of offense, converted 4 of 13 third-down chances, possessed the ball for just shy of 27 minutes, and committed nine penalties.
GETTY
West Virginia's Kole Taylor eludes Pitt's A.J. Woods and Donovan McMillon for a 7-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter Saturday night in Morgantown, W.Va.
THE ESSENTIALS
• Box score
• Live file
• Team feed
• Top 25 scores
• Schedule
• ACC standings
• Statistics
THE HIGHLIGHTS
THE INJURIES
• Out for the season: G Ryan Jacoby (leg).
• Week-to-week: G B.J. Williams (undisclosed).
THE SCHEDULE
Pitt's schedule within the ACC begins Saturday when Heisman Trophy favorite Drake Maye and No. 20 North Carolina visit Acrisure Stadium for an 8 p.m. kickoff. I will have you covered from the North Shore.
THE CONTENT
• Visit the Pitt team page for more from Milan Puskar Stadium.
