Panthers find imperfection can be painful but vow, 'We will correct it'

DALLAS -- If the perfect Pitt football team wanted to prove it deserved being mentioned among the best teams in the NCAA, then the Saturday night matchup here against No. 20 SMU, the No. 18 Panthers' first ranked opponent, presented the perfect opportunity.

They had the chance to live up to their slogan for the year: "Prove it." 

And then, they managed the complete opposite in a 48-25 mauling by the Mustangs at Gerald J. Ford Stadium.

"That was not the football game we all expected," Pat Narduzzi said afterward.

That might be putting it lightly:

• The NCAA's sixth-highest scoring offense looked choppy and uncreative, as the Panthers rushed for 103 yards with 82 of those in the second half after the game was out of hand. Eli Holstein turned the ball over twice and completed 29 of 47 pass attempts for 248 yards and an interception.

• The NCAA's ninth-ranked defense missed several tackles, created no turnovers and allowed the Mustangs 467 yards of total offense, including 161 yards and four touchdowns on the ground.

• Even the near-pristine special teams sagged. Ben Sauls missed his first field goal attempt of the year -- which was a sign of the way the game was going -- and Cam Junko averaged 31.2 yards per punt after averaging 44.9 before this. 

Anything that could go wrong, did.

"Regardless of offense, defense, special teams -- we didn't punt the ball well when we had to punt it, we had a 31-yard average, that's not where we've been, that's not what we've done -- so it snowballed a little bit," Narduzzi said. "But it starts with me. I gotta get our guys better prepared to get a W."

Those mistakes started on SMU's first drive as Kevin Jennings hit Key'Shawn Smith down the left sideline:

Then, there was this missed tackle on Matthew Hibner:

And soon after:

In the play above, the Panthers seemed to have Roderick Daniels Jr. cornered on two or three occasions, but it didn't matter.

"For whatever reason, it was one of those games," Narduzzi said. "We haven't tackled that bad. I mean, from the second play of the game down our sideline and we think he's down ... we gotta finish. We didn't do a good job finishing the plays today."

And it's not like Pitt wasn't in a position to make those plays. Brandon Geroge said so himself. But that didn't matter, either.

"We were definitely in position to make a lot of those plays. It just comes down to execution, wrapping up, running our feet," George said. "That's a practice habit thing, and we will correct it."

It didn't stop there. While Jennings passed for 306 yards and two touchdowns, the Mustangs run game gashed the Pitt defense all night long. Brashard Smith rushed for 161 yards and two touchdowns, including this 71-yard sprint to the end zone where he went completely untouched.

"They are a very good football team, but we gave them a lot of stuff that we just shouldn't have given them at the end of the day," George said.

On top of their defensive woes, the offense continued to struggle and looked as bad as it has since its outing against Cal on Oct. 12.

Holstein was consistently forced out of the pocket as SMU brought pressure all night long. There were multiple occasions where he took his eyes off his receivers downfield because he was worried about the pass rush. That compounded into the offense stalling out as half of Pitt's drives lasted six plays or less.

The redshirt freshman was also sacked three times, had the ball stripped while trying to escape a broken down pocket on a third and 14 late in the second quarter and was picked off at the goal line on a pass to Desmond Reid that bounced off his hands.

Branson Taylor's presence on the left side of the offensive line has also been missed since he went down with a season-ending knee injury. The unit has struggled to protect Holstein ever since.

"We gotta protect him better, whatever it is, whether we gotta put six guys in there, max protect, we gotta find a way to protect him," Narduzzi said. "We gotta get the ball out, then we gotta catch the ball. I think we probably had more drops today than the previous seven games combined. We gotta make plays."

After battling through in-game adversity on multiple occasions this season, Pitt will now have to find a way to rebound. They came into Saturday on a high as they were amid their best start in over 40 years. But Narduzzi said that handling that type of success is sometimes difficult.

"It's one game ... it's hard to win every week, it's hard to be on every week and maybe as a team and as a staff, we didn't handle success," Narduzzi said. "I always say the hardest thing is to handle success. Our guys handled adversity, and this is adversity and our guys will bounce back, you can see it in the locker room."

With the way that both George and Gavin Bartholomew, two of Pitt's four captains, handled their postgame press conferences, it was easy to see they were ready to get right back to work.

George said: "I need to go into practice with a better mindset, I need to make sure guys are on the same page, guys are executing well, that goes for everybody with a 'C' on our chest. We need to make sure everything is in tip-top shape going forward. I think we allowed too much stuff to slip. God has a funny way of humbling everybody. Now, we know what's going on." 

We will see how that plays out next Saturday against Virginia at Acrisure Stadium.

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