As Notre Dame has attempted to diversify its portfolio with scheduling in recent years the rivalry with Pitt, like a few others, has taken a back seat. This Saturday, the Panthers return to South Bend for the first time since 2012 and this will be only the second meeting in the series over the last 5 seasons.
Note: Another 2:30 eastern start this weekend!
Pitt (+21) at Notre Dame
Notre Dame Stadium
South Bend, Indiana
Date: Saturday, October 13, 2018
Time: 2:30 PM ET
TV: NBC
Series: 47-21-1 Notre Dame
Fourth-year head coach Pat Narduzzi might be on the hot seat in another era but not today. His victories over #5 Penn State and #3 Clemson in 2016 and #13 Miami last season have apparently given him a lot of rope on campus. Despite a 5-7 season in 2017 he was rewarded with a contract extension through the 2024(!!) season.
Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke has been on the job about 18 months, hired Jason Capel away from Duke for basketball, initiated facility upgrades, picked up her own 6-year extension back in April but I don’t know how well this extension for Narduzzi is going to look for posterity.
3 Pre-Game Topics
Giant Killer Panthers
The aforementioned upsets by Pitt in the last 2 seasons will inevitably get a lot of air time during Saturday’s broadcast. It’s actually pretty impressive! However, the trend in the other contests for Pitt isn’t all that encouraging. Since Narduzzi’s first full recruiting haul he’s signed the 30th, then 37th, then 46th nationally ranked classes and the talent drain is beginning to eat away at results on the field.
While those 3 ranked wins are part of the resume so are Pitt’s 12 losses to ranked teams under Narduzzi. The first 6 came by an average defeat of 8.3 points while the latest 6 losses have come by an average margin of 26.1 points. Again, that’s a scary trend.
Road to Recovery
The real question is whether Pitt is actually pretty bad or kind of decent and still finding their way in 2018. Football Outsiders is leaning towards the former with a No. 73 S&P+ ranking which is just worse than the likes of Baylor, Florida State, and Nebraska this season.
An upset win last week over Syracuse moved the needle back to Pitt possibly being closer to decent. They were able to lean on a strong ground game (265 yards) and out-gain a frisky Orange offense.
Opening the Door to Blowouts
The modern history of the Pitt-Notre Dame series has been filled with close and frustrating games for Irish fans. Besides the 2005 surprise opening to the Weis era and the 2015 most recent meeting (a game not nearly as close as the final 12-point victory) it’s largely been super close and tight games between these rivals this century.
But it hasn’t always been that way. This series has seen large stretches of dominance by the Irish beginning in 1943 through 1951 with a string of blowouts, as well as 1965 through 1973 with some brutally embarrassing wins. The latest stretch of woe for Pitt came during the Holtz era including a 35-point win in 1989, a 35-point win again in 1991, a 31-point win in 1992, a 44-point win in 1993, and a 54-point win 1996.
2 Key Opponents
RB Qadree Ollison
It feels like Ollison has been at Pitt forever. He originally took over for the injured James Conner back in 2015 as a redshirt freshman garnering all-ACC honors with a 1,121 yards. He then took a back seat (just 33 carries) the following year when Conner returned and then shared the running back duties in more of a backup role last year.
Ollison is sharing again with fellow senior Darrin Hall and they’re both playing very well while averaging over 6 yards per carry. Ollison is coming off 192 yards last week against Syracuse, his second most in a single game. Of note, he only totaled 32 yards on 12 carries back in 2015 against Notre Dame.
QB Kenny Pickett
This spot was originally slated for linebacker Quintin Wirginis who was lost for the season after a non-contact knee injury this week in practice. Narduzzi called him one of the best middle linebackers he’s ever been around and Wirginis was having an excellent year leading Pitt with 41 tackles, 7 tackles for loss, and 3 sacks.
The Panthers quarterback Kenny Pickett is a true sophomore coming off 1 start last year and 66 pass attempts. He held off former USC quarterback Ricky Town in the off-season and has been the unquestioned starter for 2018. He’s pretty athletic (prepare yourself for some frustrating quarterback keepers) but Pitt’s passing game just can’t get off the ground. Pickett is 4th to last among nationally rated quarterbacks and is carrying a dismal 6.2 YPA with 146.7 passing yards per game average.
1 Prediction
Narduzzi has been known to be quite prickly when it comes to Notre Dame, likely from his time at Michigan State, yet this week he was unusually frank and likable when talking about this Saturday’s game.
Narduzzi on Irish recruiters: “They walk into a high school, they get what they want.”
— Jerry DiPaola (@JDiPaola_Trib) October 8, 2018
Referencing the tweet above I like to imagine Narduzzi waiting in a high school office while Notre Dame coaches are given a catered spread of breakfast food in another room. He’s just in there seething with anger and pacing near the door waiting for someone to come talk to him.
I digress. In case it hasn’t been clear, Pitt has been mostly bad lately and lost 11 out of its last 19 games. While they may not be fully acknowledging it yet (6 more years of Narduzzi AFTER this season!) Pitt is firmly pointed in the direction of the ACC basement. Right now, only Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Louisville are rated worse in S&P+ within the league and the Panthers have already lost to the Tar Heels.
National Rankings
| STAT | IRISH | PITT |
|---|---|---|
| F/+ | 8 | 86 |
| S&P+ | 8 | 73 |
| S&P+ Offense | 32 | 55 |
| S&P+ Defense | 5 | 90 |
When you review those upsets of Penn State and Clemson–basically 2 games that sealed Narduzzi’s extension despite plenty of other losses–what sticks out is that Pitt scored a combined 85 points. Since the start of 2017 after NFL quarterback Nathan Peterman (shut up, I’m calling him this) left campus the offense has been really struggling averaging 24.6 points per game with 18 touchdown passes in 18 games.
It’s really difficult to imagine this Pitt offense scoring 30 or 40 points in an upset. They’d have to score that much presumably because the Panthers defense has really been quite bad and the magic that worked at Michigan State for Narduzzi has not carried over to the Steel City.
Case in point, as Narduzzi heads into his 45th game as head coach for Pitt he carries with him the burden of giving up at least 30 points in 23 games thus far.
I know the victory over Syracuse last week altered some of our perceptions on this Pitt team. I’m a little guilty myself because I pegged the upcoming game against the Orange in Yankee Stadium as being a sneaky tough one, although now I’m not so sure.
Nevertheless, I do think this game has the makings of a huge blowout. The spread is enormous for this rivalry and I’m usually the last one to flippantly say this but the Irish *should* easily cover. The FEI projection is calling for a 46-6 beat down and a near lock win. We have to factor in a little bit of a look ahead with the bye week calling the team’s name, a lack of enthusiasm and fatigue from the past 2 weeks, and likely some garbage time production from Pitt, though. I can see a tight-ish game for 20 minutes at the beginning and end with the Irish bombing in 4 touchdowns in the middle 20 minutes.
Welp, I did feel fine about this game before. But Eric had to go get confident, and now I have an uneasy feeling! Thanks Eric!
Everyone should worry deeply. 🙃
Saw a stat last weekend. Kelly had 7 20+ point wins over power 5 teams in his first 7 years. He’s had 8 in last year and half (including 4 ranked teams). That’s pretty awesome and a chance to add a couple more to that this year
Side note: couldn’t come up with the 7, had Purdue 2011, Miami and wake forest 2012, Michigan 2014!!!!!!!, Texas 2015
Had to look it up Maryland 2011 shamrock series and wake forest 2015. Utah was 28-3 but they weren’t a power 5 school yet. Seems like a lifetime ago. Needless to say straight bottom feeders on those previous blowouts
Navy 2011
AAC not Power 5
In 2011 they were Independent not sure if the people counting things like this would consider that power 5 or not….not really sure how that works, because we aren’t technically power 5 but generally grouped with them.
I think it’s because ND is “good”
I don’t think most would consider them Power 5, no. BYU is pretty much in the same limbo. Either could probably be in any Power 5 conference without being the worst team in it, but Power 5 is not commonly understood to include them.
Other independents currently include Army, Liberty, UMass, and New Mexico State. Definitely none would be considered Power 5; hell, Liberty and UMass are barely FBS.
I believe the power 5 conferences that mandate a power 5 non conference game only deem BYU and Nd as acceptable alternatives. I guess I would lump BYU and Nd in as power 5 schools
I can’t see giving up that much to Pitt. Ollison seems to be a decent back, and he may get a good run here or there, but unless we turn the ball over and give them short fields, I can’t see 4 scores for them. On the flip side, after two big weeks this one will be harder to get up for, so maybe we sleep walk a bit in the first half.
I think something like 48-17 for the good guys, with giving up a score or two early, but pulling away by the 2nd quarter.
This looks familiar: “He’s pretty athletic (prepare yourself for some frustrating quarterback keepers) but [ND/Pitt]’s passing game just can’t get off the ground”
I feel like I’ve read a million, “that would be so typical if we lose to Pitt” comments after the great start this year, but looking back at our recent trap game history, we’ve actually been pretty solid at avoiding losses.
2012: no losses
2013: losses to Mich, Oklahoma, Pitt, and Stanford. Pitt was a bad loss, the others were all top-20 teams.
2014: lost to FSU, then our season tumbled into a pit of despair so I don’t think any of those losses count as “traps”.
2015: losses to Clemson, Stanford, OSU, all marquee opponents
2016: we sucked so trap games didn’t exist
2017: losses to Georgia, Miami, Stanford, all top-20 teams
2018: no losses yet
Of course, we’ve had a ton of near-escapes against crappy teams in that time span, with 2012 Pitt probably being the canonical example in my head. But in terms of actually letting any of these trap games ruin our season, it just hasn’t happened recently, so I don’t understand some of the doom-and-gloom I see from the fanbase. It’s not pleasant eking out wins, but at least they are wins!
Northwestern 2014 might be the the evidence (even though the season was already “meh” at that point) but a million comedies of errors happened in that one. Throwing out all of 2016 is generous, yes there were extenuating circumstances but ND lost to a ton of teams that year that they had no business losing to. None were really “trap” games but it is fitting examples of losing games that should be won. I get it, easy to excuse a loss to Clemson or FSU or Georgia but not Duke or Navy.
Other than that, I generally do agree with your tone and conclusions. I guess it’s nature of being a modern Notre Dame fan to wait with dread for the bottom to fall out, but there’s no doubt this team really should steamroll everyone up to the USC game at this point.
Yeah, I was definitely a bit generous with the categorization, but I feel like there is a perception that whenever we win a big game, the other shoe will drop in the form of a random opponent like Pitt, and that hasn’t really been the case. 2013 Pitt was probably the closest thing, although that team wasn’t really destined for greatness at that point. I’d agree that Northwestern is the closest thing, but I had given up on that team after giving up a million points to ASU. And 2016 certainly had some letdowns, but starting the year off with the Texas loss really prevented any momentum from building into a big trap loss. Dread is natural, I just think we overstate our tendency to blow these games a bit.
This comment and reply thread is a great example of why I love this site. Paddy posts a thoughtful comment backed up by actual, you know, facts; hooks respectfully disagrees on some points but not in a mean-spirited way; Paddy responds with another good comment.
I love that there’s a community where people actually contribute intelligent thoughts without just trying to crap all over each other.
In the absence of marquee opponents, I think Kelly needs to really light the scoreboard on fire. There’s only one way you can impress the committee when you’re not playing teams with a pulse…you blow them out of the ***** water. Look at what Bama has done the first few weeks of the year. Their SOS means absolutely nothing because they’ve been straight murdering teams and dont even look like they’re TRYING to do it. I want to see Kelly take the same mindset. Never let off the gas and drop 60 on this garbage team
Giving the Notre Dame Coaches Whatever They Want: A Play
Open Scene with Pat Narduzzi sitting in Pittsburgh area high school football coach’s office.
Narduzzi: So coach like I was saying, Jamal Johnson is right for our program and really flourish at Pitt and we’d really apprecia–
[Phone rings]
HS Coach: Ooh that’s a 574 area code [Holding up one finger in Narduzzi’s face and picking up phone with other hand]. Is this Coach Elston?! COACH! How the heck are you?! Me, no nothing important I can talk … definitely not talking to anyone important, what’s up? OMG you’re in Pittsburgh? Around the corner? Yeah, come on in. For you? I’ll free myself up.
[Annoyingly mouths “well” to Narduzzi; begins shooing Narduzzi out with hands].
Yeah hey why don’t I order a pie and we can watch some film? Sounds great buddy can’t wait!
[Dejected Narduzzi sad walks out dejectedly].
Narduzzi: [To self, sadly; tearing up] They just walk in and get what they want….
*Slow fade out and open into a scene at the local Allegheny HS parking lot*
[An expensive 4-door sedan pulls up in the dirt lot and comes to a stop. Narduzzi looks over the top of his 1998 Saturn Coupe to see who’s just arrived]
Narduzzi: Well, if it isn’t ol’ Mike Elston.
Elston glances over and squints: Oh hey….buddy. How have you been? What’s going on in your life lately?
Narduzzi: Oh you know, just hittin the old recruiting trail, trying to see if we cant get a few upper tier athletes from the area.
Elston: Oh really? Same here, say you wouldn’t happen to be going after McQueen here, would you? Would hate to have to go into a battle with an old buddy like YOU.
Narduzzi, knowing that’s exactly who he came for: No…no really just catching up with Coach here trying to see if he had some insight onto their JV team. We probably wont pick up anyone this season, but maybe next year.
Elston: Well that’s good. Hey bud, I hate to just run off. It’s been great running into you again but I gotta get in there and meet this kid. They say he could be the next Tim Brown.
Narduzzi: Well good luck coach.
[Elston turns to go inside the fieldhouse]
Elston, to himself: Who the _____ WAS that?
Narduzzi, to himself: ____ prick, Elston. Just shows up unnanounced and just gets whatever he wants…
Both of these are delightful. Thank you.
notre dame football fan fiction FTW
Would you two prefer to be known as the Pasek & Paul or Miranda & Lacamoire of OFD?
::kiwifan interjects to suggest Gilbert & Sullivan::
(I don’t know any playwright duos)
I thought Pasek was the guy that got the bacteria out of milk. Must have been a Renaissance guy. Who knew?
Pasteur – I assumed you’d fondly remember the day pasteurized milk came out
Yes, my uncle Luis was very successful in the end. After he gave up the cognac.
Truly can’t believe my Broadway allusions didn’t create more discussion
Honestly–and I’m sure you won’t be able to believe this–I’ve never published a play before. It’s true. Impossible to believe but true. Real life is stranger than fiction, right? So anyway I really don’t know anything about Broadway or those people you mentioned. They are people right? Anyway that said, I expect this my first play to be on Broadway soon.
I’d maybe do some previews in Toledo or Spokane before heading for the Great White Way
If you don’t believe in me stay the hell out of my way drlck.
I’m now imaging Elston walking onto campus and the HS staff singing about the Lord High Executioner, while Narduzzi cowers in fear.
Eric, pull it together! You’re making me pick Pitt (maybe half our team has the flu, a la BC 2011 or Pitt 2012) to enable the reverse jinx.
65-9, mark it!
–I bet the over at 53.5 and I approve this message.
(Paid for by the hooks orpik gambling account)
Irish 45, Panthers 16. Panthers rack up a few time killing drives with their running game that end in field goals.
Does anyone know if Book threw deep successfully in high school? Announcers last week said he threw over 3,000 yards as a senior, wonder how much of that was deep balls. I’d feel better if he showed that in hs.
Here’s his senior highlight reel. He hits some pretty good deep balls in it – first one is at the 1:24 mark.
http://www.hudl.com/video/3/2598473/5721c9000428ae20e4c322ad
I think his problem in Blacksburg was more about being amped and/or not having practiced deep throws heavily in a while. I’m guessing that as the “blue zone” and likely two-minute QB, the staff had him practicing mostly short and intermediate stuff. He probably just needs some more reps. Pitt’s secondary is pretty suspect too, so he should have some opportunities this week.
yeah let’s everyone chillax. i think we should be heartened that his arm is a lot more lively than we thought it was. homeboy can’t miss on the short and intermediate stuff. why would he not be able to improve on the deep stuff? Deep balls and Cole Kmet. Those are the two sleeping giants in this offense. When they start to hit, look out brother. And they will. Am I the only one that feels like Kmet is more ready for primetime than Mack at TE. I mean he just feels like he is so much more ready to make actual big TE plays, versus Mack who’s just more of a flex/short range possession guy who catches first downs (to his credit), but never really breaks tackles or wins jump balls, and occasionally gets schemed wide open.
@I think it might have been the thin air in Blacksburg.@
Too funny.
I agree, Kmart over Mack. For such a big, athletic guy, Mack seems to go down pretty easily.
Not Kmart, Kmet. F’ing autofill.
Thanks Brendan. Good to see.
Our 2016 grades at QB are fun to look back at now.
https://www.onefootdown.com/2016/2/5/10918180/2016-football-recruiting-qb-and-rb-review
I was thinking about this article recently. Many writers at the time were describing Book as a permanent back up. You guys were much higher on him than many.
Thanks for this flashback. They are fun and good to read. You pretty much nailed it.
Love their throwbacks and have heard they’re probably going to adopt those jerseys at the end of the year.
IIRC ND once sported similar colors, no?
A little bit in the early 80’s, although Pitt’s current throwbacks are much, much brighter than what they wore back in the day.
