Drake Maye threw for just under 300 yards and scored three touchdowns against the Pitt defense, and it still kind of felt like the Panthers got off easy.
That’s what happens when a quarterback accounts for over 400 yards and five touchdowns the season before, I guess. Pitt schemed up a plan to slow Maye, hit him a few times and held him under 300 yards through the air, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
“We brought some of our favorite pressures that we could have got home, but he is so fast with getting the ball out of his hands,” Pat Narduzzi said Monday at his weekly news conference. “It’s like — there’s some quarterbacks that are like really slow getting it out of their hand and they freeze and don’t know what to do. This dude doesn’t freeze; this guy can make a shot, and he’s going to make a heck of an NFL quarterback just because he can see it.”
Maye completed 22-of-30 pass attempts against Pitt, taking just about 2.6 seconds after the snap to get the ball out of his hand on average, and he was still dragged down by three recorded drops by the UNC wideouts. It was a masterclass.
Pitt blitzed just under 40% of Maye’s 38 drop backs, and that was intentional with the speed and precision of Maye’s play.
“It didn’t affect him Saturday, I can tell you that,” Pat Narduzzi said Monday at his weekly news conference. “If we brought six, that dude was getting the ball out and our guys were running free and turning around, looking at where the ball is being thrown. Like, he got it out as fast as I’ve seen any quarterback ever get it out. He knew where to go with the ball. He was fast with it, and he was accurate.
“We kind of knew that going into the game. We went back and looked. So, we kind of cooled it on that, but when you did dial it up — we dialed it up a heck of a lot less than we did or would have done had we not known what we were dealing with. Maybe that’s why our coverage was so good.”
Pitt dialed back the blitzes, dropped back into more coverage packages and hoped to force Maye into making a mistake — he didn’t make one. But the Panthers managed to pressure him on just under 30% of his 38 dropbacks. And he completed 3-of-4 pass attempts for 69 yards and a touchdown under pressure.
Maye was too quick in getting the ball out, too elusive to drag down when given the opportunity and Pitt’s pass rush couldn’t hit home frequently enough.
Maye is likely the best quarterback that Pitt will face this season, although Florida State’s Jordan Travis, Notre Dame’s Sam Hartman and Duke’s Riley Leonard are all talented, and it’s not as if Pitt wasn’t able to get in Maye’s face.
|
Pressures |
Hurries |
QB Hits |
Sacks |
| Wofford |
18 |
10 |
4 |
4 |
| Cincinnati |
19 |
11 |
5 |
4 |
| West Virginia |
6 |
4 |
0 |
2 |
| North Carolina |
16 |
7 |
4 |
5 |
Pitt sits second in the ACC, tied for 11th in the NCAA, with 14 sacks this season. It may feel like there hasn’t been as much of an impact from the defensive line this season, and there is something to be said about that, but the Pitt pass rush is getting home.
Dayon Hayes leads Pitt with two sacks, and he has racked up 15 pressures, eight hurries and five quarterback hits, but the defensive line as a whole hasn’t really had anyone step up. It’s been a lot of work by committee.
Bam Brima and Nate Temple have 1.5 sacks between them, and Nahki Johnson has played just 35 snaps this season — only 14 in pass rushing situations — after a strong offseason.
The interior pressure also hasn’t been the same without Calijah Kancey, and no one should have expected otherwise, the elder four have been solid if nothing else. Sean FitzSimmons has spent most of the season injured, and Elliot Donald has received just 18 snaps.
It’s Samuel Okunlola, who has also played just 18 snaps this season (only 11 in pass rushing situations), who also has two sacks of his own. He’s about the extent of the youthful emergence.
But Narduzzi still feels pretty good about where Pitt sits, as a whole, on the pass rushing front through four games this season.
“I think it’s maybe better than I thought it was going to be based on who we lost,” Narduzzi said. “I don’t know how many sacks we got against Drake Maye last year, but it wasn’t five. Five sacks in a game was pretty good.
“I think two sacks the week before. I don’t know how many times (WVU quarterback Nicco Marchiol) passed it, but two out of 10 the week before, EJ told me, so that’s 20 percent sacks. If we got five out of how many times he passed it Saturday, it probably doesn’t equal to 20 percent, so you can only get as much pressure as they’re letting you, so I think that all plays into it. But again, you can’t compare numbers based on plays and all that. You just don’t know.”
Pitt has an opportunity to unleash its pass rushers against Virginia Tech this weekend, facing off with an offensive line that has allowed nine sacks (tied for the third-most in the ACC with the likes of the Panthers). And if there’s ever been a time for a breakout candidate to emerge, it’s now.
It could be the difference between Pitt taking the next step in getting after opposing quarterbacks or not.
