Vukovcan: Favorable Schedule Could Lead to Big-Time Pitt Success

To say expectations for the 2024 Pitt Panther football program have changed would be an understatement.

Coming off a 3-win season, most national writers and media outlets were forecasting Pitt to finish the season with four or five wins and in the bottom half of the ACC conference.

Considering where the program sits heading into Week 5, if those predictions end up happening, it would be a huge disappointment and total collapse for Pat Narduzzi’s program.

As Pitt prepares to start ACC action, the Panthers sit with a 4-0 record and are one of just 19 undefeated teams left in the country. With this impressive start, not surprisingly, the Panthers are receiving national attention.

When the latest national polls were released on Sunday, Pitt was ranked No. 27 in both the AP Top 25 and the USA Today/Coaches Poll. That means, in all likelihood, if Pitt is able to go on the road and defeat North Carolina, there’s a good chance they’ll find themselves ranked next Sunday. Just this morning, veteran writer Brett McMurphy came out with his weekly bowl projections and has Pitt taking on LSU in the Gator Bowl on Jan. 2.

The season starts with talk of a 4-win season and now we’re talking about the Gator Bowl.

With the talk of Pitt having another awful season in the rearview mirror, the expectations for the entire season have changed.

The question now is how will this Pitt team handle these expectations. How will they react and respond to being the hunted instead of the hunter?

The good news for Pitt and it’s something that I’ve thought worked to their advantage is that they’re going to have a favorable schedule the rest of the way. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy schedule, simply put, aside from the Clemson and SMU games, the opponents and game locations appear to be largely in Pitt’s favor.

Although Pitt has always struggled at North Carolina, Mack Brown’s team is a mess right now and it should be a high-scoring game that favors Pitt. Week 6 is a home game against California that Pitt should come out on top of. Following that, Pitt will host Syracuse in a Thursday night game. With quarterback Kyle McCord, this game will be difficult, however, the schedule makers have given Pitt an extra week to prepare for it as they’ll have another bye week.

After Syracuse, Pitt will travel to Dallas to take on a 4-1 SMU team and this will be their toughest opponent to date. In Week 9, the Panthers will host Virginia, where they’ll be the favorite. Then they’ll finish the season by hosting Clemson, going on the road to Louisville and finishing the season at Boston College.

I’m not going to give a game-by-game prediction, but I do think that Pitt has a very good chance to finish this season with a record of 9-3 and possibly an outside chance of 10 wins.

In order for this to happen, the biggest thing that needs to improve is the pass rush and play of the defensive line. This is a group that has a ton of talent and potential and the only thing that they’re missing is game experience.

Jimmy Scott, Sincere Edwards, Nahki Johnson, Isaiah Neal, Nick James, David Ojiegbe, Jahsear Whittington and Francis Brewu were all four-star recruits coming out of high school, so they have the ability. The only question now is how soon will some of these players turn their talent into on-field production and results.

The unexpected departures of Dayon Hayes, Samuel Okunlola and DeAndre Jules left defensive coordinator Randy Bates without a whole lot of experience. So instead of slowly working these young, talented players into the rotation, they’ve been thrown into the fire with immediate on-the-job experience.

Last season, some of the young Pitt linebackers, such as Kyle Louis and Rasheem Biles, received on-field experience, and now a year later, the duo is leading the Pitt defense.

Unfortunately for this young defensive line, they weren’t afforded that opportunity, but the future for some of these players is equally as bright.

The question is, how long will it take for some of these players to take the next step in their development?

If just a few of them can continue to progress and start to harass the opposing quarterback and help stop the opposition’s run games, this Pitt 2024 season can become very interesting.

By that I mean, Pitt fans could have the chance to make some unexpected travel plans at the end of the season that they weren’t counting on when the season opened against Kent State.