Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jason Mackey: Pitt has all the ingredients for a winning team — including a quarterback

I'll let you read what he says but to me the ingredient that they have is magic.

...an incredible victory that, for me anyway, triggered a different kind of curiosity.

Are these Panthers for real? They might be. At minimum, they're an entertaining group...

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[The win over WVU] It was impressive, honestly.

What Pitt’s victory showed me, more than anything, was that there’s belief developing here — in each other, in Holstein, in the offensive game plan and the defense’s ability to figure out when necessary.

How else to explain what we saw after West Virginia snagged a 34-24 lead with 4:55 left in the fourth quarter?

[Belief when 96.7% of the evidence is that you shouldn't believe is pretty close to what religious belief is, isn't it? Your belief is all but resting on divine intervention.]

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The plot here felt like it was straight out of a movie, honestly.At one point in the fourth quarter, the Mountaineers had 161 yards to just four for Pitt, who ran a whopping eight plays in the third quarter. Pitt went three-and-out on its first drive of the fourth quarter before the magic started.

[Oh, he DID say it. Honest to the deity I had not seen that before.]

Back-to-back holding penalties created first and 30. Yes. First. And. Thirty. There was an incompletion before Holstein targeted wide receiver Daejon Reynolds … for the first time all year on second down.

Because, of course he did.

[Jason is an entertaing writer.]

The result was a ridiculous 40-yard touchdown, easily the play of the game and a sequence that included some fairly egregious pass interference, too.

"I threw it up there," Holstein recalled. "I thought it was [defensive] holding at first and thought, 'Hey, at least we'll get the penalty.'

"But then I saw him come down with it, and I was like, 'Hell yeah. I appreciate that Dae-Dae. Thanks for helping me out.' ...

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"I wouldn't say I put the team on my back," Holstein said about his runs. "I made plays that were there to make. But I do have to disagree, those sacks should not count against my rushing yards. Without those, I would have, like, 88 rushing yards, which would've been great. College football has to change that real quick. ..."

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[Eli is a loose, fun cat to be around, it seems.]

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"The last two drives, we needed to get our offense the football back," Brandon George said. "I told the guys, 'It’s our game, no matter what. I don’t care what the score is. Don’t even look at the scoreboard. Get the football back, and we’re gonna be great.' "

“Every week it’s something a little bit different,” Narduzzi added. “It’s finding a way to win. They’re blue vase-ing it.”

[Narduzzi has a blue vase. I forget the progeny. It's some talisman. Which is a magical thing.]

And while we could be in danger of getting out too far ahead of our skis, it shouldn’t be hard to agree on this: The 2024 Pitt Panthers are a heck of a lot better than anybody expected.

[Yeah. Judge, I stipulate to counsel Mackey's last statement.]

They’re certainly exciting, with back-to-back comeback wins, one more dramatic and improbable than the next.

They have a gamebreaker at tailback in Desmond Reid, who came into this one leading the country in all-purpose yards. What impressed me Saturday was that the Mountaineers took Reid away … and that was OK. Pitt survived.

[They do, I said it last week. They have two stars on offense, Holstein and Reid. And WVU didn't let Reid beat them--and still got beat. That to me is magic. Two stars is better than one or none obviously, but football offense is ELEVEN guys. Tyoo isn't much! Yet I am getting that sense of magic that if next week Eli gets shut down, Desmond, or some other guy, Daejon Reynolds or the blue vase will step up.]

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..."That was a happy locker room after the game.”--Head Cat Pat Narduzzi