It is almost unthinkable that Pitt lost a shootout to Miami at Heinz Field on Saturday given the way both teams are built and the experience disparity between the two quarterbacks. Kenny Pickett is a fifth-year senior and one of the most experienced and best quarterbacks in the country. Miami’s Tyler Van Dyke is a redshirt freshman and he was making his fourth career start.
I thought there was no doubt that Pickett’s experience and the home field would give the Panthers a huge edge on the Hurricanes considering Van Dyke would likely not be ready for a stage this big.
So much for that theory and so much for Pitt’s playoff pipe dreams. It might even be so much for Pickett’s Heisman dreams, which have slipped a little as that’s the kind of interception that makes the difference between winning and losing a game.
It is hard to blame Pickett for Pitt’s two losses, though, considering he threw for a combined 901 yards a nine touchdowns in those two games. Still, he made two mistakes while Van Dyke only made one and that was one of the main differences in Saturday’s game.
“They made one more play than we did. I thought they played hard,” Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi said. “We lost the turnover margin by one, minus 1, probably the difference in the game. We only had one turnover. Tyler (Van Dyke) made that because I told you he was a good football player, could throw it well.”
Experience is apparently overrated or maybe this Van Dyke kid is just pretty special. Based on what we witnessed Saturday, I am going with the latter as I thought there was no way a freshman was coming in to Heinz Field and outgunning Pickett.
I assumed if Miami won, it would be with a controlled running game that didn’t ask Van Dyke to do too much and a defense that was opportunistic and made a few big plays.
That wasn’t the case at all as Miami put the ball in Van Dyke’s hands, asked him to match Pickett throw for throw and waltzed out of Heinz Field with a huge victory. I will say this — Miami’s remaining opponents better get the Hurricanes this year because that kid looks like he is the real deal and will be a real pain in the neck to deal with for the next three seasons.
Again, if a shootout unfolded, which it did, it just wasn’t supposed to go this way, it really wasn’t.
Of course, maybe it didn’t matter how the game played out because Miami owns Pitt when it comes to these head-to-head matchups. The Hurricanes have won four in a row, 14 of the past 16 and 22 of the past 25 games in the series.
Ironically, the last time Pitt beat Miami was in 2017 when the Panthers upset the second-ranked Hurricanes, 24-14. The quarterback for Pitt that day was a freshman named, well, Kenny Pickett. That seems like a long, long time ago, though, and in this game, his experience was supposed to give the Panthers an edge.
This game actually seemed like the proper script was going to play out when Van Dyke blinked and made a freshman-mistake, throwing a terrible interception with seven minutes left and the Hurricanes clinging to a 38-34 lead. The play fell apart and Van Dyke needed to throw the ball away but instead threw it up for grabs allowing Pitt linebacker John Petrishen came down with it.
At that point, I’m sure fans were thinking “this is it, this is where Kenny Heisman takes the Panthers right down the field and they take a 41-38 lead on a touchdown pass he throws to someone like Jordan Addison” and it was all set up for that.
It seemed like destiny when Pitt began marching down the field but all of the air went out of the stadium when Pickett made a really uncharacteristic mistake and threw an interception to another freshman, James Williams, at the Miami 2.
The pass was probably not completely Pickett’s fault as it looked like there was a miscommunication between him and Addison but it wasn’t the way this was supposed to go. Pitt was supposed to be equipped to win a shootout and Pickett was supposed to outplay a freshman. Neither of those things happened.
Narduzzi was asked if the fact that Van Dyke hadn’t played a lot of games made it difficult to prepare for him and he said emphatically, no.
“We knew he was a good football player. I said that last week. I only need one game — watch North Carolina State; put that on,” Narduzzi said. “There was plenty of tape. We knew he had a good arm, and we knew he was a good football player.”
Pickett is not the reason the Panthers lost the game and he broke three Pitt records — all-time touchdowns responsible for, all-time total yards and single-game passing — and did some spectacular things. He made a few throws that no other quarterback who calls Heinz Field home and at times put the Panthers offense on his back.
His two interceptions, though, combined with Van Dyke’s uncharacteristic poise and ability to make big plays under pressure, were too much to overcome.
“We will all bounce back from this,” Pickett said, “and be better because of it.”
Pickett is in the midst of a special season and he is clearly a player who, if he hasn’t played his way into the first round yet, he is well on his way. He has carried the Panthers to these heights and gives them a chance to win every week but on this day it wasn’t meant to be.
