Pitt mailbag: Why are the Panthers not ranked higher after routing Syracuse?

Stephen Thompson and Christopher Carter / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Welcome to the Pitt mailbag. If you have any questions about the Panthers, send them to Christopher Carter and Stephen Thompson, and they may answer them in their weekly show. You can catch the full version on YouTube, with an edited transcript below:

Molly: Why isn’t Pitt ranked higher than 18th? They’re 7-0 and there are a few teams ranked ahead of them and some teams even have two losses? Why is this happening and should it be happening?

Thompson: Why it’s happening seems pretty obvious. There is clearly still not a high level of respect for the rest of the teams in the ACC, specifically the teams that Pitt has beaten. But Pitt hasn't really, in my opinion, done much to prove that they should be dramatically higher than where they are right now. West Virginia is now just .500 after a win over Arizona, Cincinnati has put together a nice season so far but done it quietly. That's all well and good, but Cal and North Carolina are not necessarily world beaters as far as the ACC goes. And even the Syracuse game, it was kind of a double-edged sword beating them by that much. Quite honestly, if Pitt had maybe beaten Syracuse by less, I believe people would viewed Syracuse as much stronger of a win than they do now. 

They may be deserving of a ranking a few spots higher than this. I was surprised they only moved up one spot. But look at some of the names ahead of them, and you have to ask if you think that they should move ahead of Kansas State or LSU or Boise State or Alabama or Indiana. I’m not so sure. You didn't get a ton of movement at the very, very top of the rankings, not as much as we've seen over the past few weeks or the few weeks prior to Week 9. But the reality is the Pitt schedule is not super strong this year, so the best Pitt can do is keep stacking these wins because they're not going to have many opportunities to land marquee wins over the course of this year.

Carter: Getting a ranked win this week would go a long way. If they can be undefeated and beat Clemson, I think that will do enough to change the narrative. Looking at how things have played out, there are seven teams ranked ahead of them. Eleven of them have at least lost one game. Two of them have lost two games. You know, you mentioned the lack of respect for the ACC, and the ACC's top team wasn't respected last year. Let's not forget Florida State was undefeated conference champion and didn't even get an invite to play in the College Football Playoff. That was a big shock to a lot of people in the ACC. That's just that's the bed that Pitt’s in right now, and that's what a lot of Pitt fans have to understand.

You and I have talked about this and I wrote about this extensively on the basketball side of things. Pitt had a 22-win season and in every other major conference in college basketball, if you get 21 wins, you're in the NCAA tournament. That’s been the case for the last five years, no matter what your non-conference schedule was, no matter all these other things. That's what it's going to have to overcome in footbal,l as well. So right now, if they can go in, beat SMU in their house, improve to 8-0, they'll have a win over a ranked opponent plus some decent wins. But the key to this is to keep stacking them because people just don't believe you, so you've got to keep proving them wrong. 

Len: While it would certainly drive ‘Paranoid Pat’ Narduzzi absolutely bonkers, should the NCAA institute the kind of mandatory injury reporting system that the NFL employs?

Carter: This one is timely given how quarterback Eli Holstein’s status is up in the air for now. But Stephen, as journalists, we automatically say yes because that makes our lives so much easier. We're not sitting there at the start of each game with our binoculars looking for who’s in pads, warming up and going to play. 

Thompson: Absolutely. And you're exactly right. You and I would be all over a mandatory injury reporting system. Pat Narduzzi even talked about this a couple of years ago when the Big Ten became a pioneer in college sports for mandating injury reports. He believes keeping injuries under wraps keeps gamblers away from his players, which the logic of that is a little hard to follow. If you report these injuries right away and leave nothing to the imagination, then gamblers don’t have any reason to be hitting up your players and asking for inside information.

Narduzzi has given us a million different reasons why he doesn't like to report injuries. I think it all just comes down to simple gamesmanship. He just doesn't want to give his opponent an edge. I would be totally in favor of this, and I think it would make coaches' lives a lot easier if they implemented this, quite honestly. But the NCAA is really in no position to implement anything like this. I think he'd be up to the conferences, and you’d have to convince enough paranoid coaches in this league not to veto it. I think also Narduzzi did point out this year when we asked him about the SEC's new injury reporting system that there's a lot of lying that goes on on these injury reports. They're maybe not always totally truthful. So I would love it. I don't think Pat Narduzzi would love it, and I don't think a lot of the other coaches in college football would love it, either.

Doug: I didn't look up the exact numbers, but it seems like during the last two games, Pitt has been atrocious on third downs. What's the cure in your opinion?

Carter: I did look up the exact numbers, and Doug is exactly right. Against Cal, Pitt was 1 for 11 on third downs on offense. Against Syracuse, just 2 of 9. That is a collective 3 of 20 on third downs over two weeks. And they won those games! That's the other crazy part of this. The cure lies with Eli Holstein seeing the field. There are guys open almost every play in Kade Bell's offense, and he's just looking in the wrong direction, not understanding where to go. That happens with young players. But I think the cure is get on time, get him to understand where he's got to go with the football.

Thompson: For starters, against Syracuse, the average distance to the line to gain on third downs was something like 6.5 yards for Pitt, which is just not sustainable. You're not making it easy on your offense if you are not staying on schedule or getting to manageable third downs, which I think has been a huge problem. And the root of that issue is in Eli Holstein hunting big plays as opposed to taking what was available for him. If Holstein's able to make the more simple reads, if the offensive line is able to run block a little bit better, create some holes for Desmond Reid, then the third down numbers will improve. It's not necessarily about making plays on third down in particular, but it's about being better play to play on each of those series, getting ready for third down.

Ed: Going into the Syracuse game, did you guys ever think it would be an absolute old-fashioned fanny kicking?

Carter: Stephen, you and I gave our predictions. I think we both picked Pitt to win. I picked Pitt to win by 10 and I think you picked them to win by less than a touchdown.

Thompson: Yeah, I had them winning by just a field goal, a buzzer-beater by Ben Sauls. I expected more of a battle, mostly because Pitt hasn't proven that it’s really been able to pull away from anyone who's playing at a higher level than Kent State right now, which might be the worst team in FBS. And I also did not expect, even if they were going to win by a more comfortable margin, that it would be the defense leading the way. I thought the offense would regain form.

They didn't even really need the offense at all. With the three pick-sixes and two additional interceptions, if you just kept rolling out the Pitt defense out there for series after series, I think Pitt still would have won that game.

Carter: In my time of watching football, when you give an offense time to figure things out, eventually they do figure things out and it becomes a problem when you can't keep possess the ball. Usually, they're going to tire your defense out, but Pitt's defense didn't look tired. They were out there making plays left and right, flying all over the place. That to me was the scariest part about this. Right now, the way that they are playing on defense, if the offense can get back to where it was even just a few weeks ago, you have a very dangerous Pitt football team.