The Pittsburgh Football Podcast

By Chris Gates | The Pittsburgh Football Podcast

Pitt’s matchup with UCF was supposed to tell us something.

Or so I thought…

After the Panthers opened the season with a dominant win over Miami (Ohio), UCF represented the next step up in competition. This was a Power Four opponent with athleticism, a talented secondary and a rushing attack that figured to challenge a Pitt defense that entered the season with legitimate questions in its front seven.

It felt like the type of game that could help us start figuring out exactly what Pitt has in 2026.

Instead, we got a monsoon.

Pitt ultimately survived an afternoon of lightning delays, torrential rain and ugly football to beat UCF 12-7 and improve to 2-0. But if you came out of Saturday hoping to have a much clearer understanding of the Panthers, you might still be waiting.

I know I am.

The weather impacted the game to such an extreme degree that it’s difficult to draw many definitive conclusions from what happened.

Still, we did learn a few things.

The offense deserves some benefit of the doubt

There were plenty of numbers from Saturday that won’t inspire confidence.

• Pitt finished with 315 total yards.
• The Panthers ran 43 times for just 103 yards, an average of 2.4 yards per carry.
• Damon Ferguson led the team with 59 yards on 20 carries.

Those numbers matter because Pitt entered the season with legitimate questions about its offensive line and running game.

The Panthers struggled to consistently generate push up front last season. Short-yardage situations were too often an adventure. And after an explosive passing performance against Miami (Ohio) in the opener, UCF seemed like an opportunity to find out whether Pitt could establish a more consistent rushing attack.

Instead, Saturday provided almost the worst possible conditions for answering that question.

Once the rain intensified, both teams knew exactly what was coming. Pitt was trying to protect a 12-0 lead and shorten the game. UCF could load the line of scrimmage and dare the Panthers to throw a soaking-wet football through a downpour.

That’s not exactly an environment designed to produce efficient offense.

Even Mason Heintschel’s passing performance needs to be viewed through that lens. Throwing a football effectively in those conditions required adjustments simply to get the ball where it needed to go. Pitt’s normal offensive rhythm was essentially removed from the equation.

And at a certain point in the second half, Heintschel and the offense simply stopped trying to throw the football downfield. The quarterback admitted as much in the post-game press conference.

And Pitt was doing all of this without Ja’Kyrian Turner, arguably its most experienced running back, who was held out with what was described after the game as a minor issue.

None of this means Pitt’s offensive concerns should simply be dismissed.

The offensive line remains something to watch, and the running game still needs to prove it can consistently create yardage. Pitt will eventually encounter a third-and-one when everybody in the stadium knows a run is coming, and the Panthers will need to demonstrate that they can get that yard.

Saturday just wasn’t a particularly useful measuring stick for determining whether those problems have been solved.

Pitt’s defense gave us something much more tangible

If there is one area where Saturday strengthened an early-season conclusion, it’s Pitt’s defense.

Specifically, its ability to stop the run.

UCF entered the game with every reason to lean on its rushing attack. That was already part of the Knights’ offensive identity, and the weather only provided more incentive to keep the ball on the ground.

Pitt shut it down.

UCF finished with only 20 rushing yards on 22 attempts, with sack yardage making the raw number look even worse. Even after accounting for that, the Knights generated very little on the ground.

And now it has happened twice.

Miami (Ohio) averaged only 1.3 yards per carry against Pitt in the opener. Through two games, opposing offenses have essentially gone nowhere against the Panthers on the ground.

That is meaningful because Pitt entered the season needing to replace important pieces in its defensive front seven.

So far, those questions have been answered about as emphatically as possible.

• The Panthers consistently swarmed to the football against UCF.
• Defensive backs were involved.
• Linebackers were involved.
• Defensive linemen pursued plays all the way across the field.

Cruce Brookins delivered physical hits. Raion Strader repeatedly found himself around the football. On one play, after Strader helped slow down a receiver, defensive lineman Isaiah Neal pursued from across the field to finish the tackle.

That effort showed up throughout the afternoon.

And when UCF finally broke through with a fourth-quarter touchdown and later got the football back with a chance to win the game, Pitt’s defense closed the door.

Two games aren’t enough to declare Pitt’s defense elite. There will be much more difficult tests ahead.

But stopping the run was a legitimate preseason question, and through two weeks the answer has been overwhelmingly positive.

Special teams may be becoming an asset

Saturday also provided another encouraging data point for Pitt’s special teams.

Antonio Chata’s 58-yard field goal against Miami (Ohio) was one of the most impressive individual moments of the opener. Against UCF, the conditions shifted the spotlight to punter Gabe Russo.

Russo punted eight times and placed three inside the 20.

Those punts were enormously important.

As Pitt’s offense struggled to move the football in the second half, field position became increasingly valuable. One bad punt could have given UCF a short field and completely changed a game decided by five points.

Instead, Russo repeatedly got the football downfield and forced UCF to put together long drives in miserable conditions.

Even the simple act of consistently punting the football deserves some context. Handling a wet snap and striking a soaked football in a downpour isn’t automatic.

Russo handled it.

Through two games, Pitt has received strong performances from both its kicker and punter. It’s still early, but that could become a significant advantage in close games this season.

There are still things Pitt needs to clean up

The weather can explain a lot.

But it can’t explain everything.

Pitt’s timeout usage was frustrating at different points Saturday, including burning a timeout simply to get the punt team organized.

That can’t happen.

The Panthers also used multiple timeouts relatively early in the second half of a game that remained was well within reach for UCF. Fortunately, Pitt never desperately needed those timeouts at the end.

But there will eventually be a game when it does.

Clock management and timeout usage have periodically been sources of frustration during Pat Narduzzi’s tenure, and Saturday provided another example.

It didn’t cost Pitt the game, which makes this the ideal time to correct it.

The biggest takeaway might simply be toughness

Ultimately, Saturday may have revealed less about Pitt schematically than it did about the personality of this team.

The Panthers played hard.

That sounds overly simplistic until you consider the circumstances.

• Ferguson and La’Vell Wright repeatedly ran directly into crowded boxes.
• Pitt’s offensive linemen kept grinding.
• Defensive players flew across a soaked field to pursue the football.
• The defense kept making stops while the offense struggled to sustain drives.

Pitt’s lone touchdown might have been the perfect representation of the entire afternoon.

Ferguson ran into a pile near the goal line and kept fighting. His teammates joined him, and eventually an entire collection of Panthers pushed the pile into the end zone.

Nothing came easily.

Pitt just kept pushing.

There are going to be games during a college football season when everything clicks. We saw one of those against Miami (Ohio), when Heintschel and the Pitt offense exploded.

And then there are games when almost nothing looks right.

Good teams have to win those, too.

Pitt survived. Now we wait for more answers.

The frustrating part of Saturday is that UCF was supposed to provide answers.

• Could Pitt run the football more effectively?
• Could the offensive line hold up against better competition?
• Would Heintschel continue to look comfortable against a more talented secondary?
• How would Pitt’s reconstructed defensive front perform against a legitimate rushing attack?

We received a compelling answer to that last question.

For most of the others, the evaluation probably needs to wait.

And that’s OK.

Pitt didn’t need to prove everything about itself Saturday. It needed to win.

The Panthers did that.

They’re 2-0, and now the schedule moves quickly to Thursday night against Syracuse in Pitt’s ACC opener.

Maybe that’s when we’ll finally start getting some of the answers we expected to find against UCF.

For now, Pitt survived one of the strangest games it will play all season.

Sometimes, that’s enough.