Saturday marks the renewal of the Pitt-Penn State football rivalry that has been dormant for 16 years.
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But Penn State roared back to make the return of the rivalry an instant classic … only to squander a chance to tie or win in the final minutes, as Pitt escaped with a dramatic 42-39 victory anyway. A 28-7 shellacking ended as a 42-39 nail biter that was a few plays away from going in State’s favor. On Saturday at Heinz Field – after years of build-up and in front of the largest crowd in the history of Pittsburgh sporting events – we got as close as we’ll get to a definitive answer: Yep, it’s real.
And it was that easy for the Panthers to score on their opening drive, that easy to silence the Penn State sideline, that easy to start the 97th game of an intrastate rivalry with a statement.
In other games involving Big Ten teams, No. 4 Ohio State overcame a sluggish offensive start, a lightning delay and a driving rainstorm in the second half to beat Tulsa 48-3.
On third-and-goal, after two more rushing plays, Peterman found Orndoff in the back of the end zone off a play-action pass play to push Pitt ahead 21-7.
“I thought the offensive line did a tremendous job, especially for me running the ball”, he said.
“I think we definitely worked on tackling in the off-season, because I knew it was one of the things we needed to work on past year, open-field tackling”, Haley said.
“We’re not naive to the fact of what everybody else is is saying”, Penn State receiver Chris Godwin said. The Lions and Panthers are meeting for the first time since 2000, and the implications are obvious: recruiting edge in the state and bragging rights.
“We had some guys on the field that aren’t typically on the field and ran a wrong route”, Franklin said.
By decree of head coach Pat Narduzzi, the Panthers aren’t speaking with reporters this week. Narduzzi, clearly, was sacked up, and he had a ready-made motivational peg; he closed practices this past week, so the Panthers didn’t have to worry about what they said. The Pittsburgh Panthers ground game is averaging 86 yards per contest, and James Conner leads the way with 53 yards and one touchdown. It was his 12th time running for 100-plus yards and the first since he ran for 220 against North Carolina in November of 2014.
“We came out of halftime with a great mindset. I trusted my reads today”.
Dayton’s David Leisring picked off Andrew Romanchak’s first pass attempt of the second half – his third in two games – and the Flyers added another short Will field goal. While it may take some convincing for some of the Nittany Lions to get just how big a deal this is within the state, there are sizable number of players on both sides who call Pennsylvania home some of whom were wooed by both schools that won’t need a reminder.
While McSorley often struggled to hold on to the ball, when he meant to let it go he did well.
McSorley (24-35, 332 yards) was answering questions outside Penn State’s locker room when he was interrupted by loud shouts of “Hail to Pitt” by a passerby. Pittsburgh finished with 341 yards rushing, while Penn State ran for only 74.
“The reality”, head coach James Franklin said, “is that we didn’t play smart enough, we didn’t play mistake-free enough, to win”. “The more and more we do it, the better we’ll get”.
Barkley had a costly second-half fumble. However, he got hit by Mike Caprara and forced a fumble, which was recovered by the Panthers.
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For the record, Saquon Barkley is a quality over quantity kind of player. “There’s a lot of media hype around this game and I’m just trying to deliver the message that this is the most important game because it’s the next game, and that we have to come out even”.
