Kevin Gorman: Pitt's Pat Narduzzi gets it wrong on fourth-and-goal again

Pat Narduzzi got it right, even though he got it wrong.

The Pitt football coach took the blame for a 16-12 loss to Miami on Saturday afternoon at Heinz Field, a loss that crushes the Panthers’ chances of repeating as ACC Coastal champions.

That much he got right, pointing the finger first at himself.

Once again, Pitt had a fourth-and-goal at the 1. Once again, Narduzzi elected to kick a field goal instead of trying for a touchdown. If that decision blew up on the Panthers at Penn State — where Alex Kessman bounced the ball off the upright — Narduzzi’s indefensible explanation only made it worse.

This time, when Pitt had Miami backed up against the goal line while trailing by a point midway through the fourth quarter, Narduzzi did the same thing. He sent Alex Kessman out for a field goal, first taking a delay-of-game penalty to create an easier angle from the same left hash Kessman bounced the ball off the left upright at Beaver Stadium last month.

“The smart play was to kick the field goal,” Narduzzi said. “Some people say, ‘Go for it.’ If you don’t get it then, now you’re losing the game. You’re down. To go ahead was huge momentum for us. Again, you can go back and forth and we can lose sleep over it, but it is what it is. … If you go for it and don’t get it, you’re saying the same thing. They don’t even have to score to win the football game.”

That’s where Narduzzi was wrong — again.

The field goal gave the Panthers a 12-10 lead, and every point counted on a day when Pitt couldn’t cross the goal line. A touchdown would have meant so much more, the perfect punctuation to a drive that covered 64 yards in eight minutes, 14 seconds in the fourth quarter.

That drive saw the Panthers convert a third-and-1 on a quarterback sneak by Kenny Pickett and a third-and-2 on an 18-yard run by V’Lique Carter.

Carter got a 1-yard gain on first-and-goal at the 7, followed by a 5-yard gain on second-and-goal. That’s when Pitt made the curious choice to replace Carter, who had six carries for 37 yards on the drive, with A.J. Davis.

Davis hadn’t touched the ball in a dozen plays and was stopped for no gain. That put Pitt in the same predicament as the Penn State game, a 17-10 loss on Sept. 14: fourth-and-goal at the 1.

Where the Panthers needed a touchdown to tie against the Nittany Lions, Narduzzi went for the field goal. Against Miami, he took the easy points and the lead, counting on Pitt’s defense to hold a two-point lead for the final 7 minutes, 19 seconds.

That was a mistake.

Narduzzi should have learned his lesson the first time. The Panthers never were in better position to score a touchdown and had run a dozen times for 57 yards on that drive. But they abandoned the run after Davis was stuffed.

“I didn’t even want Coach to be in that situation,” Pitt center Jimmy Morrissey said of Narduzzi. “They put their trust in the O-line to run the ball, and we couldn’t get it in. We didn’t finish. That’s on us.”

Not entirely. Even if Pitt was stopped short, Miami would have had to drive 99 yards to score. The worst part: Narduzzi took that into consideration and still decided to go for the field goal.

“We weigh it a lot. You weigh it a lot,” Narduzzi said. “Tough decision when you’re down and three points puts you ahead, and the way the defense is playing. I don’t know. It could go either way. You’ve got to play the odds, and I guessed wrong. That’s my fault.”

That’s where Narduzzi is right and wrong.

It shouldn’t be a guessing game. If Narduzzi believed as much in Pitt’s running game, which gained 176 yards to Miami’s 54, as he does in his defense or his kicker, going for it on fourth-and-goal would be a gimme instead of a gimmick.

The fearlessness he showed in running the “Pitt Special” against UCF was missing against Miami, which had shown little offensively. The Hurricanes scored 10 points on short fields, thanks to two first-half interceptions thrown by Pickett.

The momentum didn’t last long, either. Pitt stopped Miami, then went three-and-out with a 32-yard punt by Kirk Christodoulou to the Hurricanes’ 38. They answered with a nine-play, 62-yard drive capped by freshman quarterback Jarren Williams throwing a 32-yard touchdown pass to K.J. Osborn to make it 16-12.

But they could have kicked a field goal for the win just the same. That exposes the flaw in Narduzzi’s field-goal logic, which he seemed to grasp afterward. Going for three instead of seven might have given Pitt the lead but it gave Miami the momentum it needed. His choice had consequences.

“It’s hard to win when you kick four field goals,” Narduzzi said. “Do I wish we’d have gone for it on fourth-and-1? Yeah, but when your defense is playing as well as they are playing, you thought, ‘Shoot, let’s win with four field goals.’

“We can look back and question every call, offensively and defensively – and we’d like to – but in the end, we had too many dropped passes and not enough touchdowns. It’s hard to win with three field goals and on a short field.”

It’s even harder when you don’t score a touchdown, especially when you aren’t willing to go for it on fourth-and-goal at the 1.

That Narduzzi flinched again is on him.

The smart play isn’t always the best play, and there’s nothing worse than being right when you get it wrong.

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