Offensive Thoughts

There’s one glaring thing the offense is missing. I’m going to highlight some offensive stats and I want to see if you can find the one area this offense is missing as well. The thing that UNC had and Pitt didn’t on Thursday and the one problem that is holding them back from being good enough to have beaten UNC and Iowa. Let’s start the stats!

These stats are based on the 128 teams listed as FBS on cfbstats.com, the higher the ranking the better.

Here’s what immediately jumps out to me: Yards per play and plays of 10+ and 20+ yards. This offense has to be incredibly efficient to score because yards aren’t coming in chunks. Throw in that 45% of opponent kickoffs are touchbacks (91^st) and only two punt returns of 20+ yards and you see an offense that has long fields due to special teams and doesn’t get big plays. What this offense is missing is the ability to gain yards in large chunks. Sure, it’s great to have a nine minute drive to end the game, but to consistently need eight or ten plays to get into the end zone is not feasible.

Against the ARCHRIVAL ORANGE and UNC, Pitt had nine scoring drives, four touchdowns and five field goals. Of those nine, six required nine or more plays to score. Two of the other three were off of a turnover (touchdown vs. Cuse) and blocked punt (FG vs. UNC), so the field was short. That means without the aid of a short field, the offense has scored ONCE in fewer than nine plays in the past two games, a late field goal in the first half against Cuse.

That is how an offense makes it too difficult on itself to score: slow, efficient drives without big plays. The problem with this is it opens a team up to too many field goals because by the time the offense arrives in the red zone, they’ve converted two or three third downs and eventually a little thing goes wrong. That little thing happens and the offense settles for three.

There’s no doubt the offense has been too conservative. The question is why? Do the coaches not trust the players to attack downfield or is the game plan to be conservative and trust the defense? Up until the UNC game, this approach worked, so it’s hard to fault the coaches completely. The defense has been good enough all year to win every game if the offense held up their part of the bargain. Thirty points would’ve won every game vs. an FBS opponent this season. Chaney needs to open up the playbook and challenge defenses downfield. That will require trusting players not named Tyler Boyd more. Dontez Ford has earned that. Orndoff and Holtz certainly have as well. That’s three players worth trusting to get big plays.

If the offensive game plan is the same against Notre Dame, it’ll take another herculean effort from the defense to win on Saturday. Notre Dame is only giving up 22 points per game. They’re scoring 36; that’s the same as UNC. There are matchup differences and everything, but one thing matters: Notre Dame can and will score. Can Pitt’s offense keep up?

We’ll find out.