Backyard Brawl could come down to trench battle
Keith Srakocic
When Pitt and West Virginia meet, it’s always a physical football game and often decided by the line play.
When Pitt and West Virginia meet, it's always a physical football game and often decided by the line play.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Analyzing any upcoming football game is normally a tricky endeavor with all the possibilities it presents, but this season’s 106th Backyard Brawl between West Virginia and Pitt Saturday night appears to be simpler than most.
In the end, it comes down to the West Virginia offensive line’s ability to block the run game and control Pitt’s pass rush and the Mountaineer secondary’s ability to make a giant step forward in defending the Panther passing game.
The teams appear to be evenly matched, the game opened a virtual tossup and while it has slid slightly toward WVU thanks to the home field advantage, at a point or two it’s like saying “we don’t know who’s going to win, so we’re pretty sure you don’t either.”
The oddsmakers have had WVU right on in its two games. They made the Mountaineers a 29.5-point underdog at Penn State and the Nittany Lions wound up winning, 38-15, on a touchdown with 6 seconds left. Then WVU was a 38.5-point favorite over Duquesne and wound up winning by 39.
You hate to go overboard on statistics in any story, for they are far too dull and often misleading, but in this one our basic analysis of the game demands it.
WVU must run the ball to win. Period. End of story.
You want a telling statistic? Since Neal Brown has been head coach, the Mountaineers are 10-0 in games in which they have rushed for 200 yards and are 19-5 in games in which they have surpassed 100 rushing yards.
Getting to those numbers against a Pitt defense under coach Pat Narduzzi is never easy.
Through two games, an easy win over Wofford and a close loss to Cincinnati, Pitt is giving up 107 yards per game on the ground.
A year ago, for the entire season, Pitt gave up just 98 rushing yards per game to rank seventh nationally and has been No. 12 or better in the nation against the run in each of the past four years. Only Georgia and Wisconsin can say the same.
But as important as it is for the O-line to open holes for their backs, it must close holes to Pitt’s savage pass rush.
Since Narduzzi was hired at Pitt, they have had five sacks in a game 26 times and are 25-1 in those games. They have ranked No. 1 or 2 in the nation in sacks in each of the last four seasons, collecting 199 over that time.
No team has more.
“They’re going to challenge you,” Brown said. “They’re going to be up in our face and we’ve got to be ready for that.”
There are two ways WVU can slow that pass rush.
First, of course, to make the running game effective. If WVU can use CJ Donaldson inside and Jaylen Anderson and Jahiem White outside, the defense has to respect that.
Then there’s the skills that Garrett Greene brings to the quarterback position. An all-out rush would be playing into his hands as his greatest asset is his escapability, which allows him to turn losses into gains, sometimes big gains.
Make no doubt that Brown will have ready a healthy dose of plays where Greene is called upon as a runner or where there can be running lanes for him should the rush be overly aggressive.
This is especially true early in the game. Greene has not thrown well in the first quarter of two games, completing just 42.9 percent of his first-quarter attempts.
If Greene can burn Pitt early, that would slow the rush.
As for the pass defense, that is giving up 281.5 passing yards a game, Brown is making some lineup changes.
Brown announced on his radio show Thursday that safety Marcus Floyd is back from injury and will start this year.
“He brings a lot of experience and can play multiple positions back there in the secondary, so we’re glad he’s back,” Brown said. “The expectation is that he will play better than the guy he’s replacing.”
And while there was no announcement, it’s highly likely that Malachi Ruffin will replace Andrew Wilson-Lamp at cornerback.
“Going into the season, the depth chart coming out of fall camp is always based on performance and Malachi hasn’t done anything wrong,” defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley said on Monday. “It was just that up to that point a couple of guys had been better. At the end of the day, what matters more than anything is how you play. He came in and did a really nice job and will be one of the guys we look to moving forward.”
A strong pass rush on Pitt quarterback Phil Jurkovec would ease some of the pressure on the secondary, Jurkovec coming under pressure against Cincinnati and completing just 10 of 32 passes for 125 yards.
But that is how the game shapes up, but does a WVU-Pitt Backyard Brawl ever go the way it’s supposed to?