No. 21 Pittsburgh holds off No. 24 Louisville 23-20
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Patrick Jones II wants No. 21 Pittsburgh’s defense to be the best in the country. Not just in points allowed. Not just in yards allowed. Not just in turnovers. All of it.
“We want it all,” the senior defensive end said.
The Panthers are certainly playing like it.
Jones collected three of Pitt’s seven sacks, helping the Panthers beat No. 24 Louisville 23-20 on Saturday. The win pushed Pitt (3-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) to its best start since 2014 and adhered to a blueprint the Panthers believe can carry them to the conference title game in December: tough, physical defense and just enough offense.
So far, it’s working. The Panthers held the Cardinals (1-2, 0-2) to 223 yards — less than half of what they had been averaging coming in — and never let Malik Cunningham get comfortable. Cunningham completed just 9 of 21 passes for 107 yards with a touchdown and three picks, the last a fourth-down interception by Pitt’s Jason Pinnock with 1:19 remaining.
Cunningham ended up leaving on a stretcher after the play with an undisclosed injury. Coach Scott Satterfield said the junior had feeling in all his extremities and was being evaluated. The sight of their rising star heading into the tunnel with his head strapped to a board marked a difficult end to a difficult day for the Cardinals. Louisville struggled to generate much of anything offensively thanks to the relentless pursuit of Pitt’s defensive front.
“We’ve played some good D lines, but they were different,” Satterfield said. “They played fast, they played physical.”
And they played exactly the way they knew they would play against the Cardinals. Sporting alternate charcoal grey uniforms inspired by both the architecture on the Pitt campus and the region’s legacy as a leading global steel producer, the defense often resembled a cloud of dust that swarmed anything in a white jersey that happened to come into its path.
“I know the Steel Curtain is the Pittsburgh Steelers but today (we were) dominant up front,“Panthers coach Pat Narduzzi said.
When they weren’t, the secondary picked them up most of the time. Other than a 21-yard touchdown pass from Cunningham to Atwell on a busted coverage in the second quarter that briefly gave Louisville a 17-13 lead, the Cardinals found little room to work. Three times Louisville had the ball in the fourth quarter with a chance to take the lead. The drives ended with interception, punt, interception.
“Our D-line, they trust that we’re always going to take away the first read,” Pinnock said. “And we trust that they are going to get there. So we can undercut routes, we can do things that maybe, if you didn’t trust your D-line, you couldn’t do. We play well together.”
Auburn holds off Kentucky: Bo Nix threw for 233 yards and three second-half touchdowns, including a pair to Seth Williams, and Auburn scored twice in the fourth quarter to pull away from Kentucky in the season opener. The Tigers turned a three-quarter scare into a comfortable win by capitalizing on a late turnover and Kentucky’s failed fake punt in the lone Top 25 matchup of the Southeastern Conference’s opening weekend. Kentucky quarterback.
Texas rallies against Texas Tech: Sam Ehlinger threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to Joshua Moore in overtime, sending No. 8 Texas to a wild 63-56 victory over Texas Tech on Saturday that saw the Longhorns rally with two touchdowns in the final 3 minutes of regulation. Moore's second touchdown catch came with 40 seconds left and Ehlinger's 2-point conversion pass to Brennan Eagles tied it to get to overtime. Texas got the ball first and quickly scored when Ehlinger and Moore connected for their third score of the day. Tech's possession ended when Alan Bowman was forced to scramble and threw a wild pass that was intercepted.
Stingley hospitalized: LSU star cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. was hospitalized overnight on Friday the school said in a statement hours before its season-opening game against Mississippi State on Saturday. According to the statement, Stingley became “acutely ill” on Friday night but the condition was not COVID-19 related. He did not play Saturday.