College football is the sport of chaos, but Week 11 was largely devoid of it. The head-to-head matchup between No. 8 Texas Tech and No. 7 BYU, which went to the Red Raiders, provided the only loss for a team in the committee’s top 12. Aside from ACC collapses, which have the conference looking like a one-bid league, the CFP Rankings were largely unchanged at the top in the second week.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the 12 teams currently in the bracket will be the 12 teams that make up the field after the conference championship games on December 6. There is still plenty of room for chaos in the final three weeks of the regular season, and there’s one team that can single-handedly provide it and shake up the CFP.
The Pitt Panthers are one of the hottest teams in college football. Winners of five-straight, Pat Narduzzi’s team is undefeated since making a change at quarterback. After a 2-2 start, which included blowing a 10-point fourth-quarter lead in the Backyard Brawl, Pitt sent Eli Holstein to the bench and gave the keys of the offense to true freshman Mason Heintschel, and he hasn’t lifted the pedal from the floor.
Pitt checked in at No. 22 in the second CFP Rankings, following a 35-20 win over Stanford in Week 11. The midseason hot streak has gained so much momentum that ESPN’s College Gameday is making the trip to Pittsburgh for the first time on a Saturday since 2005, as the Panthers host No. 9 Notre Dame.
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Pitt could knock 3 teams out of the College Football Playoff in the final 3 weeks
With two losses from its first two games of the season, the Fighting Irish have slowly climbed back into the CFP picture. A win over USC is the best on their resume, and a road win at Pitt would further bolster it. A loss, though, would be Notre Dame’s third and would eliminate a shot at redemption for last year’s national runner-ups.
The Notre Dame matchup, though, is far from the only one on Pitt’s mind. Even if the Panthers win out, an at-large bid could be a bit far-fetched, so Pat Narduzzi’s focus is firmly on winning the ACC. With a 5-1 record in conference play, his team controls its own destiny.
That’s because in the final two weeks of the year, the Panthers travel to No. 16 Georgia Tech, then host No. 15 Miami. Win out in ACC play, with a loss to Louisville, which already has two ACC losses, and Pitt not only claims a spot for itself in the ACC Championship Game, but dashes the Yellow Jackets and Hurricanes’ hopes of making the CFP, either as the conference champs or with an at-large bid.
No team has a tougher or more consequential three-game stretch to close the season, and that means no team has more of a chance to cause chaos for the CFP committee. Two of Pitt's final three games made Saturday Blitz's list of the 10 biggest games that will decide who gets into the College Football Playoff. The way Pitt is playing right now, it may have a chance to pull it off.
Pitt is one of the hottest teams in college football
For the season, Pitt ranks 11th in points per game at 37.0, but that number climbs to 40 since the quarterback change in Week 6, and the Panthers’ average scoring margin with Heintschel is 19.0 points, which would rank seventh for the entire season, one spot behind Notre Dame at 19.9. Of the teams with a higher scoring margin than 19 points this season, only Utah, ranked No. 13 in this week’s CFP rankings, is currently outside the 12-team field.
In a super-spread offense that asks Heintschel to complete a ton of short passes to move the ball down the field, Heintschel is averaging just 4.57 yards per dropback. However, his 0.39 expected points added per dropback ranks 16th best in the country, one spot ahead of Heisman Trophy favorite Fernando Mendoza.
Pitt enters Week 12 as an 11.5-point home underdog to Notre Dame, and may not be favored in any of its final three games. Still, the Panthers and their freshman quarterback have shown enough to be considered a dark-horse playoff contender and have the schedule to wreak havoc on the rest of the CFP field.
If Pitt dispatches Notre Dame, Georgia Tech, and Miami, it will have considerable ripple effects across the country. For starters, the ACC will certainly be a one-bid league, but that’s already likely. With Notre Dame out, though, the SEC could potentially gobble up six bids with Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, and Ole Miss locked in and Texas, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt all still in the mix and currently ranked above the fourth-highest-ranked Big Ten team.
We’re a long way from the finish line, so the possibilities still seem almost endless for how to fill out the 12-team field. Still, Pitt having a shot to make the CFP at this point in the year seemed unfathomable four weeks into the season, and right now, the Panthers are the main character in college football.