Reyes, Rhodes find holes in Pitt’s defense

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Pitt was run over, literally.

The Orange racked up 239 rushing yards on… SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Pitt was run over, literally.

The Orange racked up 239 rushing yards on the Panthers’ defense Saturday at the Carrier Dome. Two running backs, Walter Reyes and Damien Rhodes, had more than 100 yards rushing in the game. Each ended up in the endzone once in the game, including Rhodes’ second-overtime two-yard scamper.

Rhodes took over for Reyes, who left the game early in the third quarter with an injury. But it did not matter what number Syracuse called. The Panthers looked like the 2003 team that let up three 200-yard rushers and two 100-yard rushers in the game against Miami.

Pitt had, prior to Saturday, given up an average of 109.4 rushing yards per game. And in the two games leading up to Syracuse, Pitt held both Rutgers and Boston College to 112 yards combined. In fact, Reyes had a run for 57 yards on Saturday, which is more rushing yards than Rutgers and Boston College ran for in their games against Pitt.

It’s clear that Pitt was stopping the run all season, and now, all of a sudden, the defense had a complete breakdown.

“Just not doing our assignments,” H.B. Blades explained after the game. He said the defense was just trying to do too much. “You do your assignments, and you stop them.”

Syracuse came out with the game plan to run, despite a screen pass to start the game. After the four-yard screen, the Orange ran 10 consecutive running plays for 58 yards and a Reyes touchdown.

The Panthers had difficulty stopping the Orange when they were in the redzone. The Orange scored five of six times when having the ball in the redzone. The only time Syracuse didn’t score in the redzone was on its second drive in the first quarter, when Brendan Carney missed a 32-yard field goal.

“We could never get everything going at the same time,” defensive tackle Thomas Smith said, referring to Pitt’s offense and defense. He said when the offense was going, the defense was not, and vice versa.

The defense also struggled with something it prided itself on all year. Something that has won them games all year, and could have potentially won them the game Saturday: goal-line stands.

The Orange, on four occasions, had the ball spotted inside the Pitt five-yard line, and on all four, they scored touchdowns.

In prior weeks, Pitt had made critical goal-line stands to keep its offense in the game, such as it did against Temple and Boston College. Against Temple, a game that Pitt narrowly won 27-22, the Panthers made two goal-line stands to help fire a fourth-quarter comeback.

In Syracuse, this was not the case.

There were no goal-line stands.

Although, the defense did play a respectable second half. After allowing 21 first-quarter points, the defense filled its holes and kept the Orange out of the end zone the entire second half. They even created two turnovers, one fumble and one interception, and gave the offense a chance to run away with the game. But to the defense’s disappointment, they did not.

On the fumble, Pitt converted a touchdown and a two-point conversion to tie the game, but following the interception, Pitt drove to the Syracuse 28-yard line and missed a 45-yard field goal.

“We need to capitalize on those things,” quarterback Tyler Palko said about the turnovers. “We did have a chance to put the game away.”

But it was not the offense that allowed 239 yards rushing, 139 yards on three kickoff returns and missed two late field goals.

“I thought overall we played pretty well on offense,” Palko said. “We put a lot of points on the board.”

Thirty-one points to be exact, which is more than the team’s average of 26.7 points scored per game. The only problem was that the defense allowed more than its average of 21.4 points per game — 17 more.

“You have to put that on us,” Blades said about the defense. “They came out, and they played better than us.”