Saunders: Pitt Needs Eli Holstein to Find His Mojo -- Fast

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — In a rivalry game, the stakes are higher. There is more passion, more emotion, more bragging rights, more of every thing that makes college football the great sport that it is. 

The Backyard Brawl, even with the Pitt and West Virginia programs far below their historic stature, is one of the great college football rivalries.

One of the best things about those rivalry games is that they create big moments, and those big moments create legendary plays, moments and players.

You can’t think about the Backyard Brawl without Pat Bostick’s gutty performance in the 2007 13-9 game. Pitt cornerback M.J. Devonshire got this recent four-year run of the rivalry started with one of those moments in 2022. 

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi did a phenomenal job of summing up that phenomenon in his final press conference this week on Thursday.

“Legends and heroes are made in this game,” he said. “Whether it’s Pat Bostick on a quarterback sneak and his helmet’s out, and he doesn’t even remember the play if you ask him, ‘cause I think he was knocked out. There’s plays like that. You become legends in this game. People will remember you forever for those big plays. M.J, his gloves are in the College Hall of Fame. You become a legend in this game.”

While he didn’t have the same kind of signature highlight moment, Pitt quarterback Eli Holstein certainly seemed to arrive during his performance in last year’s Backyard Brawl.

That game was part of a heady start to the 2024 season for the Panthers, with Holstein and company starting the season 7-0 before everything unraveled. Holstein got hurt, and Pitt lost its final six games.

In 2025, there were plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the Pitt Panthers. A light schedule had them facing few preseason top 25 teams, and both of those not until late in the season, and at home.

But so much of the way the 2025 season will go for Pitt will be about the performance of Holstein. At times in 2024, he looked like a potential future star, the heir to Kenny Pickett’s legacy of being a modern star quarterback for the Panthers. At other times, things didn’t look great.

Hope renews eternal in college football though, and there was good reason to believe at the start of the 2025 season that Pitt would see the Holstein of old — or even better — under center this season. 

In the Panthers first real test at West Virginia, Holstein was not up to the task. On the very first play of the game, he put the football in jeopardy, nearly fumbling it away in the face of a WVU pass rush that didn’t show much respect to the Pitt offensive line.

“It rattled us a little bit,” Holstein admitted after the game.

In front of 62,108 rowdy Mountaineers, Holstein came up small to start, and the Pitt offense struggled mightily in the first half. Every time they looked like they might be ready to put the game away, they couldn’t get the job done.

A Malachi Thomas catch-and-run got Pitt down to the WVU 7-yard line the first quarter before an unnecessary roughness penalty on Lyndon Cooper pushed them back and they had to settle for a field goal attempt that missed.

In the second quarter, Holstein completed a long pass to Raphael Williams and earned a roughing the passer flag on top of it to give Pitt first and 10 at the WVU 11. Two players later, Holstein threw an interception in the end zone.

“I rushed it and didn’t trust the protection,” Holstein said. “On me. Zion (Fowler El) went across. They played zone. Should’ve just thrown to Zion out front. I make that throw, it’s a touchdown and a different ballgame.”

A long pass to Bryce Yates set the panthers up with a first and goal later in the second half. Holstein was injured on the first-down play — he said he was punched in the face. Two incomplete passes later, Trey Butkowski made his second field goal try.

“We got in the red zone three times and came away with two field goals and one turnover,” Holstein said. “That’s on me. We’ve got to execute better.”

At some point in the first half, the Panthers lost starting running back Desmond Reid to an injury. Reid did not return. Despite WVU being gashed by Ohio the previous week to the tune of 184 yards rushing, Pitt either couldn’t or wouldn’t lean on that part of the offense to beat the Mountaineers. 

Time after time, offensive coordinator Cade Bell tried to put the game in the hands of Holstein, and whether it was the scheme, the protection, or the play of the young quarterback himself, they just couldn’t get it done.

Twice within three minutes in the third quarter, the Pitt defense intercepted backup West Virginia quarterback Scotty Fox and returned the ball to the 14 and 24 yard lines. Pitt did not gain a first down, actually lost 15 yards over the two combined drives and settled for two more field goals.

The best offenses are great all the time, juggernauts that can’t be stopped. But even average offenses can be good in those moments. Come in on the quick change, with a defense off balance, and get a quick score. Make other teams pay for blown coverages, penalties and turnovers, and a team with a mediocre day overall can light up the scoreboard quickly.

Before Pickett became a star and a Heisman Trophy candidate in 2021, he showed a propensity for coming up clutch in big moments. These Panthers couldn’t even manage that on Saturday.

“We shot ourselves in the foot in those situations,” Holstein said. “The defense did a great job getting us the ball in those situations, those short fields. We just didn’t execute. … We put two touchdowns in there and it’s a completely different ballgame.”

It is. More than that, the performance of Holstein brings into question any amount of optimism for the rest of Pitt’s season — most of which depended on a bounce-back season from him.

“We lost that game,” Holstein said. “Credit to them. They played a great game. They’re a good football team. But I feel like we lost that game.”

While there is plenty of blame to go around for Pitt losing the Backyard Brawl, the Panthers will need Holstein to be a lot better than he was in this one going forward. The loss to the Mountaineers doesn’t need to define Pitt’s season — they still have yet to play a conference game, after all —  but Holstein’s play probably will.