Paul Zeise: Pitt, Mason Heintschel weren't ready to step up in class

Paul Zeise, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov 17, 2025

Published in Football

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PITTSBURGH — The good news for Pitt is that Georgia Tech doesn't have anything that resembles the offensive and defensive lines of Notre Dame.

That's a good thing because it means that the Panthers will have a fighting chance against the Yellow Jackets next Saturday.

Yes, the game is in Atlanta, but the Panthers won't be overmatched and they should be able to score a lot of points against the Yellow Jackets defense. And the bread and butter of Georgia Tech's offense is running the football and won't be able to push Pitt around like Notre Dame did.

Saturday the whole world was watching to see what this freshman quarterback sensation Mason Heintschel is all about and just how good the Panthers really are.

What they saw was Notre Dame bully the Panthers and Heintschel look an awful lot like a freshman playing in his first big game.

There are times when a lot of analysis is needed for what happened in a football game, but this was one of the easiest games to diagnose in my 30-plus years of covering football.

Notre Dame physically manhandled Pitt on both sides of the ball and really did almost anything it wanted to do. On offense, the Fighting Irish ran the ball and protected their quarterback so he could make some big plays down the field. And on defense, they basically wrecked everything the Panthers tried to do.

The final score was 37-15, but it wasn't really indicative of just how overmatched Pitt was. And this is by no means a typical column ripping Pitt because it got blown out in a nationally televised game with a lot of eyes watching.

I view this as a learning experience for Heintschel, as he has never been in this situation before and it was still only his sixth start. It is one thing to rip up defenses like Boston College and Stanford, but it is another to go against one of the best teams in the country, a team loaded with 4- and-5-star guys up front (where the best teams are built).

"No question about it," Pat Narduzzi said about Heintschel's ability to learn from Saturday's loss. "And I think every player on our football team can learn from just the little details. I mean, I watch the game on the iPad and there are so many details we can look up and try to clean up."

Heintschel will be better for this experience and won't see anything like Notre Dame's front seven the rest of the way. Maybe Miami will be a similar test for Pitt, but by then Heintschel will have had this experience and a road game against a ranked Georgia Tech team to figure it out.

Notre Dame proved to be a bad matchup for Pitt, but to Narduzzi's early point, clumsily as it came out, the game was meaningless. Yes, there was a lot of hype and pomp and circumstance around the game, and yes, it was a chance for Pitt to beat a ranked opponent on the big stage of national TV. But the games coming up are the ones that matter.

The Irish hung a loss on Pitt but didn't sack its season, as the Panthers can still get to the ACC championship game with wins over Georgia Tech and Miami and a little bit of help from either Louisville or Virginia Tech.

It all comes down to just how much Pitt learned in this game and how Heintschel bounces back from the first bad game of his career. And really it isn't just Heintschel; his receivers had some chances to make a few plays early and dropped the ball, and he didn't have much help from his line, either.

I don't believe that Heintschel's first five games were a product of the teams he faced. Yes, the Panthers were fortunate to play some of the worst teams in the ACC, but their offense came alive when Heintschel took over for a reason.

He is a good football player and an excellent quarterback. He is just young and lacks experience, and sometimes the only way to learn is through the baptism-by-fire method. That happened Saturday, and now the hope is that he will be more equipped to handle the pressure — to perform under the spotlight and the pressure from a superior defense — the next time it comes his way.

Pitt put itself in position to play a huge game Saturday by the way it performed over the last month. The Panthers clearly weren't ready for the challenge of the game, and a lot of it is because they were just undermanned in a few key areas.

They are still in position to play another huge game next Saturday against Georgia Tech, and they will have the chance to redeem themselves a little bit, validate that they are indeed a good team who had one bad Saturday, and keep their ACC title game hopes alive.

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