Chris Beatty caught passes at a record-setting pace at East Tennessee State and, later, in the CFL.

He has coached young people on that particular skill going back into the previous century, so he believes he knows a dropped pass when he sees one.

But as Pitt’s second-year wide receivers coach, Beatty – along with anyone else who has watched Pitt games this season — knows his players have had a problem holding onto the football. It’s just that he prefers to count them up himself.

Pro Football Focus reports there have been 22 passes slip through Pitt fingers. Of course, there is no clear definition of a drop.

“Back when I was playing, people would say, `Oh, it touched your hands. That’s a drop,’ ” he said. “Pro Football Focus doesn’t sit back and tell us how many drops we have. We know how many drops we have or don’t have. When the ball touches our hands, that doesn’t mean that’s a drop.”

The bottom line is Beatty said he doesn’t like to harangue his players about it. There also is a school of thought that coaches don’t want to mention it so much that it puts the wrong image in players’ heads.

“I don’t harp on that stuff,” Beatty said. “No one catches more balls (in practice) than we do and no one works harder than we do to make sure we eliminate those things. We catch millions of balls. We will continue to catch a million balls.”

He also notes that Pitt has put the ball in the air 236 times, more than all but one team (Duke) in the nation.

“If you pass more, you’re going to drop some. That happens,” he said. “I don’t stress it. I leave that up to other people.”

What he does stress is Pitt has four players with more than 225 yards in receptions, from Taysir Mack (231) to Shocky Jacques-Louis (233) to D.J. Turner (332) to Jordan Addison (444).

But the season took a wrong turn last Saturday in Miami when quarterback Kenny Pickett was left at home with a left ankle injury and Pitt scored a season-low 19 points. Turner, Jacques-Louis, Mack and Jared Wayne combined to catch nine balls for 84 yards; Addison had eight for 147.

Pitt ranks fourth in the ACC in passing yards per game (283.2), which should be cause for at least a smile or two amidst the Panthers’ three-game losing streak.

But Beatty understands that’s not good enough.

“We’ve left some (yards) out there, which is disappointing,” he said. “We have to do better than that.”

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