Former Pitt fan will lead Wake Forest against Panthers in ACC championship game

Dave Clawson rattled off the names of some of the greatest players in Pitt football history as if he grew up rooting for them.

Which he did.

“I grew up being a huge Pitt Panther fan,” Wake Forest’s coach said. “I would listen to games on the radio. That was the team that engaged me in college football. Matt Cavanaugh, Tony Dorsett, Dan Marino, Rickey Jackson, Hugh Green. I was a die-hard Pitt fan.”

Funny how the world turns.

This week, with Pitt on the threshold of its first outright conference championship, Wake Forest is the only team left providing resistance. And it is coached by Clawson, the son of a Pitt graduate who is a Johnstown native.

Wake Forest and Pitt will tangle Saturday night in the ACC championship game at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte N.C. Both schools rose three slots in the Associated Press Top 25 rankings Sunday — Pitt to No. 17, Wake Forest to No. 18.

“It’s a neat thrill for me, career-wise, to be able to coach against a team I grew up rooting for as a young kid,” he said.

Clawson said his dad made a point of making several trips to Pittsburgh to expose his son to the teams he adored: the Pirates, Steelers and Pitt.

“In the last eight years, that’s changed a little bit,” Clawson said, referring to his eight-year tenure as Wake Forest’s head coach. “My dad will be wearing Wake Forest gear for this one.”

Clawson’s ties to Pitt go beyond his dad. He has known Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi for almost 25 years. In the late 1990s, they traveled in the same circles with Clawson as offensive coordinator at Villanova and Narduzzi directing the defense at Rhode Island.

Clawson has had several stops in his career, and he said he also has known Pitt coordinators Mark Whipple and Randy Bates for many years. He replaced David Cutcliffe as offensive coordinator at Tennessee in 2008 and was the head coach at Bowling Green, almost intersecting with Pitt’s appearance in the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in 2013. He coached Bowling Green that year, but left for Wake Forest before the bowl game.

Pitt and Wake Forest have met only once — when Pitt clinched its first ACC Coastal title in 2018 with a 34-13 victory in Winston-Salem, N.C. — but Clawson knows what makes Narduzzi’s defense tick.

“Pat has always been what you call a press-quarters guy,” he said, referring to the defense that relies on cornerbacks pressing the wide receivers off the line of scrimmage and getting little help in pass coverage from the safeties.

“He’s had excellent corners, and he puts those guys on islands and they’re good,” Clawson said. “Because of that, the safeties can get very involved in the run game and you get eight- and nine-man boxes that you can’t block them all.

“In years when he has those really good corners, it’s tough to beat. They don’t concede anything. They make you execute. It’s a lot like Clemson in that they’re always attacking. This is not a bend-but-don’t-break defense.”

Narduzzi said defense wins championships, but there’s a good chance the ACC championship will be decided by the quarterbacks.

Pitt’s Kenny Pickett is a record-setting Heisman Trophy candidate. He’s fifth in the nation in passing yards (4,066) and is the only quarterback in the 68-year history of the ACC to throw for 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns in the first 12 games of a season.

Kenny Pickett is the only QB in ACC history with 4,000+ pass yards, 40+ pass TD in the first 12 games of a season.@ACCFootball dates back to 1953.@KennyPickett10 is the FIRST QB EVER to post those numbers. EVER.#H2P » @HeismanTrophy pic.twitter.com/nUmWQs0KBK

— Pitt Football (@Pitt_FB) November 28, 2021

Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman is ninth in the nation with 3,711 passing yards. Plus, he has thrown 34 touchdowns.

Which team is best at lighting up a scoreboard? You be the judge. Wake Forest has scored 515 points (third in the nation), and Pitt has 514.

“I’m kind of hoping we can get a few stops. It will be hard,” Clawson said. “(Pickett) has just gotten better and better.”

Pickett and Hartman present distinct contrasts as quarterbacks. Pickett, a senior, runs a drop-back, pro-style offense. Hartman, a sophomore, has become adept at RPOs (the run-pass option attack that led Western Michigan to victory against Pitt). Also, he has mastered the “hold-mesh” technique in which he takes a few steps toward the line of scrimmage while holding the football in the belly of the running back.

“He has more time to decide, ‘Am I going to hand off to this running back or am I going to throw it?’ ” Narduzzi said.

Pitt handled it in 2018, but Hartman has added a twist to it.

“The quarterback will come off that thing and throw a shoulder into a defensive end. It’s like ‘Golly,’ ” Pitt’s coach said. “They do what they do, and they perfect it and that’s why they are where they are.”