Pitt LB Cam Lindsey out for season with knee injury

Narduzzi broke the news at his Wednesday media session, and the beat writers in the room got it out right away.

Christopher Carter

@CarterCritiques

Pat Narduzzi just told us that #Pitt LB Cameron Lindsey is out for the year.

The injury came late in Saturday's game. Lindsey went down in the 4th quarter grabbing at his knee, and trainers looked at him before he was helped to the locker room. The Miami game was already out of reach, so on the night it looked like 1 more bruise in a blowout. On Wednesday it turned into a season-ending one.

Chris Peak

@PantherLair

Pitt linebacker Cam Lindsey is out for the season, Pat Narduzzi just announced. Lindsey hurt his knee in the Panthers’ loss at Miami on Saturday.

This one hurts beyond the depth chart. Lindsey is a hometown kid, an Aliquippa outside linebacker who stayed home and committed to Pitt. Aliquippa is about as Western PA as football gets, and keeping that kind of player in the city is exactly the recruiting pitch Narduzzi has been making for a decade. This season Lindsey was the backup to Purdue transfer Alex Sanford Jr. at the money linebacker spot, which is the hybrid position in Narduzzi's defense that has to cover and also hold up against the run.

Losing a backup sounds survivable until you look at how Pitt's season has gone. Starting QB Mason Heintschel tore his ACL on October 2 and is out for the year, leaving Holden Geriner and Corey Dailey to split the job. The Panthers were 5-0 at one point. They're 5-3 now, 2-3 in the ACC, and they've lost 3 straight, with the Miami beatdown the ugliest of them.

Narduzzi isn't pretending about where this is going either. He said this week the ACC title is "probably out of reach, but who knows," and that his only focus is Georgia Tech. That's coach-speak for: just win a game. Every linebacker who goes down makes that harder for a defense that just gave up 52.

Next up is Georgia Tech at home on Halloween night, and Lindsey had already been ruled out of it on the ACC availability report before Narduzzi said anything. The Yellow Jackets are 2-5 and in free fall, having won just 2 of their last 12 games, so there's no better spot on the schedule for Pitt to end the skid. If the Panthers can't beat this Tech team with a banged-up two-deep, the question stops being about the ACC and becomes whether they make a bowl game at all.