PITTSBURGH -- Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi walks across the field to get a closer look at his quarterbacks. On this open date practice the week before the Notre Dame game, the Panthers are not in full pads, but they are playing tempo offense like always.
He points out Mason Heintschel.
"Look at the urgency he has when he drops back," Narduzzi said.
Every pass is delivered on time and on target, thrown with the authority of a veteran.
But Heintschel is far from a veteran. He is an 18-year-old true freshman with five career college starts. Heintschel also happens to be 5-0 and perhaps the player who will have the most influence on where Pitt's season goes.
No. 22 Pitt is 7-2 and has a chance to put a hammer to the College Football Playoff chances of their final three regular-season opponents while elevating their own, starting Saturday against No. 9 Notre Dame, with "College GameDay" in attendance. The Panthers will then face No. 16 Georgia Tech and No. 15 Miami with ACC championship hopes for all three teams on the line.
When Narduzzi made the decision to bench Eli Holstein after a 2-2 start and play Heintschel, he had no idea how things would go. He knew his team needed a jump start after two close losses to West Virginia and Louisville -- both games in which Pitt blew double-digit leads.
"Who knows? We could be 0-5. We see a lot of guys practice good and not show up when the lights go on. He shows up when the lights go on," Narduzzi said.
Pitt is one of the hottest teams in the country, thanks to an unlikely star from an unlikely place.
MASON HEINTSCHEL HAS an affinity for the now-famous Michael Jordan meme.
"I took that personally?" he asked with a smile. "I think about that all the time. That portrays me."
For the bulk of his life, Heintschel has taken slights, well, personally, and used them as motivation. Playing basketball with his three older siblings and getting bullied? No problem. He found a crafty way to win.
Playing quarterback at a high school without a winning track record? No problem. He found a way to turn the program around. Getting only one Power 4 offer to play in college? Great. He took it and spent every waking moment showing the football world what it missed.
"It is something that has helped shape who I am today," Heintschel said. "It's tough to get overlooked. But when you have that motivation and that extra drive to prove those people wrong that didn't recruit you or didn't want to contact you, it helps add a little extra push to try to be as good as you possibly can be."
Not many Power 4 football prospects come from Clay High School in Oregon, Ohio, where Heintschel played despite opportunities to go to bigger, more established high school football programs. He wanted to stay loyal to the school and his teammates. He wanted to elevate a downtrodden program.
Pitt had Heintschel on its board of quarterback prospects for the class of 2025, based in part on his highlight tape, which showed him making plays as a scrambler. Narduzzi was intrigued but wanted to see more. So offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Kade Bell cut a 300-play highlight reel, filled with clips that showed the way he handled the pocket and the way he threw.
"He was throwing lasers. I watched about 10 of those plays, and I was like, 'Holy cow,'" Narduzzi said. "We knew he was special from that point and wanted to make sure that tape didn't get out."
At the time, Heintschel had just finished his junior year in high school, earning conference Offensive Player of the Year honors after throwing for over 3,000 yards and 33 touchdowns. Yet he only had a few Group of 5 offers. Nearby Toledo offered him first.
Pitt offered him in early 2024 -- his only Power 4 offer -- and after his visit that March, he committed.
Heintschel was even better his senior year in high school, taking Clay to its first league title in 42 years, while completing nearly 70% of his passes for 2,444 yards and 35 touchdowns and adding 770 yards and six touchdowns rushing.
As often happens late in the recruiting process, other Power 4 schools got wise. Heintschel got interest from bigger schools, and even received attention from Michigan, where his dad, Eric, played baseball and the Heintschels had season tickets. But sticking to his commitment to Pitt was, Heintschel said, "an easy decision." The coaches there believed in him before everybody else, and he would stay loyal to them.
Heintschel graduated early and joined Pitt for bowl practices in Detroit against Toledo, the team that gave him his first offer. He ran some plays on the scout team and immediately turned heads.
"When you recruit a kid from a smaller school, you are worried about the speed of the game. Does it take him a while?" Bell said. "But watching him on the scout team, he played fast. He played confident and aggressive."
Pitt had a returning starter in Holstein for the 2025 season, then added veteran Cole Gonzales through the transfer portal to serve as the backup. The plan was for Heintschel to learn the offense, develop and likely redshirt.
The plan changed after the Louisville loss.
Narduzzi and Bell agreed it would be best to see what Heintschel could do. They had seen him put in the work since January, when Heintschel was in the Pitt football building as early and as often as possible, meeting with assistant quarterbacks coach Jacob Floyd to begin learning the offense while Bell was on the road recruiting.
When spring practice rolled around, Bell said Heintschel was prepared to run the entire offense. Heintschel reminded Narduzzi of Kenny Pickett, who led Pitt to the 2021 ACC title and became a first-round pick in 2022.
The work continued into the fall, making both coaches comfortable with the decision to start him against Boston College.
"When I found out that was going to be my time to step up, I was just like, 'All right, you can't look back now,'" Heintschel said. "You've got to go make the most of your opportunity."
On his first series as the starting quarterback, Heintschel led Pitt on an 11-play, 76-yard drive that ended with his first touchdown pass -- a 14-yard score to Justin Holmes. The drive showcased what Pitt coaches saw on the 300-play high school reel Bell made: efficient plays, third-down conversions, pocket awareness, a strong arm -- and yes, scrambling ability.
Heintschel went 30-of-41 for 323 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions in the 48-7 win, becoming the first ACC true freshman with 300 passing yards and four touchdown passes in his first career start since Deshaun Watson in 2014.
"A true freshman doesn't come in and complete 70 percent of his passes," Bell said. "I've never seen a freshman like this. It's pretty impressive."
Next up: A road trip to then-ranked Florida State. Heintschel threw his first two interceptions of the season on back-to-back drives, allowing the Seminoles to take the lead heading into halftime. But Heintschel rallied Pitt from two second-half deficits to win 34-31 as he completed 70% of his passes and threw for over 300 yards again, with a career-high 64 yards rushing. Pitt had a star in the making.
Two games later against NC State, he set a Pitt freshman single-game passing record with 423 yards and three touchdowns.
It has not all been perfect. Syracuse forced Pitt out of its comfort zone and into third-and-longs for the bulk of the day. And Heintschel had two fumbles and two interceptions against Stanford -- three inside the red zone -- but the Panthers prevailed in both games.
"He thinks he can make every play, and that's great," Narduzzi said. "You might be able to make the play one time, but then the next time, they might get you and that one may end up getting us all. We can't have those hiccups in the last few games. Certainly not in the next one."
THERE IS A giant boulder that sits off to the side of the Pitt practice fields with two hammers placed on top. Once practice wraps and Narduzzi finishes addressing his team, he picks one position group of players and tells them they can have their turn smashing the rock.
The boulder has been there for only about six weeks. After the loss to Louisville, Narduzzi showed his team a short video of a man hammering a rock until it finally cracked. Persistence, he said, was key for the Panthers to regroup and turn around their season.
To hammer home that message, Narduzzi asked Chris LaSala, associate athletic director for football administration, to find him a rock. Not just any rock, mind you. A really, really big one that would be easy to spot from anywhere on the field. LaSala called landscaping places he knew around town and went on a mission. He took photos of rocks to send to Narduzzi. They finally settled on a 3,000-pound boulder that was delivered and driven by forklift across the practice fields to the spot where it now rests.
Everyone at Pitt is aware that Notre Dame has the best defense it will face, especially adept at stopping the run. Heintschel loves it when the ball is in his hands, and he will have to make plays for Pitt to have any chance to win. The question is whether he can keep making all those plays as the degree of difficulty increases in the final three games.
That is where Narduzzi, Heintschel and the rest of the team keep coming back to that rock, eager to keep chipping away until they get their breakthrough.
"I think we can play with anybody in the country," Heintschel said. "That's why these next three weeks are going to be a really fun time for us. These are great teams, but we have a great team here, too. I'm excited to go show what we can do."