The biggest difference of the Pitt football team on the field is the defense. They play with passion, energy, and so much more confidence.

The biggest difference that is occurring for this team overall is their belief that they can and will win the game. That one bad thing is not the herald of finding a way to lose.

The credit to Head Coach Pat Narduzzi and the coaching staff is that they have recognized when the players start to slip into that, “well, here we go again,” moment — and stomped it.

What he won’t tolerate from his team is an absence of emotion. He saw too much of that in the fourth quarter when Virginia scored to trim what had been a comfortable Pitt advantage to seven points late in the game.

“It was kind of quiet over there,” Narduzzi said of his bench. “I tried to get them cranked up. They have to have emotion. You can’t lose your emotion.”

The Panthers didn’t fold as previous Pitt teams have done after a big victory. The Panthers stood tall — or, at least, they didn’t bow their heads — in the face of an opponent trying to rally to victory.

“They got a pass on us and all of a sudden, the kids start to go, ‘Oh no. Here we go again,’ ” Narduzzi said. “That’s our job to make sure they don’t say that. We’re not going back that way. We’re not taking that route.”

I’ve been staring at that article and that particular passage for the past week. Because, while it is easy for a new coach to say that sort of thing, it is quite another to really affect the change. As Chad Morris is learning at SMU.

Chad Morris has turned around the offense at SMU, but he still hasn’t changed the mindset, saying the Mustangs are waiting for bad things to happen.

The 1-5 Mustangs trailed Baylor and Houston 28-21 at each halftime this year, but scored seven total points in those second halves, including being outscored 21-7 by Houston in the second half Thursday night. After the game, Morris expressed a lot of frustration.

“It’s totally amazing to me. It’s as if we’re looking for something to go negative, something to go wrong, and it tanks from there,” Morris said. “It’s been that way. It’s hard to explain as a coach. I’m very frustrated with that. We’re going to continue the process, continue the course, continue to preach our culture. We’ve got to find a way to play four quarters and understand bad things are going to happen.”

Morris felt it coming against Houston, too.

“Down 28-21 at half, they (score early in the third quarter) … They score again. And it seemed like, at that point, I made the comment to the coaches on the sideline. I said, ‘This is the point they want to tank on us. We’ve got to stay positive.’ We were unable to control the ball in the second half and couldn’t get them off the field on third down.”

This group of Pitt players has participated in their share of crazy. They have seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. They know the fanbase — us — seem to be on the verge of always saying, “here we go again,” or “how are they going to blow this.”

It hasn’t happened. Instead, this team is responding. The coaches have been getting through to them. Convincing them, that they control their own fate. That they don’t have to be involved in another Pitting.

Whether it being the defense making the plays to shut down the opponent at the end. Or the offense in the GT game making plays and doing just enough. And Chris Blewitt coming through with his own kick to do it for Pitt. Putting Pitt on the right side of the crazy.

I remember when Paul Zeise was on the Pitt football beat in the final year of the Wannstedt era and only year of the fraud. In the weekly chats he would mention from time-to-time that the mindset of the players was one that expected bad things to happen. That it needed to change — by those players graduating out.

It didn’t go away. It seemed to be passed down. Paul Chryst was not the kind of coach who could change the mindset. That isn’t something in his approach or style. In somewhere like Wisconsin that has a more positive mindset — that wasn’t/isn’t an issue — so it isn’t something he needs to address. But Pitt needed someone to change that.

Pat Narduzzi recognized it. He saw it first hand at Michigan State. He has faced it head on with the players and it is working. Amazing to see.