Rain changed Saturday night at Pitt Stadium into a simple test: who could keep moving the ball on the ground when the weather made everything else harder.
Pitt’s answer came from a freshman who wasn’t supposed to be this far along yet. Damon Ferguson Jr. ran for 59 yards and a touchdown, and he became the only Pitt player to score in each of the team’s first two games. He was doing it in place of returning starter Ja’Kyrian Turner, and he was doing it after arriving on campus in June, months behind the recruiting timeline that has most freshmen in school by January.
For a running back, that kind of delay can be a real obstacle. The position lives on feel, timing and repetition. Ferguson had to build all of that late, while classmates were already deep into the spring.
“I kind of felt like I was playing catch up, but not really,” Ferguson said. “Some of the guys there, they've been there since December and January, so they had a little bit more knowledge on what to do. When I saw that I wasn't really understanding the plays, it was kind of hurting me inside.”
Instead of letting that frustration sit, he attacked the room. Ferguson said Turner helped him three days a week as they broke down the offense together, the same sort of path Turner had taken a year earlier behind Desmond Reid. The rest of the backs stayed after practice too, running through installs until the language started to stick.
By the second or third week of fall camp, Ferguson said the offense was no longer moving too fast for him. The snippets of OTAs he had picked up before enrolling began to click, and the play calls that once felt foreign started to make sense.
Offensive coordinator Kade Bell saw that progress show up in a different way once the pads came on. Some players slow down when contact is real. Ferguson didn’t.
“There are some guys that when there's two or three people there when you're making a cut they slow down without pads on, and there are some kids that just don't slow down,” Bell said. “From the first day we put pads on, Ferg is that kid.
He's not afraid. It's not too big for him.
He plays like he's supposed to play at running back.”
Ferguson said he never walked into the fall thinking about a specific role. He just wanted a way onto the field, even if that meant special teams. That patience mattered on Saturday, because he didn’t get much warning before his number was called.
“To be honest, I don't know what went through my head. I just know coach called my name and I was like, here's my chance,” Ferguson said.
He made the most of it in four quarters of hard running through a monsoon, taking on a physical Big 12 front and still finding room. His teammates in the running back room said they weren’t shocked, only relieved to see the work show up in a game that demanded it.
Pat Narduzzi liked what he saw, even if the freshman still had the usual first-year wrinkles.
“I’m sure he made some mistakes, bounced some runs when he shouldn't, freshman mistakes,” Narduzzi said. “But I thought he did a nice job.
That one run, that's a big-time run. Good day by Damon.”
Ferguson’s touchdown, like a lot of his night, came with him pointing the credit elsewhere. He made sure the people in front of him got the praise.
“It was my O-line,” Ferguson said. “Without them guys, without them giving me the extra push I wouldn't have been able to get in there. So I thank my O-line for that one.”
That’s been the story of his rapid climb: late arrival, extra work, and no wasted time once he finally got his chance. He didn’t start with the advantage most freshmen get. He built his way into it, three days a week, one install at a time.
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