In his own words, Jordan Addison would describe his 2020 season as ‘good’, not great. However you want to describe it, he was electric from the moment he stepped on the field this past season for the Pitt offense. Addison racked up 60 receptions for 666 yards and four touchdowns, all team-highs in 2020.

He earned spots on three freshmen All-American teams and was runner-up for the ACC Rookie of the Year award. It may or may not have been great, but his 2020 season certainly caught a lot of attention.

As Addison is going through his first full session of spring football, the goal is to be great in 2021. He wants to eliminate drops - he estimates he had ten a year ago. He wants to catch more touchdowns, and his ultimate goal: a 1,000-yard season, which would be the first for this program since Tyler Boyd did it in 2014.

Addison is his own toughest critic, but he says that is just the way he is wired.

“I feel like you’ve got to be hard on yourself and you’ve got to believe in yourself at all times,” he told reporters on Thursday. “So that’s just what motivates me.”

Addison wants to learn more in his second season. He hopes to be able to play all the receiver spots this year and he’s put an emphasis on learning the entire playbook so he can be moved around more in 2021.

“Going into my second season I think I need to work on knowing the whole offense,” he said. “Because my freshman year I just knew what I was doing, now I want to know what everyone is doing so I know the spacing, timing, and where the ball is going to be and things like that.”

Addison will have a new voice guiding his development in his second season with the Panthers. Chris Beatty left his position as Pitt’s wide receivers coach to take a job with the Los Angeles Chargers. He has since been replaced by Western Pennsylvania native Brennan Marion, who has brought a spark of energy to the program since his arrival.

Addison called Beatty’s departure a shock at the time, but is happy he now can take information from two different coaches.

“The adjustment hasn’t been too big,” Addison said of working with Marion this spring. “We all just want to come in here and work. We learned from Coach Beatty and we’re taking that and now we’re learning from Coach Marion, so we’ve just been keep getting knowledge everywhere.”

Addison is the featured name in Pitt’s wide receiver room at the moment, but the group does return plenty of experience. Taysir Mack, Shocky Jacques-Louis, and Jared Wayne all caught at least 20 passes a year ago. Tre Tipton has been around the program since 2015, and Jaylon Barden is a promising young player that came in with Addison in the 2020 recruiting class.

The competition for snaps has been good according to Addison, and he believes they are all pushing one another to be better.

“We push each other everyday,” the sophomore receiver explained. “So I think with everybody coming back and the knowledge that we have now, it helps even the younger guys because we get to teach them and everybody just continues to compete everyday.”

Addison has a cool confidence about him, yet he is not a flashy player, nor a talkative one either. He lets what happens on the field speak for itself. As a sophomore, he already understands that opposing teams double-teaming him could free up a teammate. He’s already mentoring some of the receivers younger than him, like early enrollee Myles Alson.

Still, aside from showing those leadership qualities, Addison is a competitor and sometimes that can break his usually cool demeanor. He was asked which of the Pitt defensive backs has been giving him the most trouble this spring, and he was unable come up with one.

“I have to think about that one,” Addison said with a slight grin. “I’m not sure right now.”