MORE FROM PITT TRAINING CAMP 2019: News and notes on the first practice of camp | Slideshow: Photos from the first practice | Video: Get an inside look at Pitt's first camp practice | Video: Narduzzi on the team and the season | Ask the players: Who is poised to break out this season? | Ask the players: Who are the team's leaders?

Heading into the 2019 Pitt season, the Pitt defense seems settled on the defensive line and in the secondary.

Linebacker? That’s another story.

Pitt graduated Quintin Wirginis, Elijah Zeise, and Seun Idowu off of the 2018 team. Those three accounted for a combined 66 starts in their respective careers. It’s a lot of experience to replace for this team, but Pitt linebackers coach Rob Harley remains optimistic about his unit anyway.

“I think it’s exciting,” Harley said of ushering in three new starters for the 2019 season. “We have guys that have played meaningful reps, but again the guys that played the most reps last year are guys that are gone, so I think it’s exciting. It gets new blood, different types of players and I think it’s an exciting time and competition breeds all sorts of good things, so it’s going to be fun.”

While Pitt loses all three starters, there is still starting experience hanging around the linebackers room. Saleem Brightwell was the team’s starting middle linebacker during the 2017 season. Elias Reynolds served as the team’s middle linebacker for seven games following Wirginis’ season-ending injury last year. Chase Pine got a chance to start in the Sun Bowl. Even graduate transfer Kylan Johnson has nine career starts under his belt when he was at the University of Florida.

Experienced? Yes, but still an unproven unit overall.

“We want competition at every position, and if I had to pick the position where there's more competition than ever, I would say it's at linebacker,” Pat Narduzzi said in his first press conference of the 2019 season. ”You've got Saleem Brightwell and Elias Reynolds. Both those guys have started at the Mike linebacker before, and then you've got Chase Pine, who's also started against Stanford, so there's a lot of guys that have started different games at different positions, so there's a lot of competition at that linebacker spot.”

In addition to the names mentioned, there’s another name that made some noise this spring and that’s junior Phil Campbell. He played safety for the first two years of his career, but made the move to linebacker in the spring. Campbell has bulked up to 220 pounds, and Harley thinks he’s fully committed to competing as a linebacker now.

“I think he’s done a great job in the offseason,” Harley said of Campbell’s transition. “I think he’s committed to playing with us at our position and I think he’s done a phenomenal job. I think Coach (Dave) Andrews and his staff has done a wonderful job with him and getting him ready to play one step closer to football. So I think he’s ready to go.”

For Campbell’s part, he’s excited about playing linebacker. “I do for sure,” he said if he felt like a linebacker now. “Naturally all my life I kind of played safety and linebacker, so it wasn’t too much of a big switch for me. I’m really happy with the change though.”

The main thing with the linebacker competition seems to be positional versatility. Guys like Saleem Brightwell and Kylan Johnson could play multiple spots in Pitt’s 4-3 alignment and depending on where they end up could impact the two-deep depth chart this upcoming season.

“We started off the spring with Phil Campbell, who did an outstanding job in the spring to the field, but then Phil played in the boundary, so we're going to move those guys around because we're ultimately always going to look to see how we can get our three best linebackers on the field,” Narduzzi said. “If one goes down, we're not necessarily going to put his backup in. We may take a guy from the money position and move him to the field or vice versa.

Added Narduzzi, “We’re always going to try to get our best three players on the field, regardless of their position.”

As for the competition right now, Brightwell, Campbell, Pine, Johnson, and Reynolds are certainly involved. Harley said he thinks there are a few more actually in the race for playing time.

“I would say it’s six to eight (guys) and you’re talking about playing time,” Harley explained. “You’re talking about starting jobs, competing for playing time and it’s way early to talk about whose where, but I don’t know if we had that many guys ever since we’ve been here, so it’s that time right now.”