Every college football player with any kind of productivity during one season will inevitably have opportunities to transfer elsewhere. But Rodney Hammond said there were three things that brought him back to Pitt for the 2024 season.
“My brothers, the coaches and what happened last year,” Hammond said during the first week of spring camp.
What happened last year, of course, was the worst Pitt season in a quarter-century, a season that ended with a 3-9 record resulting from some of the most consistently poor performances the program has shown in a long time. Previous Pitt teams had bad games here and there; last year’s Pitt team only occasionally had a good game or two.
And that’s not how Hammond intended to leave his time with the Panthers.
“I could say we didn’t want to leave business unfinished. A lot of us didn’t want to just leave with that bad rep on our names. You can’t just go out there 3-9 and then when stuff gets tough, you leave. No. I’m not that type of person. And I believe everybody else that came back, they’re not that type of people. When stuff gets bad, we’re going to stay down until we come up.”
“Last year definitely wasn’t great,” senior tight end Gavin Bartholomew said, “but I want to leave my name on a good season, on a good note, with a great team, and I think this year we have a tremendous team.”
DeShields, Hammond and Bartholomew aren’t exactly accustomed to seasons like Pitt had last year. DeShields was a freshman in 2020, while Hammond and Bartholomew joined him a year later, putting all three on the team when the Panthers won the ACC Championship Game against Wake Forest and appeared in the Peach Bowl.
The next year, DeShields, Hammond and Bartholomew experienced a nine-win season and a victory in the Sun Bowl.
So it was a rather stark fall to drop from 20 wins in two seasons to just three last year, and while there’s a certain level of motivation that comes from wanting to repeat a successful season like 2021, DeShields said that the drive from 2023 might be even stronger.
“I would say coming out of the season we just got done with, it will give you a lot of motivation. Just the anger. Just being 3-9; we shouldn’t have been 3-9. We were great team last year, I felt. So just knowing your worth and knowing how good you can be when you put all the work in. That will give you motivation to get better.”
For his part, Hammond took 2023’s personally.
“We were 3-9; of course I’m disappointed in myself, because there’s no way I’m on a team and let that happen,” he said. “I’m always going to be disappointed in myself. If my team doesn’t finish, I’m going to be disappointed in me and everybody else in the room.”
The question now is how the Panthers bounce back. The only other time a Pat Narduzzi-led Pitt team suffered a losing record was 2017, when the Panthers went 5-7. They responded by winning the ACC Coastal Division the following season.
This year, there are no divisions to win, but this year’s Pitt team has similar motivations.
"I’m trying to get to the ACC championship and then the national championship, honestly,” DeShields said this week. “Last year, it really hurt. That’s a chest pain right there, just thinking about it and watching the film, seeing all the things that you did wrong and just wanting to fix it right then and there. But you can’t: you have to wait a whole another year. Just remembering that and going into each practice trying to get three-percent better. That’s it.”
Donovan McMillon joined the Pitt roster last year as a transfer from Florida. He came looking to build on the 20 wins over the previous two seasons instead of what he got in his first year with the Panthers.
Ever the optimist, though, McMillon is excited about what 2024 has in store for Pitt.
“Coach was talking about how we all have a bad taste in our mouth from last season, but the vibe right now is so exciting - like it’s a new beginning. Not just for offense with new coaches, new players coming in, new scheme; just defensively, we brought some new guys in, we have new leaders throughout everywhere, both vocal and just putting their heads down and working. But everyone’s coming in really excited and there’s just a new vibe to it.”
“It’s just confidence,” Javon McIntyre, McMillon’s partner at safety, said. “We walk in this building and everybody has confidence that we’re not a 3-9 team. We know that. Last year, we did not play up to our standard at all. We’re built on those pillars back there - attitude, effort, toughness, knowledge - and I feel like we didn’t have any of those pillars last year. So we’re trying to incorporate those pillars to our game, and when we do that, we’re going to have the result we want to have with with the work we put in.”
