After one year of changing formats, the draft is back.
Pat Narduzzi said Tuesday that Pitt’s Blue-Gold Game on Saturday will feature two teams that are drafted by the players, returning to a format that Narduzzi has favored since he took over the Panthers prior to the 2015 season.
When Narduzzi arrived at Pitt, he brought the idea from Michigan State, where he had been defensive coordinator under Mark Dantonio. In the format, the coordinators start by drafting the assistant coaches and the assistant coaches then draft the seniors.
On draft day, the seniors - with some guidance from the assistant coaches - draft the teams. There’s strategy involved, as the drafting happens by position, with one team “opening” a position and then all of the players at that position getting drafted to finish the round.
Narduzzi used the draft format every year from 2015-19 and 2021-22 - there was no spring game in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic - but last year he switched things up. Rather than having the players draft rosters for the Blue and Gold teams, Narduzzi turned to a more traditional offense-vs.-defense format.
The advantage of that approach was that it kept units together, so the players who had been working next to each other all spring - on the offensive line, for instance - could have some continuity in the spring game, as opposed to the draft format, which mixed and matched first, second and third-team players.
“I really didn’t want to do it a year ago,” Narduzzi said Tuesday. “I don’t want to say I got talked into it; sometimes you get talked into it. ‘We have to do it this way, it’s better’ - all that baloney. Okay. And that’s the first year I’ve done it like that; maybe it’s a soft way of doing it, I guess. Maybe that’s all part of the toughness: the drafting is harder. It makes it harder on the offense, defense. Maybe it’s not as clean a scrimmage as you’d like it to be, because of maybe some things are mixed up. But we’ll have our own little flavor this year to make it better. We’ll show you that tomorrow.”
Narduzzi did allow that one adjustment could be with the drafting of the offensive linemen, and that the coaches are considering drafting the line as a unit rather than individual players.
Defensive end Nate Matlack, who transferred to Pitt from Kansas State this offseason, is looking forward to the draft.
“Obviously, this is my first spring, but I’ve heard a lot of guys talking about the draft that we’re going to have for the spring game, and I’m super excited for that because, where I came from, we didn’t have a spring game ever, so I’m not used to that,” Matlack said Tuesday. “But yeah, I’ve heard a lot of excitement in the locker room of guys talking about the draft and talking about who’s going to get picked, who’s going to be on what team. I think there’s an excitement about it.”
Narduzzi said he has picked up on the excitement from the players as well.
“I was going to do a draft anyway, but it was nice in the last two weeks, the kids started thinking about it like, ‘Coach, we’re doing a draft, right?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, we’re doing a draft.’ They want it, too, but I’m not doing what they want; I’m doing what we think is best for the team and I think that’s absolutely the best for the team.”
The draft will start at noon, and while there is strategy involved in choosing which position and which player to start with, Matlack has an idea on who he would take first overall.
“That’s hard, because I was talking to Gavin (Bartholomew) the other day and they said they go by position. But if I was going to pick someone first on the defense, I’d probably go with the guy that makes the most plays, and I’d say Cruce (Brookins). Cruce has been making a ton of plays in the spring and he’s just a dog on the field, so I’d 100% draft him.”
As for an offensive player to draft first, Matlack has an idea there, too.
“I feel like you have to go with Gavin. He’s just a dynamic guy. He can do a lot of different things, so I’d go with him.”
The Blue-Gold Game will be held at Acrisure Stadium on Saturday at 2 pm.
