For Addison Copeland, getting a new receivers coach was more like getting his old receivers coach.

The former three-star prospect from Buffalo signed with Pitt in December after committing over the summer. He decision to pick the Panthers was motivated, at least in part, by his experience at the coaching staff’s prospect camp in June, when he spent an afternoon being coached by receivers coach Brennan Marion.

Marion was still on Pitt’s staff when Copeland signed in December, but by the time the Panthers concluded their appearance in the Chick Fil-A Peach Bowl, Marion had been linked to the open receivers job at Texas - a position he ultimately took a little more than a week before Copeland and Pitt’s other early enrollees were set to arrive on campus.

So Copeland came to Pittsburgh without a position coach, and he spent the first few weeks of his college career working under those conditions. Then, at the end of January, Pat Narduzzi hired Rutgers receivers coach Tiquan Underwood, and Copeland remembers how he heard that news.

“It was crazy because there was talk about who the receivers coach was going to be, and I remember one day I came in for lift and I walked up the stairs and I heard the voice but I didn’t see the box (haircut),” Copeland said. [Underwood’s voice] was the only way I could identify him without seeing him. So I looked up and he was shaking people’s hands and he saw me, and we had the little, you know, ‘two best buds see each other’…it was great. It was cool. I think that was one of the best moments so far.”

Copeland and Underwood have a history. Copeland committed to Rutgers in September 2020 when Underwood was the receivers coach for the Scarlet Knights. Underwood, himself a former Rutgers receiver who played in the NFL, had a strong relationship with Copeland in the recruiting process even after Copeland decommitted from the Scarlet Knights last January.

“The way that it played out couldn’t have been better,” Copeland said. “Me and Coach Underwood have been tight for the past three or four years. He was the reason I had committed to Rutgers at one point in time, so me and him, we’re tapped in.”

That strong relationship wasn’t unique; when he met the media in Pittsburgh for the first time, Underwood said that he thought honesty and sincerity were key to being an effective coach and recruiter, and he plans to follow that approach as he gets to know the Panthers’ receiver room.

“I’m very open, very direct,” Underwood said when he met the media in Pittsburgh for the first time. “I just try to be real and honest with the players, and just try to build those relationships, because if you have a strong relationship with somebody, it’s open, it’s honest and the player will really play for you that way when they know that you care and they begin to trust you.”

For his part, Copeland is already sold on his new position coach.

“We move the same. He keeps it 100 percent real. That’s how I like to keep things. He’s been there and done everything that I want to do, so that’s another reason. Anybody who can really help me, that’s who I’m cool with. That’s who I surround myself with."