In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re ringing in the new year with a look at a strong finish to 2020, some key additions to the roster, hoops postponements, scholarship questions and more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
The right foot
Welcome to 2021!
This is the first 3-2-1 Column of the new year, so everything feels fresh and new and reborn. But before we jump into the future, I can’t help but look back, just for a minute or two at how we got to this point.
Specifically, I’m thinking about the last two months. Because if you turn the clock back to Pitt’s loss to Notre Dame on Oct. 24, the timeline lays out in a pretty interesting way.
A pretty positive way.
11/7/2020 - Pitt bounced back from the Notre Dame loss to blow out Florida State 41-17 at Doak Campbell Stadium. And the Panthers didn’t just blow out the Seminoles: they dug themselves an early hole and then battled back to get a much-needed win.
11/21/2020 - After an unexpected week off due to COVID issues, Pitt took the field against Virginia Tech with a considerably short-handed roster. 16 players were out that day at Heinz Field, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way they played: missing three starting offensive linemen, their leading receiver and their leading tackler, the Panthers trounced Virginia Tech 47-14.
11/28/2020 - Pitt lost to Clemson in ugly, blowout fashion. Not a good day for the Panthers.
11/29/2020 - Pitt flipped eastern Pa. tight end Gavin Bartholomew from Buffalo. No, flipping a MAC commit isn’t going to get anybody to throw a parade, but Bartholomew looks like a real under-the-radar steal at a position of need.
12/1/2020 - Pitt flipped another commit: this time it was Michigan offensive linemen Kyle Fugedi, who had been committed to Miami (Oh.) but saw his recruitment pick up during his senior season.
12/4/2020 - In the biggest commitment of the offseason, Pitt landed four-star linebacker/defensive end Naquan Brown. A standout in Virginia who committed to LSU over the summer, Brown publicly decommitted from the Tigers on Thursday Dec. 3 and announced for the Panthers the next day, giving the recruiting class a major boost of star power.
12/10/2020 - Pitt closed the regular season with a trip to Georgia Tech, and after a few early stumbles, the Panthers’ offense got rolling with - gasp - an effective rushing attack as Vincent Davis put in the best performance by a Pitt running back since 2017.
12/15/2020 - Kenny Pickett announced he was returning to Pitt for one more season, answering a huge question the Panthers were expecting to face in 2021 - Who will be the starting quarterback? - and bringing some stability to the offense for the coming year.
12/16/2020 - Pitt signed all 20 commitments it expected to sign, including Atlanta cornerback Khalil Anderson, who was under late pressure from Miami and Penn State, among others. The result was a class that sat firmly inside the top 25 nationally on Signing Day.
12/16/2020 - Pitt added one more commitment to the class on Signing Day in three-star cornerback Tamarion Crumpley, bringing even more depth and talent to an already deep and talented class of defensive backs.
12/24/2020 - The 2021 roster got another boost when Maryland offensive lineman Marcus Minor announced that he would be transferring to Pitt for at least one season. A former four-star prospect, Minor was a multi-year starter with the Terrapins and could play guard or tackle.
12/25/2020 - Pitt added another piece to the 2021 recruiting class in Florida safety Phillip O’Brien, who flipped to the Panthers after being committed to Auburn since last February. Rather shockingly rated as the No. 90 prospect in the state of Florida, O’Brien at one point held offers from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, LSU, Louisville, Maryland, Miami, Michigan, Minnesota, Ole Miss, Missouri, Nebraska, N.C. State, Oregon, Penn State, Rutgers, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia. He’s planning to enroll early, too, making him quite the grab on Christmas day.
12/29/2020 - Pitt brought in another former four-star prospect as a transfer, and this one was from closer to home: M.J. Devonshire, the Aliquippa standout who went to Kentucky two years ago and entered the transfer portal this offseason. It’s never a bad thing when a WPIAL star comes home, and Devonshire adds even more talent to the secondary for the next few seasons.
12/30/2020 - Phil Campbell announced he was returning for one more season, too, bringing another veteran presence to Pitt’s defense.
I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty strong run from the beginning of November through the end of December, with the Clemson game really being the only negative along the way. Momentum can always run out, but Pitt is entering 2021 with a decent amount of it.
Mission: Accomplished
Every coaching staff has a few specific goals for a recruiting class. Usually those goals involve stocking up at a certain position or two, with an eye on adding numbers to areas where the roster has grown thin.
For the Pitt coaching staff, the focus with the 2021 recruiting class was on bringing in a bunch of defensive backs and offensive linemen. We’ll talk about the linemen in a second, but let’s look at the additions to the secondary this offseason.
It started with recruiting, and Pitt went into Signing Day two weeks ago holding commitments from four defensive backs. That’s a solid haul; if you can sign four quality DB’s in one class, you did pretty well, and the four guys Pitt had commitments from - cornerbacks Khalil Anderson and Noah Biglow, safeties Stephon Hall and Javon McIntyre - look like quality players.
But that was just the start. On Signing Day, Pitt landed a commitment and signing from Cincinnati three-star cornerback Tamarion Crumpley. Then, on Christmas, the Panthers grabbed Florida safety Phillip O’Brien as a flip from Auburn.
Now the class of four had blossomed to six and the talent level only grew.
The next step, of course, was getting M.J. Devonshire after he entered the transfer portal. I’ll be honest: when Devonshire announced that he was transferring, I had my doubts about Pitt’s chances. I assumed West Virginia or Penn State would be the choice, and those schools were involved.
But as the first week of Devonshire’s second recruitment progressed, it looked more and more like Pitt was going to have a real shot at him, and sure enough, he picked the Panthers.
That adds one more talented player to the mix, and in pretty short order, the coaches have really turned around the state of the defensive backs. That was one of our key talking points prior to the season - the lack of experienced depth in the secondary - and while there’s still not a ton of experience after the top four or five guys, the talent level has increased pretty considerably.
Pitt entered the 2020 season with some holes in the defensive backfield; I don’t have the same feeling about the state of things entering 2021. The young players will need to get experience, but with Damarri Mathis returning, with Marquis Williams, A.J. Woods, Erick Hallett and Brandon Hill getting a ton of playing time this past season, with Devonshire transferring in and a bunch of really good prospects joining the team over the next six months, the back end of Pitt’s defense looks pretty encouraging.
Mission: Accomplished, pt. 2
Now let’s talk about the offensive line, where Pitt pulled off something similar to what it did in the secondary.
The Panthers’ offensive line has been a question mark for a long time. At least the last two seasons, when the line went from a unit that could run-block really well (in 2018) to a unit that could pass-block okay but couldn’t run-block at all.
Over the last two seasons, Pitt’s coaches have tried to find answers in a variety of ways, but not much of it has worked. And recruiting hasn’t provided many answers, with two high-school line prospects signed in 2018, three in 2019 and two in last year’s class.
So the class of 2021 needed a big influx of numbers and talent on the line, and it looks like that mission was accomplished. At one point a week or two before Signing Day, Pitt had six offensive linemen committed, and while two of those six didn’t sign with the Panthers, the other four did, including a pair of guys named Terrence (Enos and Rankl) who look really promising, a lineman from Michigan who had a big senior season and a converted former tight end who’s two years older than every other freshman.
It was a good and much-needed haul to replenish the depth on the line and build for the future. Then Pitt took another step to help the 2021 roster by landing Marcus Minor, a former four-star prospect who left Maryland as a transfer this offseason.
With Minor on board, I think there are some real reasons for optimism with the offensive line next season.
Yes, Pitt is starting off with having to replace two starters in center Jimmy Morrissey and left guard Bryce Hargrove. I think Minor steps into the left guard job, so that’s one spot taken care of. At center, the Panthers could go with Owen Drexel (the backup in 2020) or Jake Kradel (who has practiced there before). And then the other three spots have a lot of options.
Matt Goncalves and Gabe Houy have both played guard and tackle, so they’ve got versatility. Carter Warren and Carson Van Lynn have only played tackle (other than Van Lynn lining up at tight end as an extra lineman), so they’re possibly limited to those spots. But with those two plus Goncalves and Houy as options at tackle, Minor, Goncalves, Houy and Kradel as options at guard and Kradel and Drexel as options at center, you can see the bevy of possibilities.
If it were me, I would built it left to right: start with Goncalves at left tackle and Minor at left guard, ascertain whether Drexel or Kradel is the better option at center and then place your right guard and right tackle accordingly.
I’m not going to call the offensive line a position of strength or anything like that, but I do like how that unit appears to be coming together. There’s potential for some considerable improvement over where it was this past season, and I think 2021 has a chance to be the best all-around offensive Pitt has had since 2016.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
Do we appreciate how good these guys were?
History was made this week when various major outlets and entities around the country announced their All-America teams.
The Associated Press, Sporting News, Football Writers Association of America and the American Football Coaches Association all announced their postseason selections, and every one of them included a Pitt player on their first teams.
Of course, we’re talking about Rashad Weaver and Patrick Jones. The latter showed up on the Sporting News first team, while the former got on the first team for each of the other three selectors.
Three first-team selections from the major national selectors means a special designation: consensus first-team All-American. That’s Weaver, and he is now in elite company.
Only 44 players in Pitt history have earned consensus or unanimous first-team All-America status (a total of 51 selections, since a few guys made it multiple times). Weaver is the 45th player to join that list and the Panthers’ first consensus first-team All-American since Quadree Henderson in 2016.
This is something special, folks, and I wonder if we all really appreciate what Weaver and Jones did this season.
I mean, we all know that Weaver and Jones are really good players and they had really good seasons, but we got so focused on the offense and the losing streak and the one-point defeats and the lack of a running game and COVID and protocols and absences and postponements and all of the other things that made 2020 a Year Unlike Any Other - we focused on those things so much that I wonder if we have, to some extent, overlooked those two.
Jones and Weaver really were among the best in the nation. Pro Football Focus uses various metrics to evaluate a pass-rusher, and Weaver is in the top five nationally among edge rushers after he led the ACC and ranked in the top 20 nationally in sacks per game and tackles for loss per game. And Jones wasn’t far behind.
Not bad for a couple of former two-star prospects who signed with Pitt in the 2016 class.
At some point during the 2020 season, I asked in this column if Jones and Weaver, who are clearly Pitt’s best tandem of defensive ends since Greg Romeus and Jabaal Sheard, are actually a better tandem of defensive ends than Romeus and Sheard.
At the time, I thought it was a question worth considering; now, I don’t think there’s really any question about it:
Jones and Weaver are Pitt’s best defensive end tandem since Hugh Green and Rickey Jackson. That’s rarified air right there, and I think those two guys have earned it.
How many games will Pitt hoops lose?
No, I’m not talking about losing games on the court.
I’m talking about losing games off the schedule altogether. Because the biggest storyline for the Pitt basketball team this week wasn’t a game won or lost but a game postponed. Two games, actually, as Tuesday’s trip to Cameron Indoor was postponed after a positive test in Pitt’s program, and then Saturday’s game against Notre Dame got the same treatment for the same reason.
These postponements happened right around the same time that the Pitt women’s basketball team paused team activities, and its next four games have been postponed.
Welcome to 2021, which looks an awful lot like 2020.
This is just how things are these days: no games are guaranteed, and they can be postponed or canceled at any time. The women’s team was scheduled to host Boston College on Thursday, but the game was postponed that morning.
Similarly, the men’s game against Duke was postponed the day before it was supposed to happen, and that’s what we’re going to have to deal with all season long.
Pretty much until tipoff on any given night, the possibility will always exist that it can get called.
Now, with two games postponed, Pitt is getting closer to losing games altogether. The ACC built the conference schedule with room to reschedule postponed games, but there’s only so much available space on the calendar. The Panthers don’t have anything scheduled until next Saturday - there was a week off between the Notre Dame game on Jan. 2 and a home game against Florida State on Jan. 9 - but Duke and Notre Dame both play midweek games, so it would seem unlikely that a makeup could be played in that week.
Pitt has an open date on the last weekend of January, too, but again, Notre Dame and Duke are scheduled to be active. Other than that, the Panthers have two games scheduled for every week through the end of the season.
So to get those games made up, the conference will have to look at moving a lot of pieces, and it’s above my pay scale to consider all of those possibilities.
One possibility I know is this: there’s a pretty good chance that Pitt - and a bunch of teams in the ACC, probably - won’t play a full 20-game conference schedule. So we should probably appreciate whatever games we get.
ONE PREDICTION
How the NCAA can fix its scholarship problem
The NCAA isn’t about to ask me how to resolve the scholarship problem that’s coming, but I’ll offer some free advice anyway.
What’s the problem that needs to be solved? Glad you asked. At some point in the last year, the NCAA, in its infinite and possibly shortsighted wisdom, decided that anybody who was on a team in 2020 would get a free year of eligibility.
Put another way, 2020 didn’t count against anyone’s eligibility clock. If you entered 2020 with two seasons left to play, you will enter 2021 with two seasons left to play. If 2020 was going to be the last year of your eligibility, you could come back in 2021 for your real last year of eligibility.
That’s a good idea, I think. We’ve all talked at length about the challenges of 2020 and the hardships and all of that, with games and seasons being postponed or canceled. It makes sense to basically make this a free year.
The problem is, all of those free years are going to create a major logjam down the road. The NCAA limits football programs to 85 scholarship players in a given year. So a team will enter 2021 with all of its underclassmen returning plus potentially a dozen or more seniors plus an incoming recruiting class that was built to get the numbers up to 85; you can see how the numbers are getting thrown out of whack.
And the problem continues down the road. Every year, a team could be returning a full class of players who would have otherwise been moving on. When the NCAA first announced the exception, I wondered aloud in this column about how this was going to work out; conceivably, teams would have no scholarships available for the 2022 or 2023 recruiting classes.
One early idea being discussed was raising the scholarship limit of 85. I thought maybe the NCAA would make the limit something like 105 for 2021 and then gradually slide the number down over the next few years.
But that doesn’t really solve the problem. It still puts teams in a numbers crunch that could only be solved by either pushing out upperclassmen or taking fewer recruits - and neither is an ideal solution to a problem caused by the NCAA’s seemingly well-intentioned reaction to 2020.
Thankfully, I am here to solve the problem. Here’s how you do it:
The 85-player scholarship limit doesn’t change; it stays at 85. But every player who was on a roster in 2020 gets a free year at the end of their eligibility - a year where they don’t count against the 85. Call them “super-seniors” or “post-eligible players” or whatever you want to call them - just don’t call them part of the 85.
To me, this is a rather simple solution. Save for extreme situations where a player might get a sixth year of eligibility due to injury, the players affected by this will be out of the system after the 2025 season, so it would just five or six years of paperwork for the schools, who would have to submit a list each season of the players who were on the roster in 2020 and have run out of eligibility.
And since the free year applies to anybody on the roster - not just scholarship players - coaches could even use that extra year to reward walk-ons with a scholarship for their final season, since they won’t count against the 85.
I’m not claiming this is an elegant solution to the problem, but I do think it’s a solution and one that accomplishes the goal while not creating too much of a disruption. The biggest question with this course of action would be whether or not schools want to pay for all of these guys to come back, although my guess is that the actual number of players who use the free year would be less and less each season.
So that’s my prediction: the NCAA will take a fairly reasonable approach to solving a conundrum of its own making.
We’ll see about that.
