The 3-2-1 Column: A big week for quarterbacks

Quarterback is the most important position on the football field, and it takes center stage in this week’s 3-2-1 Column. The Pitt football program had a busy week in addressing the most important position, and we look at it from all angles.

Pitt also earned a berth to the Sun Bowl, so what exactly does that game mean? Pitt basketball has had some intriguing moments over the last week, what is the vibe around that program?

We have plenty to talk about, as always.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Kedon Slovis is the past
The NCAA transfer portal officially ‘opened’ on Monday, and not long after that happened, it was reported that Pitt starting quarterback Kedon Slovis would be entering his name into the portal for the second straight offseason. Slovis will not be with the team for the Sun Bowl and his tenure with the program is over just one year after it began.

Slovis started 11 games this season for the Panthers with a 7-4 record. He threw for 2,379 yards, 10 touchdowns, along with nine interceptions. Slovis completed a career-low 58.4% of his passes after coming to Pittsburgh following a successful run at USC. Pitt’s offense ranked 57th in total yards this season, a far cry from the top-10 offense the team produced in 2021.

The Slovis experiment just did not work out for either side. We can talk about all the reasons why it did not work, and I will get into that, but the main takeaway I have from this this season is I don’t blame anyone for trying. This was a match that made perfectly good sense for both Slovis and Pitt.

On one side you had a team coming off an 11-win season with 15 starters back that needed a quarterback. And on the other, you had a quarterback from a prominent program with over 7,500 career passing yards that needed a home to resurrect his career for a season.

It made a lot of sense…until the games actually started.

The first thing we need to address in the Slovis season recap is that he lost his best offensive weapon before the team even played a game. The Jordan Addison transfer altered the entire path of the season for Pitt and Slovis, and it is undeniable that his decision had a huge effect on what followed for everyone involved.

We can talk all about the motives that drove Addison to USC, but from Pitt’s perspective his departure ultimately crushed this season. There may have been, ahem, monetary reasons that drove him to the West Coast. Perhaps Addison did not see a fit with Slovis or Frank Cignetti's offense. Whatever led to that decision is in the past, but if this team had the actual best wide receiver in the country, Addison likely would have masked many of the team’s issues and Pitt is sitting with a better record than 8-4 today.

As we know, the 2022 Pitt football season went on without Addison and the team had chances to overcome his departure. Slovis had some positive moments early on in the season. He threw for 300 yards and led Pitt’s game-tying drive against West Virginia. The Panthers were in an early season battle with Tennessee, but a big hit knocked him out of the second half and ultimately the next game.

Slovis just never seemed right after that.

The offense started to lean more on star tailback Israel Abanikanda and the passing game never seemed to find any consistency. Even during Pitt’s four-game winning streak to close the regular season, Slovis had a 5-to-4 touchdown to interception ratio. Pitt found ways to win those games without the passing game being a huge factor.

It became abundantly clear as the season progressed that Slovis and Cignetti were not a match. That’s not to excuse the play calling and scheme from the coaching staff, but there were opportunities for Slovis to succeed and it never materialized.

Pitt’s offensive line struggled early on in the season, as they allowed seven sacks on Slovis in the first two games. He was only sacked 8 times in his final nine games. Slovis had time and easy reads in front of him and a solid rushing game for support, but he still never found a comfort level within this offensive system.

The 2022 season will always have a lot of ‘What ifs’ around it.

Pitt had a chance to follow up its best season in 40 years with another big year given the talent still on the team. There were plenty of reasons in place to suggest Pitt could make another run at an ACC title in the preseason. After reflecting on the 12 games we just witnessed, it’s hard not to pinpoint a lot of the miscues squarely on the play of the quarterback.

Phil Jurkovec is the present
Kedon Slovis is out of the picture for Pitt football, but that tends to shift the attention onto Frank Cignetti Jr. heading into the offseason and also the 2023 campaign. In hindsight, Pitt grabbed Slovis last offseason then hired Cignetti afterwards. I am not too sure the two sides would have chosen each other had those events happened in reverse order.

I totally understand Pitt had to act quickly in the transfer portal to land a player like Slovis, but it’s part of the story now. He will get a chance to play somewhere else next season, while Cignetti gets a mulligan of sorts to run his offense next season with a quarterback he trusts.

Pitt needs better offensive production in 2022. Perhaps Cignetti will show more with his guy running the show for the Panthers in 2023. A new quarterback could make all the difference next season, at least that is Pitt's main hope heading into a second season under Cignetti.

Pitt did not have to wait long after Slovis entered his name into the transfer portal to find its quarterback for the 2023 season. Phil Jurkovec announced Monday afternoon that he committed to Pitt, following a three year stint as Boston College's starting quarterback.

The second Jurkovec announced his intentions to leave Boston College late last week, many speculated Pitt would be his next landing spot, and it worked out a little too perfectly, as he committed to Pitt just hours after Slovis announced he was leaving.

Jurkovec will be coming home, of course. He was a four-star recruit in the class of 2018 and was one of the top prep quarterbacks in the country. He led nearby Pine-Richland High School to a perfect 16-0 season his senior year and threw for 3,969 yards and 39 touchdowns. Every school in the country was on him in the recruiting process, including Pitt, but Jurkovec chose to attend Notre Dame.

His two years in South Bend were rather uneventful and even trying for the former four-star. Jurkovec was rumored to be in line to switch positions and reportedly even thought about quitting football entirely, but he found new life at Boston College, where Cignetti happened to be the offensive coordinator.

Jurkovec threw for 2,558 yards and 17 touchdowns in ten games during the 2020 season for the Eagles. He was not only able to resurrect his college career in Chestnut Hill, but he also was able to put his name on the map for the NFL.

The next two seasons did not go as planned, however. Jurkovec missed 14 games over the last two years, and his stock for the next level has dropped considerably. He threw for 1,711 yards and 11 touchdowns this season in eight games. Cignetti and Jurkovec will get a chance to work together again for one last ride in 2023 and try to recreate what they started in 2020.

If we are being realistic about the situation, this could be considered a last chance for both. Jurkovec has one year of eligibility remaining, and after a disappointing 2022 campaign, Cignetti likely needs to show more to Pat Narduzzi in his second year calling plays.

For as much as Slovis looked uncomfortable in this offense, Jurkovec should not have that problem next year. He had the best season of his career with Cignetti calling plays and if Jurkovec can stay healthy, there is reason to think this could be a mutually beneficial situation for both parties.

Pitt needed a quarterback, and they found one right away, and that is the biggest storyline here. Jurkovec also being successful under Cignetti will grab headlines heading into next season, and of course, who doesn’t like a native son returning to play for the hometown team?

Much like the Slovis addition last year, bringing in Jurkovec makes sense in many ways for Pitt. The expectations won’t be as high for the team heading into next year from a national perspective, but at the same time when you add a senior quarterback for one season, you are playing to win right away.

We’ll see if this addition is the right match.

Ty Dieffenbach is the future
If you couldn't tell by now, Monday was the day of the quarterback for Pitt football. After the Slovis and Jurkovec stories broke, the Panthers weren’t quite done for the day. Ty Dieffenbach, a 6’5” quarterback out of California, pledged to the Pitt program just two days following an offer from Frank Cignetti.

Dieffenbach starred for Agoura High School outside of Los Angeles and was previously committed to UNLV. He is expected to graduate high school early, and will enroll at Pitt for next semester, and will be on the field with the team for spring practice.

Pitt was in need of a quarterback in the class of 2023 following the decommitment of Kenny Minchey. Cignetti offered two quarterbacks in the aftermath of Minchey’s decision, but he seemed to zero in on Diffenbach and it moved quickly from there.

The California signal caller missed some time this season with an injury, but he did throw for over 4,000 yards and 48 touchdowns in his three years as a starter at Agoura. His size and potential is certainly enticing, but there is a sense he is a bit of a project given his recruiting ranking and offer sheet.

Quarterback recruiting is generally handled early on in the year, as players like to find their spots quickly, and also schools don’t like to be in scramble mode in December. Pitt found itself in scramble mode unexpectedly, but they managed to find an under-the-radar prospect just ahead of signing day to fill a need in this recruiting class.

Obviously Minchey was in the prestigious Elite-11 and had a lot of promise as a prospect. Given the timing of his decision, it was never likely Pitt could find someone of his caliber right before signing day. Dieffenbach is not the prospect Minchey was, but it's hard not to be at least a little bit intrigued about his potential. He's not coming to Pitt to start next season, so tracking his development for the next few years will be worth monitoring.

The commitments of both Jurkovec and Dieffenbach point to a totally revamped quarterback room for next season. Slovis has already hit the portal, Derek Kyler is graduating, and Nick Patti is likely not to return for a sixth season. That would leave Nate Yarnell as the only holdover for now, but it seems like the coaching staff is still interested in adding more to the room beyond Jurkovec and Diffenbach.

Pitt appears to be in the market for a younger transfer with multiple years left of eligibility to potentially be the heir apparent to Jurkovec. Penn State transfer and former Pitt target out of high school, Christian Veilleux, is a prominent name on that front. While he is firmly on Pitt’s radar, the coaching staff appears to be exploring all avenues with the always growing list of names in the transfer portal.

Pitt found a starting quarterback and a potential future starting quarterback in one day, I'm not sure it ever happens all at once like that.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What does the Sun Bowl mean?
Before the quarterback mayhem on Monday, Pitt got official word of its postseason destination on Sunday afternoon. The Panthers will be heading El Paso for the Sun Bowl to take on the 18th ranked UCLA Bruins for a 2:00 p.m. kick on December 30th.

Pitt enters the game with an 8-4 record and winners of four straight games, while UCLA owns a 9-3 record. The two storied programs have not met since 1972. On paper, it’s an exciting matchup, but it does bring a few questions along with it.

Pitt has a chance to win a 9th game and that would mean ending the year on a five-game winning streak. Does that 9th win matter in the grand scheme of things? I think it does. I think I have rattled this off a few times by now, but it would give Pitt 20 wins over a two-year period, which would be the best stretch over two seasons since 1981-82.

Given the preseason hype around the program, 9 wins and they way they got there may feel a little underwhelming to some, but this program hasn’t churned out many seasons with nine or more wins in the last four decades, four to be exact, and getting there would be worth something for this program.

The other question about Pitt’s 13th and final game this season is: how do people feel about the entire bowl process in its current state? On the surface, the Sun Bowl is a traditional bowl game that carried some level of prestige. It is one of the oldest bowl games, and it is not named after a chain restaurant or played in a baseball stadium. Generally this is a respected postseason destination, but with the growing presence of the transfer portal and players opting out of bowls for NFL reasons, the entire bowl season has lost its luster outside of the New Years Six.

Pitt will be without its star player, as Calijah Kancey revealed he had shoulder surgery and will be out for the game. Obviously there have already been numerous transfers away from the team, most notably the starting quarterback, and perhaps a player like Israel Abanikanda could opt to sit out this game.

On one hand you have a chance to achieve a 9-win season, which would be the second best year under Pat Narduzzi’s watch. On the other, you have a game that may feature a lot of backups playing for Pitt, and UCLA too for that matter.

I like bowl season. More football is always welcomed in my opinion, but the game and whole system is becoming more and more broken with each passing year. College football has changed considerably in the past 24 months and it’s not done evolving either: Playoff expansion, conference reshuffling, NIL, the transfer portal. It’s a new world and the sport is very different than it was 5-10 years ago.

I think there is something to play for from Pitt's perspective, but at the same time, the outcome may not matter in the end anyway. Pitt is heading to the Sun Bowl. Some version of the Pitt Panthers will play the UCLA Bruins on national TV.

We’ll all watch the game of course, but I’m not sure we will quite know how to feel about it.

Where is Pitt basketball after ten games?
The Pitt Panthers have completed ten games in the 31-game regular season. Jeff Capel’s team has a 6-4 record, and they are coming off a tough 75-74 loss to Vanderbilrt earlier this week, That defeat snapped a five-game winning streak for the Panthers.

Pitt welcomes Sacred Heart to the Petersen Events Center tomorrow for a 3:30 tip. It is one of two non-conference games remaining on the schedule before Pitt runs a 19-game ACC gauntlet to close the year. Through ten games, we have seen both positive signs from this team, but also some growing concerns as they head into conference play.

We’ll go with the good stuff first.

Pitt basketball has a better roster than it has has in the previous few seasons. This team has the ability to knock down outside shots and some of those lengthy scoring droughts that plagued them last season have gone away. This team can score and when they are clicking, can be fun to watch as well. Pitt is third in the ACC in made three-pointers this year after finishing last in the league a season ago.

Pitt has received immediate contributions from transfers like Nelly Cummings, Blake Hinson, and Greg Elliott. The bench has provided some spark as well, with a resurgent season from Nike Sibande and the unexpected strong play of Federiko Federiko. This team has a better scoring punch and more depth. They can compete. Entering the ACC slate, they should not crumble down the stretch like they have in recent years.

Of course with a 6-4 record, there are some concerns as well.

Like in the previous two years, this offseason was stained by an off-the-court incident. Dior Johnson, Pitt’s highest rated recruit under Jeff Capel, is currently serving an indefinite suspension following felony charges. He is set to put in a plea deal this morning, and we will see how the dust settles after that.

The Johnson story has been on the back burner to a degree with the team taking most of the attention. The whole situation still something that falls into the negative column for Pitt. Johnson was expected to have a big role this season and they could have used him in some of these early season losses. They have made it ten games without him, and there is not a ton of clarity on if and when he will be available.

Perhaps the biggest issue surrounding this team right now is something that was totally unexpected to start the year. John Hugley, Pitt’s leading scorer and rebounder from a season ago, has not looked like himself this season. The Panthers 6’9” junior center sustained a knee injury in the preseason, and forced him to miss three games so far, but in the games he has played, Hugley has hardly matched his play from a season ago.

Over Pitt’s last three games, Hugley has scored a total of 10 points and grabbed two rebounds. To Pitt’s credit, the team won two of those games, but as the schedule difficulty increases, Pitt is going to need last year’s version of Hugley to emerge.

I am intrigued with this Pitt team overall. Even in the loss to Vanderbilt on Wednesday, they did not have their best stuff, but clawed to grab a 1-point lead with :15 seconds remaining. We have heard, and seen, how the team under Jeff Capel has not dealt with adversity as well. A bad loss for Pitt has generally turned into an all-out swoon.

I do not see that happening this season.

Pitt is probably not an NCAA Tournament team, but they also shouldn’t crumble once the schedule picks up in difficulty either. This should be a competitive team once conference play starts.

Capel brought in some good pieces and that core is playing fairly well right now, even with the loss to Vanderbilt fresh on our minds. The roster is deeper than it has been in previous season. Perhaps if Hugley regains form and Johnson is reinstated that only enhances what they already have.

I’d say through ten games, I’m cautiously optimistic about what they are capable of doing, and I certainly did not have that feeling a year ago.

Progress, right?

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt wins a national championship this year
I think this is a pretty simple prediction, but a rather significant one. Pitt has two athletic programs deep into the NCAA Tournament right now, and I think one team will break through and claim a national championship this year.

The Pitt Volleyball team punched its way through to the Elite 8 yesterday with a 3-1 victory over the Florida Gators in the NCAA Regional Semifinal. The Panthers raced out to a 2-0 lead, before closing the door in the fourth set over the third-seeded Florida Gators.

Making it to the Elite 8 is nothing new for Dan Fisher’s program. The Panthers have made it to this point three years running. Pitt made it to the Final 4 last season and they seem to be inching closer towards the ultimate prize.

Pitt volleyball has been the best program on campus for a while now. They have made it to the NCAA Tournament seven straight seasons, and have won the ACC four times during that stretch. The task ahead won’t be easy, of course. Pitt must beat Wisconsin in Madison to advance to the Final 4. That match takes place Saturday night at 8:00 p.m.

Should they advance past the Badgers, a potential Final 4 date against ACC rival Louisville would likely await the Panthers. Pitt and Louisville split the regular season series.

The Pitt men’s soccer team is also at a deep stage in the NCAA Tournament. The Panthers are in the College Cup, soccer’s equivalent to the Final 4, for the second time in three years. Under the guidance of Jay Vidovich, Pitt soccer has turned from an afterthought to a national title contender in a short amount of time.

Pitt punched its ticket to the College Cup in front of a sold-out home crowd last weekend with a 1-0 thrilling win over Portland in overtime. Standing in the way of Pitt and a berth in the national championship game is Indiana, the same team that eliminated Pitt two years ago 1-0 in this exact same part of the tournament.

Pitt winning a national title in any sport would be rather significant. The school’s last national title occurred in 1976 with Tony Dorsett guiding the football team to a championship. The Pitt athletic department has stressed comprehensive excellence across the board, and we are starting to see some of the sports that have floated under the radar for years rise to national prominence.

I predict Pitt adds a big trophy to the shelf in the very near future.