MORE HEADLINES - Pitt offers top 150 forward | Revisionist history: Re-ranking the class of 2017 | PODCAST: Finishing the class, fixing the offense and more | Anatomy of a position: How Pitt's QB roster came together | Mailbag: Breakout stars, hoops recruiting and more | In the film room: What Chris Payton is bringing to Pitt

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about Pitt’s newest commit, four-star recruits, the 2017 class, Damar Hamlin and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Up to a dozen
Pitt’s 2022 recruiting class grew this week when Bradley Mann committed to the Panthers. He’s the 12th recruit to pick Pitt in the class, and he chose the Panthers over Louisville, Indiana and others.

Mann’s an intriguing prospect, a 6’6” 255-pound lineman who plays on both sides of the ball at his high school in Jacksonville (Fla.). Pitt initially targeted him as an offensive lineman, but Charlie Partridge saw him at a June camp in the Sunshine State and became convinced he could play on defense as well.

Seems like he could definitely make an impact rushing the passer, just based on his junior film

That looks pretty intriguing to me. Mann explodes off the edge and is pretty physical - violent, even - when he gets to the quarterback.

Guys who have his size and run like he does aren’t common, and they open up a whole bunch of possibilities. He could play defensive end. He could play defensive tackle. He could play offensive tackle. And every now and then you just might put the ball in his hand as a sort of Brian O’Neill for the 2020’s.

I really can’t decide where I like Mann best, and my opinion on the matter is less than important. But I know where Pitt needs Mann:

They need him on the offensive line.

This topic has come up a lot since recruiting kicked into high gear in the last 45 days. Simply from a numbers perspective, Pitt needs offensive linemen. The 2021 roster is projected to have 14 scholarship linemen; five of them will be seniors, whether that’s super seniors or regular old redshirt seniors.

That leaves nine linemen who will be returning next year, plus any redshirt seniors who decide to come back as super seniors in 2022 (that list consists of Owen Drexel, Gabe Houy, Marcus Minor and Carter Warren; we’ll get to them a bit later).

Nine isn’t even enough to fill a two-deep. Pitt needs at least one redshirt senior to return as a super senior in 2022 just to get a depth chart that doesn’t include a true freshman. And of those nine, three will be true freshmen this season and four more have minimal-to-no playing time.

Now, putting Bradley Mann on offense isn’t going to fix that issue for 2022, but the bigger problem - dwindling numbers on the offensive line - is why I think he should probably go to that side of the ball. The offensive line simply needs to be restocked, even if it means taking a promising prospect who could be a standout defensive lineman and moving him to offense.

A history of four-stars

I think there’s a lot to like about Pitt’s recruiting class so far. The skill guys look really talented, with a mix of size and speed at receiver and a good all-around weapon at running back. The defensive linemen both look really promising. And the offensive linemen seem to have a fair amount of promise and potential.

If the class is missing anything prominent - other than, you know, a quarterback - it’s star power.

We’re talking about aesthetics here, but it’s a not unimportant factor, for a number of reasons. And while Pitt’s class has some bright spots, it’s ranked No. 46 in the nation due to the lack of stars: as of this point, none of the 12 commits is a four-star prospect.

Now, it’s worth stating that rankings are always subject to change. I’m personally of the opinion that a few of Pitt’s commits are four-star caliber, even if their rankings aren’t there just yet. And if any year is likely to see somewhat wild fluctuations in recruiting ratings, it’s this year, given everything that has happened in the last 16 months.

So I think there’s a good chance Pitt will end up with at least one and possibly more four-star recruits in the class.

Fun fact: the last time Pitt had a class without any four-star prospects was 2003, Walt Harris’ penultimate class (the 2004 class is in the conversation here; that group only had one four-star commit, and it was the legendary Vernon Smith).

In Pat Narduzzi’s seven recruiting classes, Pitt has signed 19 four-star prospects. They range from the impactful to the not-so-impactful, with a few in-between - as well as a bunch of guys who are still looking to make their mark.

On the top end are Jordan Whitehead, Damar Hamlin, Darrin Hall and Paris Ford. Whitehead and Hamlin were three-year starters; Ford started multiple seasons; and Hall was part of the only season in school history with two 1,000-yard rushers.

On the low end, the story is different. Kaezon Pugh, Ruben Flowers, Charles Reeves and Mychale Salahuddin never contributed much and ultimately transferred.

In the middle are Amir Watts and A.J. Davis; Watts was a multi-year starter but didn’t produce at a high level, while Davis has played a lot without too much to show for it.

And then there are the guys who are TBD. Not surprisingly, they’re from recent classes: 2019, 2020 and 2021. That’s Davis Beville, Daniel Carter, Dayon Hayes, Jahvante Royal, Rashad Battle, Elliot Donald, Nahki Johnson and Naquan Brown.

I think there’s still a good deal of optimism for that group. Beville has the tools to be a successful Power Five quarterback. Carter is in a crowded running back room but he is unique in his size and power. Hayes put up 2.5 sacks and a forced fumble in 27 snaps as a freshman last season.

Battle played a good deal in 2020 - fourth-most snaps among the cornerbacks - and expectations are high for Royal. Meanwhile, the three incoming freshman defensive linemen are as highly-regarded as any Pitt has signed under Narduzzi.

So while it’s been a mixed bag of sorts with four-star prospects thus far, the last few classes could shift that balance to more positive results. And in the meantime, we’ll see which recruits among the 2022 commits could end up getting a rankings bump.

The start of something
I ran into Damar Hamlin on Sunday at the 2/10th Top 150 camp at Shady Side Academy (which isn’t actually in Shady Side - who knew?). We chatted for a few minutes about some different topics, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he does in Buffalo this year - and beyond, because I think he’s going to have a long NFL career.

Later that day I read this great article about Hamlin that shed some light on things I didn’t even know about.

It’s a great piece and I recommend you check it out - after you finish the 3-2-1 Column, of course.

But running into Damar and reading that article got me thinking, and I wonder if we fully appreciate what he meant to the Pitt program.

We know what he did at Pitt: three-year starter at a crucial position on Pitt’s defense; 290 career tackles; the Panthers’ leading tackler in 2018 and 2020 and No. 2 in tackles in 2019; six career interceptions; team captain as a senior.

He was an outstanding player who lived up to his billing as a four-star prospect coming out of Central Catholic. But before any of that happened, Hamlin was something else.

As a recruit, he was the No. 2 prospect in western Pennsylvania’s class of 2016, rated just behind Woodland Hills running back Miles Sanders but holding offers from plenty of top Power Five programs. Hamlin could have gone to Notre Dame or Penn State or Ohio State or just about anywhere, but he chose to stay home.

And when Hamlin announced that decision on KDKA-TV two days before Signing Day, he was the capper to a class that injected a huge boost of energy into the Pitt fan base.

That was Pat Narduzzi’s first full recruiting class, of course, and momentum slowly built throughout the recruiting cycle. Over the course of the previous 12 months, as Narduzzi assembled a class that would ultimately rank No. 29 nationally, there was one final piece to be added, one player who could turn what looked like a good class into what might be a great class.

Damar Hamlin.

Pitt had plenty of western Pa. players committed already. Brandon Ford was on board. So were Hamlin’s teammates at Central Catholic, Bricen Garner and Rashad Wheeler. And Hamlin’s seven-on-seven mate, Therran Coleman. Not to mention Aliquippa standout Kaezon Pugh.

It was a strong local class and Narduzzi was doing well with it. But the two big fish were Sanders and Hamlin. The former committed to Penn State in July 2014, but Hamlin was still out there for Pitt to land.

And when Pitt landed him, Panther fans erupted. Then-Athletic Director Scott Barnes said the school saw an uptick in season ticket sales the week Hamlin committed; I don’t think there’s any question that Hamlin’s commitment had a lot to do with that.

In a way, Hamlin reminds me of Dorin Dickerson: a prominent, highly-rated local recruit with offers from all over the country who decides to stay home and be part of a new coach’s first full recruiting class.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Izzy the man?
Is that a statement or a question? Depends on how you read it. Or what you already think of Pitt’s running back situation and the sophomore who has emerged as potentially the leader of the group.

We’re talking, of course, about Israel Abanikanda. And the question of whether or not he is the man.

He was the man this spring. At least, that’s what we heard throughout camp - from the coaches, from the players, from off-the-record conversations. And he showed it in the Blue-Gold Game at Heinz Field, when he was one of the stars on a day that featured probably a few more offensive standouts than we expected.

But is he the man?

And, more importantly, does Pitt need him to be?

I think a fair portion of the Pitt fanbase believes he might be the best hope for a running game that has been, at its best, just okay over the last two seasons. And it was often decidedly not at its best.

There’s a feeling, I think, that we’ve seen what A.J. Davis and Vincent Davis can do. The latter finished his 2020 season on a high note: 247 yards and a touchdown on 25 carries at Georgia Tech, the best performance by a Pitt running back since the 1,000-yard exploits of Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall in 2018.

But that was Vincent Davis’ first and only 100-yard game. A.J. Davis has one on his resume, too; he rushed for 103 and a score at Syracuse in 2019. And neither one of those guys even has 1,000 career rushing yards, despite carrying the ball a combined 392 times over the last two seasons.

Abanikanda is still an unknown, though. He came in with some hype as a more versatile back than the upperclassmen - bigger than Vincent Davis, faster than A.J. Davis - who could catch passes (he did a bit of that last season) and carry a full workload (he didn’t do that last season). His freshman campaign was underwhelming, but with a full year of strength and conditioning and playbooking and all of that, he should be better in 2021.

There’s a debate to be had about whether Pitt needs one guy to be really good or a group of guys to be just good enough in order to establish an effective running game. I’m partial to the system that has a Workhorse and Everybody Else, but that’s a discussion for another day.

What I do believe is that Abanikanda has a chance to be Pitt’s best back. We just have to find out if he’s up to the task.

What happened to the class of 2017?

We started our Revisionist History series last week, and that’s always one I enjoy doing.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the format, we go back and look at recent recruiting classes and re-rank them based on what those players did in their college careers. We tend to keep it to the guys who have been on campus for at least three years, while fully understanding that the rankings can - and will - change over the next year or two. So we revisit it every year, often with a new perspective in light of the previous season’s performances.

I really like doing these articles. It’s fun to take a look back and remember what a previous recruiting cycle was like.

That said, 2017 wasn’t exactly a blast to recall, because once you start going down memory lane, it seems like most of the storylines were about guys who didn’t go to Pitt.

There were all the local guys, like Lamont Wade and Donovan Jeter and C.J. Thorpe and David Adams and Kurt Hinish and Josh Lugg.

Then there were the defensive ends. Pitt wanted to restock that position in the 2017 class and brought six defensive end prospects to campus for official visits, only to land just one (Deslin Alexandre).

Sure, only one of those other five defensive ends had a productive college career - Duke’s Victor Dimukeje - but that’s beside the point: at the time, it felt like Pitt was getting killed in recruiting.

Four years later, we can consider the class with the benefit of hindsight, but I’m not sure that the class of 2017 looks all that much better. Kenny Pickett has obviously established himself and will have his name in the record books after his career ends, but he’s also got a 21-15 record as a starter with the Panthers. Paris Ford and Jaylen Twyman looked like all-timers at their positions in 2019, but each really had just one big season - not exactly a full career.

Really, the class of 24 recruits has, to this point, produced maybe 11 full-time starters, depending on how you rate Damarri Mathis’ 10 starts in 2019 and Gabe Houy’s eight starts last season.

I mean, I ranked the punter, Kirk Christodoulou, at No. 5 in the class, and while we could debate that position, I don’t think anyone would drop him out of the top 10. That says a lot about the class.

Now, a few things can change in the next year. Owen Drexel (re-ranked at No. 14) could move up after a full year as the starting center. Mathis, Alexandre and Cam Bright could - and probably will - climb as well.

But on the whole, it’s tough to look at the class of 2017 and not consider it a disappointment.

ONE PREDICTION

The numbers for the class will keep moving
This is a topic we’ve touched on before, but I’m going to bring it up now - and continue bringing it up from time to time - because it’s not going to fade in its significance:

The numbers for Pitt’s 2022 recruiting class are going to keep moving around.

This isn’t unique to Pitt: everybody’s recruiting numbers are going to move. Of course, recruiting target numbers are always moving, for a variety of reasons. But there’s going to be move movement than ever this year because few, if any, college coaches have a firm grip on how many recruits they’ll be able to take in the 2022 class.

Why? Because they don’t know how many scholarships they’ll have available.

You know where I’m going with this, probably because we just wrote about it last week.

Pitt has 25 scholarship seniors on the roster this year. Of those 25, 13 are super seniors - players using an extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA due to the COVID-related mess of 2020.

Super seniors don’t count against the 85-man scholarship limit, which allows Pitt to have more than 85 players on scholarship this season. The one exception in this case is Melquise Stovall, who transferred from Hawaii this offseason; super seniors don’t count against the scholarship limit, but transfer super seniors do.

So that makes 12 super seniors who don’t count against the 85 and 13 other seniors - including Stovall - who do.

13 is the relevant number here; those are the guys whose departures after this season will directly correlate with the open spots for the 2022 recruiting class. When they leave, the incoming recruits will take their place.

Except…

12 of those 13 - everybody other than Stovall - have the option to come back as super seniors in 2022. And the NCAA’s rule is that super seniors next year will count against the 85-man scholarship limit.

I think you can see the issue.

Every one of those 12 potential super seniors who decides to come back will take a spot that would have otherwise gone to a recruit.

Aye, there’s the rub.

That’s why coaches don’t really know how many recruits they can take in the class of 2022. If 2021 was a normal year, Pitt would already be looking at a small class; 12 spots would probably grow to a class of 15-18 because that’s how it tends to happen. But it would be small nonetheless.

Now, it’s still going to be small, but how small is anybody’s guess. And even if you have a guess, even if you have a concrete idea, chances are that number will change a bunch of times between now and Signing Day.

That’s just the reality: because coaches don’t know who’s coming back, they also don’t know how many they can bring in. So Pitt is sitting on 12 commitments and will likely add more, but how many more is going to be up in the air for awhile.