The 3-2-1 Column: Detroit, the season, the roster, hoops and more

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we've got some final thoughts on Pitt's trip to Detroit and the 2024 season plus the portal, the roster, the hoops season and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The post-mortem on Detroit

Jim wrote last week’s 3-2-1 Column, so I haven’t really had a chance to dig into the lump of coal Pitt got when it spent the day after Christmas in Detroit.

Okay. I’m going to stop right there. This isn’t all going to be negative. It’s a new year, and while the GameAbove Sports Bowl was a debacle in so many ways - quite a few of them tied to the beautiful chaos inherent in college football - I’m not going to spend all of this column bemoaning what we saw in Pitt’s loss to Toledo.

After all, what more is there to say? We all know Pitt should have gone for it on fourth-and-goal in the second overtime. We all know some different personnel decisions should have been made. We all know the defense failed to get a key stop in several key situations, overshadowing what was, really, a pretty solid performance (guys, they gave up two offensive touchdowns in regulation; that’s good defense).

We know all of those things. We’ve all talked about them incessantly on the message boards and on podcasts and postgame shows and basically anywhere we could.

So we don’t need to do that again. Not right now, at least.

There were a couple things to like. Julian Dugger was a big one. I’m not saying that Dugger should have started all season or even played much in the regular season. But by the time Pitt’s busses pulled into Detroit - I prefer to think that the Panthers bussed their way out there; it adds to the grittiness of the imagery - the coaches should have had a pretty clear idea of what they had.

They had a starting quarterback on the IR and two backups in the transfer portal. They had a walk-on who was effectively the No. 3 quarterback elevated to the starting job. And they had a dynamic freshman.

They also had a few weeks to get that dynamic freshman ready to play. Maybe he would have needed a limited package of plays, something smaller than the full playbook Pitt used during the season. But a limited set of plays doesn’t mean a set of plays with limited success. A well-designed offense with the right players in the right positions can be effective, even if it doesn’t have a lot of depth in the scheme.

But I digress.

Dugger did a great job. Not perfect, of course - he did throw a critical pick-six - but pretty damn impressive for a guy who hadn’t played all season. To put it as succinctly as possible, he gave Pitt a chance to win. The freshman from Penn Hills saw the field during every one of Pitt’s touchdown drives against Toledo, whether he was rushing twice to set up Desmond Reid’s first touchdown, throwing touchdown passes to Jake Overman and Raphael Williams or rushing for the first touchdown in overtime himself.

I think Dugger opened a lot of eyes in that game and probably lessened the need for a backup quarterback in the transfer portal, but we’ll come back to that at another time.

Because while we were watching Kade Bell come up with quite an interesting variety of ways to move the ball in that bowl game, there was a thought I just couldn’t shake:

Where was all of this during the regular season?

When Pitt was playing without Eli Holstein against Clemson and Boston College, where was all the creativity and inventiveness we saw in Detroit? Where were the direct snaps to Kenny Johnson? Where were the Wildcat reps with Gavin Bartholomew? Where was the package of plays for Dugger?

I’m not saying the entire offense needed to be built on gimmickry, but Pitt gained 322 yards and scored three touchdowns at Boston College. The yardage was better against Clemson (438) but the Panthers scored two touchdowns in the loss to the Tigers.

I can’t help but think some of those other things, some of those wrinkles and packages and trick plays might have given Pitt a little something extra to maybe get over the top in two winnable games.

Clearly, Bell is capable of devising those things. Why not use them earlier, particularly in the games when Pitt knew Holstein was unavailable?

Oh well. It’s over. Lessons were (hopefully) learned. Adjustments will (hopefully) be made. And reinforcements are (hopefully) on the way. We’ll see. For now, we’re left with the lasting memories of the GameAbove Sports Bowl:

A loss to Toledo in Detroit on the day after Christmas, a fitting (albeit entertaining) finish to a collapse, the perfect imperfection on which to end one of the most disappointing runs in recent memory.

The post-mortem on the season

Some seasons are easier to sum up than others, and on more than one occasion over the last week or two, I’ve found myself wondering just what exactly we witnessed this year in Pitt football.

Because, brother, we saw a whole lot.

On one hand, we witnessed the apparent emergence of a very good quarterback. We witnessed evidence of how speed can translate across levels in college football. We witnessed an All-American performance. We witnessed some of the best kicking any of us has ever seen. We witnessed two epic comebacks and a win in a place where Pitt had never won before. We witnessed the best start to a season in 40 years. We witnessed history.

But that’s not all we witnessed.

You know what else we witnessed.

We witnessed a complete undressing by a justifiably-cocky upstart in the ACC. We witnessed multiple injuries to the promising young quarterback. We witnessed three consecutive false start penalties pulling the rug out on a chance at a really good win. We witnessed another blowout loss. We witnessed a bed-you-know-whatting against a MAC team. We witnessed the worst end to a season in more than a quarter-century. We witnessed history.

Just as we witnessed the height of the cliff from above, we also witnessed the height of the cliff from below.

It’s a season that doesn’t fit neatly into any categories.

On one hand, you’ve got this tremendous start led by a couple breakout performances. And while the finish was pretty bad, you have the built-in excuses of injuries - specifically, injuries to the left tackle and the quarterback.

Those are legitimate explanations for why the winning stopped and the losing started.

But that doesn’t really tell the whole story, because even though there were injuries, there still weren’t any good reasons that the Panthers lost to Virginia or Boston College or Toledo (and the Clemson game was right there for the taking, too).

Actually, there’s probably one word that sums up the whole roller coaster:

Disappointment.

Because as the losses kept piling up and the team kept finding new ways to lose, the memory of that 7-0 start faded. More and more, the start to the season felt like a mirage - even if I don’t believe it was - propped up by an FCS game, a bad MAC opponent and some unlikely outcomes (multiple double-digit comebacks, three pick-sixes in one game, etc.).

You can’t completely ignore the 7-0 start. It happened, it was earned and Pitt really did accomplish some remarkable things.

But you also can’t ignore the 0-6 finish. Injuries be damned; there’s just no reason the Panthers should have gone 0-6 to close the season. I’m not going to pretend like the injuries didn’t happen or didn't have an impact - they obviously had a huge impact - but I can’t totally hand-wave away the Virginia, Boston College or Toledo losses.

A couple big injuries can turn a 7-0 start into a finish of 10-3 or 9-4. That’s understandable.

7-0 turning into 7-6 is considerably less understandable.

I don’t have an explanation for it and I’m not going to rationalize it. It was a major letdown to see the most promising season in four decades turn into one of the most disappointing in at least that long.

Yes, I think this was more disappointing than last year’s 3-9 season or the various five-win seasons we’ve seen or even some of the dismal 90’s.

It was more disappointing because the early success built the expectations so high. And the higher you climb, the more painful the fall is.

This year saw Pitt climb high enough to make the fall really, really painful.

Some losses that hurt

Pitt’s first 13 departures for the transfer portal didn’t hurt too much. There were some good backups in there, maybe a few young players who had some potential. On the whole, though, they weren’t killer losses.

Two of the four most recent Panthers to leave the team, though - those are going to leave some holes.

Of course, I'm talking about Sincere Edwards and Ryland Gandy. Edwards went into the portal the day after the bowl game. Gandy left three days later. Both guys certainly have their reasons for going, but I think it’s safe to say that playing time wasn’t one for either of them.

Gandy played the third-most snaps of any Pitt defender in 2024, trailing only Kyle Louis and Donovan McMillon, and Edwards played the most snaps of any freshman on the team. Gandy started every game this season and Edwards was the No. 3 defensive end throughout the year.

And both guys were virtually guaranteed to be starters next season.

So you have two players who walked away from starting jobs to enter the portal and find a new home. And they were two players at positions that have generally excelled in Pitt’s defensive schemes.

I guess if it wasn’t playing time and it wasn’t fit in the scheme, well, there’s always another explanation for why guys transfer.

Actually, I shouldn’t make assumptions or insinuations. Edwards signed with UCF, which is his hometown school, so that’s a pretty good explanation.

Either way, the real point is this:

For the first - and thus far only - time this offseason, Pitt has lost two projected starters to the portal. Of the 17 Panthers who left the team, these two are the only guys who were even penciled-in for the starting lineup.

I guess that’s a positive. There’s probably always a chance that a team could get through the offseason without losing any starters, but that feels pretty unlikely. In today’s college football, you’re almost always going to lose a starter or two. Last year, Pitt’s number was around 3-5, depending on what roles you think Solomon DeShields (probably a starter) and Bangally Kamara (probably not) would have had in the 2024 linebacker corps.

If you can get out of the offseason having lost only two starters to the portal, I think that’s pretty good. Of course, we don’t know if Gandy and Edwards will be the last starters to go to the portal - we’ll talk about that uncertainty in a bit - but for now, they’re the only ones.

As it relates to those two specifically, I think Edwards’ transfer hurts a bit more than Gandy’s. Gandy did a solid job in his first year as a starter, but Pitt does return Rashad Battle and Tamon Lynum, who were the rest of the top-three rotation at corner in 2024, so those two should be able to slide into the two starting jobs. And for depth, I think Pitt will get at least one transfer in addition to the talented players the staff has recruited over the last few years.

Defensive end doesn’t look quite as strong as cornerback, though. For a variety of reasons, Pitt is pretty thin at end, and Edwards was expected to be a key player in that group next season.

Now the Panthers will enter 2025 needing to replace three of their top four defensive ends from this year. Not all of those guys were great players, but the need for help at end was already pretty severe with Edwards returning, and it got even worse with him gone.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Why is defensive end such an issue?

Forgive me if I already wrote about this before - either earlier this year or in previous years, because it would apply to all of them - but what happened to Pitt’s defensive end position?

This was a position of strength, at least for a little while. Rashad Weaver and Patrick Jones were All-Americans in 2020. The next year, Habakkuk Baldonado had nine sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss. In 2022, Calijah Kancey stole the show but Baldonado, Deslin Alexandre and Dayon Hayes combined for 11 sacks and 16 tackles for loss. And last season, Hayes and Sam Okunlola combined for nine sacks and 16.5 tackles for loss.

That’s a pretty strong run. 2021-23 never quite reached the levels of Weaver and Jones in 2018 and 2020 (or Jones in 2019, when Weaver was hurt). But the defensive end position was still pretty productive and the recruiting seemed to be strong.

So what happened to put the Panthers in a position where one true freshman leaving for the portal has more or less crushed the depth for next season?

Well, we have to do that thing where we list the recruiting classes. I know: I’ve gone to that well many times over the years. But more often than not, that’s where the answers are.

To wit:

2020 - Dayon Hayes, Emmanuel Belgrave, Sam Williams

2021 - Nahki Johnson, Naquan Brown

2022 - Sam Okunlola, Jimmy Scott

2023 - Maverick Gracio, Antonio Camon

2024 - Sincere Edwards, Zach Crothers

You already know the answer before I say it.

Hayes, Belgrave, Williams, Johnson, Brown, Okunlola, Camon and Edwards all transferred. That’s eight of the 11 defensive ends Pitt signed from 2020-24.

Three players remain from those five recruiting classes.

Now, that doesn’t paint the whole picture. Even with the Covid year, those guys from the 2020 class probably wouldn’t be on the roster in 2025 anyway. Let’s take them out, then; of the eight defensive ends who signed 2021-24, five have gone into the portal.

So Pitt’s 2025 roster is projected to have three defensive ends from the last four classes.

That still doesn’t tell the whole story, though, because by narrowing our focus to 2021-24, we actually uncover another issue:

The Panthers simply didn’t recruit enough players.

Taking two defensive ends per year over the course of four recruiting classes is pretty considerably under-recruiting a position where you need two on the field at all times and are probably going to rotate at least four guys at end in any given game.

Just doing the math, that means you need a minimum of four guys available at any given time, and Pitt recruited eight players to create the pool from which you will draw those four.

A 50% hit rate is pretty ambitious, I think.

So you’ve got an under-recruited position that was further decimated by transfers.

This is why Pitt signed three defensive end transfers last offseason. Oh, and none of those guys will be on the roster in 2025 either. Just in case you thought things weren’t as bad as they seem.

They very much are.

The current situation is a failure on a lot of fronts. With low numbers in recruiting, transfers and guys who simply didn’t pan out, Pitt’s situation at defensive end is pretty precarious. Things like this can be resolved, at least to some extent, by the transfer portal, which offers lots of options for immediate improvement. But the Panthers’ needs at end from the portal increased considerably when Edwards left, and I’m not sure how high the ceiling is for Pitt’s efforts in that regard.

Is anything guaranteed?

We’ll see who’s on the roster in August.

That’s going to be one of the most commonly-uttered phrases in college football over the next seven months. It will be appended to every post-playoff prediction, every preseason poll, every bit of prognostication that comes between now and the eighth month.