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The 3-2-1 Column: Expectations, forgotten players and crazy recruiting

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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about NFL connections, high expectations, forgotten players, forgotten teams and recruiting craziness.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Maybe there’s no connection
Earlier this week, the NFL released its all-decade team for the 2010’s, and if you didn’t see the list, Pitt was prominently featured:

Of the 45 players selected on offense and defense, four are former Panthers, and I imagine you didn’t have too much trouble guessing which players made the list.

Larry Fitzgerald, Aaron Donald, LeSean McCoy, Darrelle Revis.

The usual suspects for Pitt’s NFL success in the 2010’s, four future Hall of Famers who were rightfully selected as being among the decade’s best.

Getting four players on the list tied Pitt with Cal for having the most representatives of any college, and that news was met with two equal - and equally predictable - reactions. On one side, you had the seemingly natural reaction of people who said, “Oh that’s nice; Pitt is getting some recognition for producing some of the decade’s best NFL players.” This side of the reaction included Pitt’s official Twitter accounts and, for the most part, fans.

On the other side, with equal enthusiasm and just as much inevitability, you had people who said, “Pitt had four of the best NFL players in the last decade and still couldn’t do anything when those guys were in college.”

That reaction was just as predictable as the selections of Fitzgerald, Donald, McCoy and Revis, and it’s not altogether without merit. In the seasons those guys played, Pitt had more .500 or worse seasons (five) than eight-win-or-better regular seasons (four). Pitt won the Big East just once with those players in Oakland, and the biggest win any of them experienced as Panthers came at the tail end of a 5-7 season.

So, sure, it looks like those titans of the NFL were wasted in their years at Pitt. But there’s a little bit more nuance to it.

Like this: those guys all played at Pitt, but not one of them was on the team at the same time as any of the others. Fitzgerald played in 2002 and 2003. Revis was at Pitt from 2004-06. McCoy was in 2007 and 2008. And Donald was a Panther from 2010 through 2013. That’s a stretch of great players in 11 out of 12 seasons, but no overlap at all.

Which is kind of important since, you know, you need 11 guys on the field at any given moment. If you only have one great player, it’s a whole lot harder to win at a high level.

And that puts a little perspective on the NFL all-decade list and what it means for the colleges that are represented. Take Alabama, for instance: the Tide have just one former player on the all-decade team - Falcons’ receiver Julio Jones - but Alabama won five national championships from 2009-17 because Nick Saban’s teams are loaded with NFL talent all over the field, not just at a few positions in separate years.

Pitt has been able to attract some talent over the last 20 years, but not enough of it at the same time. Throw in coaching changes, a litany of in-game mistakes, bad luck and the rest of those things you’ve seen, and you get a program that has won eight regular-season games just five times in the last 20 years - despite having some very good NFL players.

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Expectations are high
Now, the 2020 team isn’t projected to have a Fitzgerald or a Donald or a McCoy or a Revis, but this group does have some talent. Some experienced talent. And the expectations should be high as a result.

This is kind of a continuation from a conversation in last week’s column. I was writing about the over/under on Pitt’s regular-season win total being set at 6.5 by DraftKings, and I came back to the subject earlier this week when Caesar’s installed the Panthers at the same number.

And maybe it’s just me, but that 6.5 just seems low (we talked about that a lot last week).

Maybe it’s not low from a betting perspective. Maybe it makes sense because the books want to get a lot of action and they want it on both sides and all of that. Maybe we all have to make sure we’re not looking at that over/under as a prediction as much as it’s an enticement for people to part with their money.

That said, I think we all look at over/under numbers as something of a prediction. Or maybe an expectation. And when it comes to expectations, 2020 should be much better than 6.5 for Pitt.

I think it’s perfectly fine for Pitt fans to go into this season with high expectations. I think the team - players and coaches - should have high expectations. With a lot of very good players back from a very good defense and an offense that seemingly has nowhere to go but up, all parties involved should look at 2020 as a year that sees a considerable step forward.

Pitt fans are, by nature, scared of high expectations, and I understand why. Just in the last 20 years, we’ve seen some teams have very high expectations in the preseason only to fall flat on their faces very early in the schedule.

2003 comes to mind. That was a preseason top-10 team with one of the nation’s premier players. And in week three, they went to Toledo and lost to Bruce Gradkowski.

Or 2008. That team was ranked No. 25 in the Associated Press preseason poll despite going 5-7 the previous year - upsetting West Virginia in the finale created some high expectations - and of course they opened the season with a loss to Bowling Green.

Two years later, Pitt was ranked No. 15 in the 2010 preseason poll after winning 10 games in 2009. That group lost the opener at Utah, who was also ranked, and then proceeded to suffer several indignities en route to an 8-5 record and a coaching change.

So I get it. I understand why high expectations are met with skepticism and outright fear at times. But I think these are expectations that Pitt fans should lean into. Expectations that Pitt should buy into. The players and coaches should set their sights high for this season, and I think it’s reasonable for fans to do the same.

Set your expectations high because that’s where they should be for this program this season. Year Six of the Pat Narduzzi Era, with this personnel and this schedule, should be looking at a high level of achievement.

Remember the name(s)
Last week on the podcast we had a conversation with LaTef Grim, the former Pitt receiver who recently completed his degree and is working with high school players in California. It was a great discussion and I had a lot of fun catching up with him.

But it got me to thinking, because Grim really is something of a forgotten player in Pitt history, at least in the last 20 or so years. That’s probably because of the guys who came after him - you know, Biletnikoff Award winners Antonio Bryant and Larry Fitzgerald.

When those guys follow you and they accomplish what they accomplished…yeah, I can see how you might get overshadowed.

But Grim shouldn’t be totally forgotten, because while Pitt came to use the moniker of “Wide Receiver U.” around 2003 or so to reflect the success that Bryant and Fitzgerald enjoyed, it really started a few years earlier with Grim.

Simply put, he was really good at Pitt. In 1999, he caught 75 passes for 1,106 yards and four touchdowns, recording just the second 1,000-yard receiving season in school history. When he finished his career a year later, he was Pitt’s all-time leader in receptions with 178 and No. 2 in all-time receiving yards with 2,680, trailing only Dietrich Jells, who had 3,000 yards in four seasons - one more season than Grim played.

In the years since his Pitt career ended, Grim has fallen a bit on those all-time lists. Bryant, Tyler Boyd and Devin Street have passed him in career receiving yardage and Boyd and Street are ahead of him in receptions. But Grim still ranks No. 3 in catches and No. 5 in receiving yards - not too shabby. And he was a big part of the late 1990’s turnaround under Walt Harris: in his three seasons as a Panther, Pitt went from 2-9 to 5-6 to 7-5.

Yet, Grim gets overlooked. People will quickly point to Bryant and Fitzgerald and Boyd and Jonathan Baldwin when they talk about great Pitt receivers of the last 25 years, but Grim’s name rarely gets mentioned (Street seems to be in this conversation as well, at least from a numbers perspective).

Thinking about Grim got me wondering about other players who might get lost in the collective Pitt memory as time goes on, and one from recent years who could fall into this category is Qadree Ollison.

Current Pitt fans won’t forget him soon, since his play as a Panther is still fairly recent. But as the years roll on, I could see him slipping out of the fan consciousness. He doesn’t have the star power of a guy like James Conner or LeSean McCoy; instead, most fans probably reflect on him as a “ham-and-egger,” a grinding running back who wasn’t flashy.

But that’s selling his accomplishments short. There have been 23 1,000-yard rushing performances in Pitt history but only six individual players hit that milestone more than once. Tony Dorsett did it four times. Curvin Richards did it twice. So did McCoy and Conner and Dion Lewis.

And so did Qadree Ollison.

I’ll say that again: He’s one of six running backs in Pitt history to hit the 1,000-yard mark twice. And he did it rather unconventionally, in a sense: he redshirted in 2014, stepped into a leading role and rushed for 1,121 yards as a redshirt freshman in 2015, fell back into a less prominent position in 2016 and 2017 but finished his career with a stellar 1,213 yards as a redshirt senior in 2018 while averaging better than six yards per carry.

That yards-per-carry stat alone puts Ollison in rarified air: the only other player in Pitt history to lead the Panthers in rushing and average more than six yards per carry was Dorsett, who averaged 6.6 as a junior in 1975 (1,686 yards on 255 carries).

And one final note: of the 23 1,000-yard rushing seasons in Pitt history, only three players have hit that mark on less than 200 carries. Elliot Walker went for 1,025 yards on 172 attempts in 1977. Charles Gladman rushed for 1,085 on 194 carries in 1985. And Ollison had 1,213 on 194 rushes in 2018.

(EDIT: One other Pitt running back hit 1,000 yards on less than 200 carries. That was Darrin Hall, who gained 1,144 yards on 153 carries - 7.5 yards per carry - in 2018.)

It was truly a season that stands out for a school that has some impressive history at the position. And yet, I fear that Ollison will fade into the record books; his name will be on the all-time rushing list but it will be overshadowed by Dorsett and McCoy and Conner the way Billy West and Elliott Walker and Curvin Richards are (or seem to be, from my perspective).

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Is running back recruiting an issue?
Speaking of running backs…

This came up on the message boards a week or two ago and I thought it was an interesting topic:

Is running back recruiting an issue for Pitt?

It’s a funny question to ask. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that “RBU” shirts were being made and Pitt was indeed trumpeting itself as Running Back U., much in the same way that it took on the Wide Receiver U. mantle about 15 years earlier.

And it was understandable: Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall had the first dual 1,000-yard seasons in Pitt history, and that rushing attack led the Panthers to the ACC title game as Coastal Division champions. Throw in James Conner a couple years earlier and Dion Lewis and LeSean McCoy before that, and you had a solid decade of really good running backs.

And yet…

The last few years of running back recruiting haven't exactly produced a lot. If we go back to the last decade, Todd Graham brought in Isaac Bennett with the 2011 class; he was one of the better players to come from that class, even if he got overshadowed by the guys who followed him. The next year, Pitt signed Rushel Shell, and we all know what happened there.

Then things picked up. Pitt signed James Conner and Rachid Ibrahim in 2013, Qadree Ollison and Chris James in 2014 and Darrin Hall in 2015. That’s a pretty good group. Ibrahim was an okay backup and Chris James got overshadowed by better players, but Conner, Ollison and Hall obviously contributed to the cause significantly in their careers.

But the drop-off comes after that. Pitt signed Chawntez Moss in 2016; he was a nice player as a freshman but got kicked off the team midseason the next year. The 2017 class brought A.J. Davis and Todd Sibley; it’s hard to say that either one of those guys has established himself as a difference-maker over the last three years.

In 2018, Pitt got Mychale Salahuddin; he played a bit as a freshman before suffering a season-ending injury and then left the team before the 2019 season started. For the 2019 class, Pitt signed Vincent Davis and Daniel Carter; Carter, who was a four-star prospect, moved to fullback and played in a few games before redshirting, while Davis had 61 carries for 314 yards and scored a team-best five rushing touchdowns last year.

So after getting Conner, Ollison and Hall over the course of three classes from 2013-15, the next three classes produced Moss, A.J. Davis, Sibley and Salahuddin. There’s not a whole lot happening there, and while Vincent Davis looks promising, it’s hard to not draw a connection between the separation:

Paul Chryst’s running back recruits have outperformed Pat Narduzzi’s, by a considerable margin.

I don’t know what conclusions to make from that - Moss looked promising, as did Salahuddin - but the results are what they are. Perhaps Israel Abanikanda can reverse that trend. He enrolled early and everyone around Pitt seems to be pretty impressed by his combination of speed (he’s faster than A.J. Davis or Todd Sibley) and size (he’s bigger than Vincent Davis). But as we reflect on Pitt’s lack of an effective running game last year, it’s tough to look past the players themselves - and the coaches who brought them to Pitt.

What teams are forgotten?
I want to go back to the “forgotten players” topic for a second but expand it to teams.

Which teams from recent history seem to be forgotten?

This came to mind for me two weeks ago when we did a simulated bracket of Pitt’s 20 teams from the 21st century to determine which was the best. The 2009 team won, to the surprise of no one, and while there were some upsets along the way, it was natural to see the most balanced and most successful team of the last 20 years emerge victorious.

But in putting that series of articles together, I was reminded of a few teams that don’t get referenced as often when we talk about Pitt in the 21st century.

Like the team before that 2009 team - the one that went 9-4 in 2008.

That’s nine wins, and that doesn’t happen too often around here. As you probably know, only three Pitt teams have won nine or more games in the last 37 seasons.

Cripes, it’s depressing just to type that.

But the 2008 team did it and we never really talk about the success those Panthers experienced. I think I know why that is: despite the fact that Pitt won nine games in 2008, the team also had some serious lows, like losing to Bowling Green in the opener, getting blown out by Rutgers after winning five in a row and, of course, the Sun Bowl.

Those are three bad losses that made 9-4 feel a little less satisfying since it should have been no worse than 10-3 and potentially 11-2 or better.

As for 2002, I don’t think you’ll find an equivalent for Bowling Green, Rutgers or the Sun Bowl, but not all of Pitt’s four losses that season were feel-good affairs. That was the year of the swinging gate debacle, when the Panthers lost a home game to Texas A&M after back-to-back illegal shift penalties on an extra point attempt.

That didn’t sit well with anyone.

There was also a late-season loss to West Virginia at home that saw Pitt shoot itself in the foot repeatedly to blow a winnable game.

Still, neither the A&M game nor the WVU game were on the level of Bowling Green or Rutgers, and the overall result of that 2002 season was to create a whole lot of expectations for the next season - so much so that Pitt entered 2003 as a preseason top-10 team.

We all know how that went, and it’s probably part of the reason that 2002 team doesn’t get remembered as fondly as it should.

But 2002 and 2008 are both pretty significant teams in recent Pitt history for hitting a win total that only one other group of Panthers has been able to reach since the early 1980’s.

ONE PREDICTION

June will be nuts
Well, it might be…

A quick peek behind the curtains.

Putting the 3-2-1 Column together is something of a week-long affair. On Tuesday I start mapping out topics for each section of the column - the three observations, the two questions and the prediction - and on Wednesday and Thursday I do the actual writing.

So this prediction portion was put in place a few days ago, and my thinking was this:

Since the NCAA declared an emergency dead period that put an end to recruiting visits for the entire months of April and May (not to mention most of March), seniors-to-be who were planning to take official visits this spring have been forced to stay home.

But a lot of them still want to make their commitments over the summer. And a lot of the kids who want to make summer commitments also want to take official visits before they commit. So add these things up:

No spring visits
+ A lot of kids who want to take spring visits
+ The dead period ending on May 31
= A crazy June

Now, June is always a crazy month for recruiting. That has been the case for a long time, and it only got crazier two years ago when the NCAA started allowing spring official visits. But if you take all of the April/May official visits that didn't happen this year and jam them into June with the visits that were already going to be happening that month and then probably add in some more from kids who have a renewed sense of urgency due to the pandemic situation, and you’re going to get a wild, wild month.

This is what I was thinking when I planned this section of the column. And I still think it’s an accurate prediction. Except…

On Thursday, Ole Miss announced it was canceling all summer events - including camps. That’s Ole Miss the university, not just the athletic department, but the sports side of things will definitely be affected, and it gives me pause.

Because if summer prospect camps - a mainstay of June recruiting - are canceled, then I start to fear for official visits. The emergency dead period is currently slated to go through May 31; I think everyone is hopeful that it gets lifted for June, but if it doesn’t, then a crucial period of recruiting is going to go from shortened to eliminated altogether.

Perhaps the NCAA could add an extra quiet period and allow recruits to visit in July. That would be unprecedented, but at this point, what isn’t? But if that doesn’t happen, then you’re looking at no official visits until the fall. And given that many kids are unable to take official visits in the fall due to their high school seasons - assuming the pandemic has faded by the fall - then you’re faced with kids heading into December with no official visits under their belts.

And if a huge group of kids goes into December having taken no official visits, then you’ve got the possibility of Signing Day getting pushed back, since it’s difficult to expect recruits to sign without taking many, or in some cases any, visits.

Okay. I’m getting way ahead of myself. I don’t know how things are going to play out next week, let alone eight months from now.

So let’s go back to the better timeline, the one where the dead period gets lifted at the end of May and recruits can start taking visits in June. If that happens, let me tell you, man, it’s going to be crazy.

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