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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about filling the hole at cornerback, reserves who need to step up, Austin Peay and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

That’s not good news
There was a bit of news this week, and it wasn’t of the good variety.

The news, of course, was that Pitt lost senior cornerback Damarri Mathis for the season due to injury. Fortunately for Mathis, that doesn’t mean his college career is over, partially due to the pandemic exemption - pandemption? - from the NCAA that lets everybody get this year back, but also due to the fact that Mathis never redshirted, so he could still play a year after this even without COVID-19.

Whether Mathis wants to return remains to be seen; that’s a decision I’m guessing he will make after the season, although I get the impression that it’s likely he’ll return. That would be a huge boost for 2021, of course, but let’s keep the focus on the more imminent future.

Because while Pitt’s defense is fairly loaded with talent, experience and depth, not all of the position groups have the same amount of those three qualities. Yes, the defensive line does, especially the depth portion. The cornerbacks, on the other hand, do not.

In fact, only three corners on Pitt’s returning roster for 2020 have taken snaps at cornerback in a college game. Mathis was one of them. Another was Jason Pinnock, who has played a lot. And the third was redshirt sophomore Marquis Williams, who has played all of 45 snaps at corner over the last two seasons.

That’s not a lot, and now one of those guys - arguably the most talented player in the group - is out for the season.

Cornerback isn’t the only position where Pitt’s depth was questionable, but it might be the most prominent because there really wasn’t much behind Pinnock and Mathis coming into this season. There might be talent in the ranks, but there isn’t a lot of experience, and that stings. The Panthers were eventually going to face this predicament when Pinnock and Mathis left Pitt, and in some ways, there might be a silver lining to this dark cloud (we’ll get to that in a second), but with a talent-laden defense and an offense that just might break out, the coaches certainly were hoping to avoid a season-ending injury at one of the thinner positions on the team.

So what happens now? Pinnock returns as the veteran starter; that’s the easy part. The challenge will be finding someone to play next to him. Williams is the veteran of the reserves as a redshirt sophomore, but I don’t know if he’s a lock to start. Sophomore A.J. Woods has some potential and could be a breakout player this season; he’s got speed and appeared in 10 games last season as a true freshman, and while all of those appearances were on special teams, I’ve heard some positives about his play and I think he’ll be in the rotation.

There’s also a group of freshman corners on this roster, and at least one or more of them will be pressed into action. Rashad Battle and Jahvante Royal seem to have been overlooked as four-star prospects in Pitt’s 2020 recruiting class, but both have been impressive in training camp, from what I’m told, and at least one - if not more - of those guys will be on the field this season.

So Pitt has some players to throw out there. Which ones will get the bulk of the reps and how well they’ll do remains to be seen. But there are players waiting in the wings, and they’ll get an opportunity in 2020.

The upside
I mean, look, there’s no upside when a senior with 30+ games of experience gets hurt and has to miss a season. That’s a negative all around, and I’m not going to try to spin something positive out of it.

But…

I can’t help it. I look for the bright side of things. Even as the world around us makes it more and more difficult every day - every hour - I still try to find something positive. And there is actually a little bit of upside to the Mathis injury.

As we look ahead to 2021, there was always going to be a couple big holes to fill at cornerback. Really, there were going to be big holes to fill all over the defense, given the amount of seniors and players who were likely to depart for the NFL. But that’s especially true at cornerback where, as we said, Pitt just doesn’t have much in the way of experience behind Pinnock and Mathis.

The circumstances are different now. Whereas the coaches probably would have tried to get Williams or Woods or Royal or Battle on the field but likely would have given a vast majority of the snaps to Pinnock and Mathis, now they will be forced to use one of those younger players a lot more.

That’s going to mean some growing pains in 2020, but the upside for 2021 is considerable. Whoever wins the starting job is going to get a lot more reps than they would have prior to Mathis’ injury. And since that new starter probably would have been the top reserve if Mathis was healthy, Pitt will also have an opening for the No. 3 corner job, which means another underclassman is going to see a lot more reps than he would have.

These are good things for 2021. Because instead of going into next season with a bunch of young guys without much of track record on the field, Pitt is going to have a returning starter and at least one reserve with a healthy amount of playing time on his resume (and it may end up being more than one, depending on how the coaches rotate the corners).

Add to all of that a possible return by Mathis, and now cornerback actually looks promising for 2021.

The price, of course, is a drop-off in 2020. But who knows? Maybe there’s a breakout candidate or two among the young corners. Either way, the result will be a 2021 crop of corners who will be better prepared than they would have been otherwise.

So that’s not a bad thing.

Some more praise for the freshmen
I talked about the freshmen in last week’s 3-2-1 Column, and I’ve talked about the 2020 recruiting class in quite a few previous columns. But we’re going there one more time (and I won’t promise this will be the last time).

I can’t help it. It seems like every day, I hear more positive things about how the freshmen are looking, both in on-the-record and off-the-record conversations.

Starting with the press conference setting, there was Pat Narduzzi this week, offering just about the most effusive praise he could muster for freshman receiver Jordan Addison. He was asked if there is another receiver Addison reminds him of, and this is what he came up with:

“There’s one guy that kicked our butt one year when he was at Central Michigan: Antonio Brown. I didn’t look at Antonio Brown close enough until we got beat by him, but he’s kind of built like him a little bit, he’s slippery like him and I did play against him in college and couldn’t stop him. Other than that, I can’t think of anybody else that he would look like. It’s hard for me to tell, but he’s going to be a good football player. Real good.”

That’s lofty praise, I’d say. Never mind what Brown did against Michigan State - he had 10 catches for 71 yards and a touchdown in Central Michigan’s 29-27 win over the Spartans in 2009 - but you’re talking about a guy who was considered the Best Receiver in the NFL over multiple years, a player who was inarguably the No. 1 receiver in the NFL for the decade of the 2010’s and arguably one of that decade’s best overall players.

And Narduzzi just invoked his name when drawing a comparison for Pitt freshman Jordan Addison.

We’ve all been hearing the Addison buzz since he committed last summer, and I know the coaches have been really excited about him for at least that long. But it’s one thing for a recruit to have some hype before he gets to campus; it’s another thing altogether for a recruit to be on campus for eight months and a couple weeks of training camp and not only maintain that hype, but seemingly exceed it.

That’s what Addison seems to have done. Now we all just have to wait and see what he does in the games.

I mentioned the freshman cornerbacks earlier, and I’ll mention them again because I’ve heard some good things about Jahvante Royal and Rashad Battle. Narduzzi praised both guys this week, but I’ve also heard in some off-the-record conversations that those two, as well as safety Buddy Mack, are practicing really well. It sounds like the coaches have confidence putting any one or more of those three on the field as freshmen.

And while I’ve talked a lot about Addison and Jaylon Barden, it sounds like the third freshman receiver in the class, Aydin Henningham, is turning heads as well. He’s bigger than Addison and Barden, and that size makes him intriguing, especially since he seems to be making the most of it in practice.

It all leads to the same conclusion: that 2020 class is going to end up as Narduzzi’s best. I’m getting closer to moving that from a prediction to an observation.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How did the corners get like this?
Let’s return to the cornerbacks for a second and address a simple question:

How did it get like this? How did Pat Narduzzi’s defense, a defense that carries a reputation of living on strong cornerback play, end up with a lack of depth at such a key position? As always, it comes back to recruiting, so we’ll start there. Here are the cornerbacks Pitt has recruited since the class of 2016:

Class of 2016: Therran Coleman, Damar Hamlin, George Hill, Henry Miller
Class of 2017: Damarri Mathis, Jason Pinnock
Class of 2018: V’Lique Carter, Judson Tallandier, Marquis Williams
Class of 2019: AJ Woods
Class of 2020: Rashad Battle, Jahvante Royal, Hunter Sellers

I’m sure yinz are smart enough to see where we’re going with this.

If you just look at the potential returning players - that would be the classes of 2016-19 - Pitt signed 10 players as cornerbacks. Of those 10, six are still on the roster and only four are still playing cornerback.

40% is not exactly a strong hit rate. I mean, if you get all-conference players out of 40% of the guys you sign in a class, that’s pretty solid. Not great, but solid. But we’re not talking all-conference selections; we’re simply talking about players on the roster, and if you only have 40% of the guys you signed in the last four classes still on the roster…that’s not good.

The class of 2016 took some hits, as you can see. George Hill never cleared with the doctors in the summer before his freshman year, and Therran Coleman and Henry Miller moved to different positions and then transferred.

The class of 2017 is legit. Jason Pinnock and Damarri Mathis are both at Pitt and projected starters. But the 2018 class is another problem. V’Lique Carter moved to offense and then transferred to Albany and Judson Tallandier switched to safety this summer, leaving just Marquis Williams at cornerback from the class.

And the class of 2019 was small; AJ Woods looks like he can be good, but he was the only corner in the class. That doesn’t help the depth.

Really, the biggest issue was that 2018 class. Pitt signed three corners that year, and only one remains on the roster at that position. Get another viable corner out of that class, and the depth situation would look better than it currently does.

It would have helped to get another corner in the 2019 class, too (Marlin Devonshire from Aliquippa would seem to fit nicely with this roster, and given the numbers, maybe even Daequan Hardy from Penn Hills, who never got an offer from Pitt).

All this being said, though, some of the issues with cornerback depth are simply due to the nature of college sports: when you run through classes of players on four-year cycles, you’re going to have years where you’re a little thin in experience, numbers or both. Even if Carter or Tallandier had stuck at cornerback (in the case of Tallandier) or stayed at Pitt (in the case of Carter), it’s unlikely either would have logged a ton of meaningful snaps last season since the Panthers had Pinnock, Mathis and Dane Jackson.

Regardless of recruiting, a key injury in 2020 was going to test the depth at cornerback, and 2021 was always going to be a transition year at the position.

What other backups need to step up?
The reserves at cornerback are going to be called upon to perform this season. That much is certain. And obviously Pitt is going to need at least one backup at defensive tackle to emerge in 2020 after Jaylen Twyman opted out of the season.

But what about other places on the roster? Where else does Pitt need some quality backups to take a step forward and see an increase in snaps and an improvement in play?

I think there are a couple spots, and they’re on defense, which probably isn’t a surprise.

One is linebacker. Those three spots are a little bit like cornerback, where there just isn’t much experience, if any, among the backups. The penciled-in starters are Cam Bright, Phil Campbell and Chase Pine, with Wendell Davis pushing Pine for playing time and possibly the starting job in the middle.

But there’s virtually no depth in the reserve ranks behind those guys. Just looking at the outside linebacker positions, Bright and Campbell will be backed up by some combination of players with little to no experience. SirVocea Dennis played last season and did not redshirt, but only a few of his snaps were on defense; the rest were on special teams. Leslie Smith saw some time, too, but he played fewer than four games and redshirted. And the rest of the depth at outside linebacker is made up of freshmen.

Now, I will say again that I am quite bullish on this group of freshman linebackers. Just like I’ve heard some pretty high praise about a few of the other freshmen I’ve mentioned, I’ve heard people talk in glowing terms about Solomon DeShields and Bangally Kamara.

After a couple weeks of camp, the coaches believe those two guys are going to be really good. And there’s a good chance they’ll be called into action this season, either on special teams - with the way they can run, special teams seems like a lock - or in the defense itself.

And Pitt will need them to get some experience this year. Campbell will probably be gone after this season (although I suppose that’s up the air for any senior, since the NCAA is giving them another year of eligibility) so the Panthers will need a new starter to replace him, and Bright has one more year left after 2020 (again, he could have two), so the coaches would probably like to start planting some seeds for the coming transitions at outside linebacker.

Plus, getting some rotational reps for those younger linebackers this year could help in avoiding a year like the cornerbacks were facing, when all the starters graduate and none of the reserves have any experience.

There’s also the simple value in rotating linebackers. If Dennis or DeShields or Kamara or Smith can take some meaningful snaps, that should keep guys like Bright and Campbell fresh later into games.

(I didn’t really mention Brandon George, but I think he’s probably more a middle linebacker, so he’d be behind Pine and Davis).

A tougher spot to get some reps for reserves is safety. No, Damar Hamlin and Paris Ford probably aren’t going to be back next season. And no, the backups don’t have a lot of snaps in the base defense (Erick Hallett played a lot as an extra defensive back in the Delta sub-package last season, but he hasn’t seen much time playing safety in the base 4-3). So it would stand to reason that the coaches would want to get those guys on the field to help get them ready for next season.

But how can you take Hamlin or Ford out? I actually think pretty highly of Brandon Hill and I think Hallett can be a good player (plus Buddy Mack, who I mentioned earlier), but Hamlin and Ford are a dynamic duo in the secondary and two of the best players on the team; even if the long-term gain of getting snaps for the backups is valuable, is it really worth it to take one or both of those two guys off the field? I’m not so sure that it is.

ONE PREDICTION

The fear probably won’t go away
My predictions aren’t usually very good.

That’s not just about this section in the column; I mean overall. I am just not very good at predicting things. More often than not, my predictions don’t come true, for a variety of reasons (I have a fantasy football draft on Saturday night, which will likely prove this theory once again).

But there are some things I know will happen, and I know them from experience. Like the experience of being with Panther-Lair.com since 2005, which has given me a fair amount of insight into the Pitt fan psyche.

I don’t totally understand how Pitt fans think, but I know them well enough to be able to predict certain reactions. So when I posted a rumor on the message board this week about a team Pitt could be adding to its 2020 schedule, I knew what could be coming.

The opponent was Austin Peay (Pitt officially announced that on Tuesday), and as I did some quick research on the Governors, I saw that they went 11-4 and advanced to the quarterfinals of the FCS championship last season.

When I read those basic facts, I could already see the reaction:

Why would Pitt schedule such a good opponent?

Now, I know where some of that comes from. It was still less than a decade ago that Pitt lost to Youngstown State. And even more recently, the Panthers went to overtime against another YSU squad. And that’s just the FCS ranks; there have been plenty of Ohio’s and Akron’s and Bowling Green’s and Houston’s and Toledo’s over the years.

Get enough of those, and you start to get a little shell-shocked. I can understand that. You probably need to get a few more years of separation from those losses before the fear wears off.

But I guess I would say this: in the last five seasons, Pitt has done a pretty decent job in those games. In fact, Pat Narduzzi has a 10-2 record against teams outside the Power Five, and his two losses came to Navy in the 2015 Military Bowl and UCF in Orlando in 2018; both of those teams were ranked at the time, and I don’t think either would count as a bad loss.

(A brief aside: we often talk a lot about Pitt’s scheduling practices, and it’s remarkable that 2019 was the first time in the Narduzzi era that the Panthers faced three non-Power Five opponents in one regular season.)

Now, this is not to say that Narduzzi has not experienced some bad losses. Boston College was a bad loss last season. Miami was, too. And so were Stanford and North Carolina in 2018. But those were at least Power Five opponents, which counts for something considering each of his three predecessors this century had at least one loss - and usually more - that was worse than those.

But I get it. I understand that Pitt fans are gun-shy when they see a talented FCS opponent. Maybe a few more years of taking care of business against those kinds of teams will make the fear pass.

Maybe.