The 3-2-1 Column: Football strengths, hoops concerns and more

MORE HEADLINES - Sixth year means another chance for Tipton | Video: Tipton gets a sixth year | PODCAST: Encouraging hoops and spring football | Spring camp: What stood out in Wednesday's practice? | Hamlin and Ford staying in the moment | Slideshow: Photos from Pitt's spring practices | Spring camp video: QBs, WRs and TEs

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about Pitt hoops team closing the season in disappointing fashion and the strongest positions on the football roster for 2020.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

So much for encouragement
Early in the week, I convinced myself that things were looking up for the Pitt basketball team.

No, they still hadn’t won a game since Feb. 8. So there wasn’t that upside to look for. But in the wake of a pretty competitive showing at N.C. State, which was pretty much the best the Panthers had played in about three weeks, I thought there were signs of progress.

Add in the furious and inspired late comeback against Virginia, and you had two solid performances - flawed performances, to be sure, but solid all the same - sandwiching a dog against Syracuse. That sandwich had me trending up on the team again, thinking they might be able to put together a little something to end the season on a positive note.

Then came Wednesday night, and whatever good was done against N.C. State went out the window as Pitt played an uninspired game and lost to Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

Take your pick of storylines, criticisms and issues from this season: they were all there against the Yellow Jackets.

Poor shooting? Yep. They went 17-of-55 (30.9%) on field goals.

Turnovers? Yep. They had 18 of those - or one more turnover than made basket.

Inefficient play from the guards? Yep. Xavier Johnson and Trey McGowens went 3-of-12 from the floor.

Plus, they got outrebounded (38-32), got nothing from their starting center (Terrell Brown had 2 points in 14 minutes), never led in the game and had multiple droughts, including a six-minute scoreless stretch in the first half and seven-plus minutes without a field goal in the second half.

Pitt showed up in its natural form on Wednesday night, and the results followed the trend of the 2019-20 season, which the Panthers finished with a 15-16 overall record, a 6-14 mark in the ACC and a seven-game losing streak to close out the schedule.

Now they’ll get another game in the ACC Tournament, and barring some streak-breaking magic, the season will end after that. Instead of generating some positive momentum - even a little bit - for the offseason, Pitt limps into March with more sadness than madness and a whole lot of questions.

Primarily, those questions center on the core and the considerable uncertainty about whether or not the Panthers, as currently constructed, actually have a core they can build on.

Four or five months ago, we all would have said yes. Emphatically. We probably would have said it two months ago. Even one month ago; on Feb. 5, Pitt was 5-7 in the ACC and three days away from improving to 6-7 with winnable games against Clemson, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, N.C. State and Georgia Tech waiting on the schedule after that.

As we all know, the Panthers lost every one of those games, some in heartbreaking fashion and some just spectacularly bad. That leaves everyone - you, me, especially Jeff Capel and his staff - looking and wondering where this roster goes from here.

Some players have to get better, of course. And some are probably going to have to move on, for the good of themselves and of the team. The offseason promises to be interesting, but it seems unlikely that there will be near as much optimism entering next season as there was entering this season.

Next year’s team is going to have to earn the optimism.

A welcome return
My initial plan was to write about basketball for two segments of this week’s 3-2-1 Column, but that was the plan on Wednesday morning; after what happened on Wednesday night, I’m skipping that.

We’ll talk football instead. There’s some positive stuff to get into there.

Not that spring camp itself has produced much in the way of positive storylines. Spring camp is what it is: everybody is focused on improving in the areas where they struggled and polishing the areas where they excelled. The injured players are getting healthy and the healthy players are getting bigger, stronger and faster. These are the things that happen in spring camp. It all means everything and nothing.

Except there was one legitimate, honest-to-goodness positive storyline to come out of this week. I’d even go so far as to call it actual news.

Tre Tipton got a sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA and will be able to play for Pitt in 2020.

That’s good news for a lot of reasons.

We all know Tipton’s story. A receiver from Apollo-Ridge High School who signed with the Panthers in the class of 2015, Tipton has missed more games than he has played over the last five seasons, suffering injuries in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 that caused him to miss 35 games while appearing in just 30. When he has been on the field, he has shown flashes of potential. But those flashes were fleeting and he never stayed healthy long enough to really build some consistency.

With all of that missed time, getting a sixth year was something of a no-brainer and the NCAA did the right thing by granting it to him this week.

I can’t imagine it was an easy decision for Tipton. He has suffered three knee injuries and a collapsed lung; those things will leave a mark, both physically and emotionally. Tipton knows better than anyone how quickly a season-ending injury can happen, and he knows the toll it can take when that feeling of finality hits.

Every player carries that risk every time they step onto the field. But Tipton isn’t just putting himself at risk of experiencing the pain and the inevitable sense of loss that comes with a season-ending injury; he’s putting himself at risk of experiencing it for the fifth time in six years.

That’s heavy.

So I’m going to write this column twice. I’m going to write about Tre Tipton’s triumph now, about him getting one more year, one more chance to do what he’s always wanted to do: play football for his hometown team.

And then I’m going to write this again in December, and that time I’m going to be writing about the triumph of getting through a season unscathed, playing a full year and producing for the team that has given him so much pride.

Tre Tipton is going to do great things in life. He already is doing them, and that’s only going to continue beyond his football career. I have no doubt about that.

For now, I would just like to see him get a chance to live out that football dream for a full, healthy season, before he moves on to his other goal of saving the world.

An embarrassment of riches
We’ll probably have plenty of debates and discussions over the next six months (and beyond) about which position on Pitt’s roster is the strongest, but to me, there’s really one clear answer:

It’s defensive end.

And I don’t think it’s all that close.

We’ve all marveled at how Pat Narduzzi has built Pitt’s secondary, and that’s certainly impressive. But the defensive backs aren’t nearly as deep with experienced players as the defensive ends are. The defensive tackles are pretty good, too, but I think the high-end overall talent favors the guys on the outside. And I think the linebackers look solid, but that group lost two starters from last season (Saleem Brightwell and Kylan Johnson), so the returning group needs to be a little more proven.

Offensively, there’s really nothing that would compare to the defensive ends. There’s probably not even anything that would compare to the secondary, since Paris Ford and Damar Hamlin are a better collection of talent at safety than anything the offense has. And I say that as someone who is more bullish than most on the wide receivers; I think that group has a lot of potential, but none of it is as proven as Hamlin, Ford and cornerbacks Jason Pinnock and Damarri Mathis.

The quarterbacks are interesting in terms of depth, but we’ll talk about them in a minute. Either way, there’s still no comparison to the defensive ends.

Pitt’s defensive end group in 2020 is deep, talented and experienced with a track record of production. In fact, last year’s defensive ends were Pitt’s most productive in nearly a decade.

Patrick Jones, Deslin Alexandre, Habakkuk Baldonado and John Morgan combined for 20 sacks and 32 tackles for loss. The last time Pitt had a group of defensive ends put up numbers like that was 2010, when Brandon Lindsey, Jabaal Sheard, Justin Hargrove and T.J. Clemmings combined for 20 sacks and 34 tackles for loss.

And the 2019 group was more balanced then its Wannstedt-led predecessors. In 2010, Lindsey and Sheard put up 19 of the 20 sacks and 32 of the 34 tackles for loss - Hargrove and Clemmings had a combined total of 1 sack and 2 tackles for loss.

This past season, Jones and Alexandre combined for 14 sacks and 22.5 tackles for loss, but Baldonado (4 sacks, 5.5 tackles for loss) and Morgan (2 sacks, 4 tackles for loss) put in some pretty strong work in supporting roles.

Now all of those guys are back and - here’s the best part - Rashad Weaver is joining the group. We all know the story there: Weaver led Pitt with 6.5 sacks and 14 tackles for loss in 2018 and entered training camp 2019 as one of Pitt’s best overall players. Then he suffered a torn ACL injury and missed the season.

He’s not quite 100% yet, but by the time August gets here, he’ll be close enough to get back in action. And that means the coaches will have five experienced and productive defensive ends to rotate.

Most coaches hope they have four. In the past, Pitt has lived with three.

This year, the Panthers will have five.

Calling it an “embarrassment of riches” is probably too strong of a comment, but not by much.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Is this the best group since <insert last good group here>?
That’s a common discussion we have in sports debate:

“This is the best class of receivers in NFL Draft history” or “This is the best group of defensive line prospects in the WPIAL this century” or “That’s the greatest onside kick recovery unit since the legendary Houston squad of 2014.”

We do that all the time. We see a good collection of players or some other notable event and compare it to history. We want to know if what we’re seeing really is the best there has ever been. We won’t really be able to draw that conclusion, for a lot of reasons, but we like to talk about it all the same.

I just did it in the last segment of this column when I said that Pitt’s defensive ends this season are the strongest that position has been since the 2010 season.

Now, I’m doing it again, and you can probably guess which position I’m thinking of.

It’s the safeties.

That’s obvious, right?

Seriously, Damar Hamlin and Paris Ford are as good a pair of safeties as I’ve seen in my 15 years of covering Pitt. I started covering the team in 2005 when Dave Wannstedt took over and his starting safeties were Tez Morris and Sam Bryant.

Over the next 15 seasons, I saw some good tandems. Jarred Holley and Dom DeCicco were a solid duo in 2009 and 2010, as were Holley and Jason Hendricks in 2011. There were a bunch of multi-year starters over the years - Holley was a four-year starter; DeCicco was a three-year starter, as was Jordan Whitehead; Hendricks, Eric Thatcher, Reggie Mitchell, Terrish Webb and Mike Phillips were two-year starters (Phillips would have been a three-year starter but he got hurt).

And then you have this season, where Pitt returns a starting tandem for the first time since 2016 and just the third time in that 15-year stretch we’re talking about. But if we lined up all of the starters from 2005-19, I don’t think you’ll find a better duo than the one the Panthers rolled out last year - and will roll out this year again.

You’ve really got a perfect mix at safety. You’ve got Damar Hamlin, a fifth-year senior whose strengths are technique, understanding of the game and rock-solid tackling skills. And you’ve got Paris Ford, arguably - or maybe it’s not arguable at all - the most electrifying player to wear a Pitt uniform since LeSean McCoy (with all due respect to Aaron Donald and James Conner, a high-flying safety is inevitably going to be little more exciting than a play-making defensive tackle or a bruising running back).

And best of all, Pitt has Hamlin and Ford as returning starters, which means they both come into 2020 with a load of experience. That’s nothing new for Hamlin; 2020 will be his third year as a full-time starter and the fourth season that has seen him log significant snaps at safety. For Ford, experience is huge; 2019 was his first extended playing time and he responded with an all-conference performance.

Give him another year of learning, another year of maturity, another year of growth and you’re talking about a potential All-American.

So I’m calling for the old-timers - er, historians - to help me out: how far back do you have to go to find a safety tandem as good as this one? It predates my time covering the team, for sure.

What about the quarterbacks?
Let’s keep playing that “best-position-group-since” game, but this time, let’s do it with the quarterbacks. Because this quarterback room for Pitt in 2020…it’s pretty interesting.

You’ve got Kenny Pickett, the incumbent who will be Pitt’s first three-year starter since Tino Sunseri did it from 2010-12 and the Panthers’ third three-year starter this century.

You’ve got Nick Patti, who got a win in his lone career start and threw a key touchdown pass in Pitt’s biggest win of 2019.

You’ve got Davis Beville, the former four-star recruit who has a lot of tools and potential that bode well for the future.

And you’ve got Joey Yellen, the transfer from Arizona State who may or may not be eligible this season but did enough in his year at ASU to impress Mark Whipple and convince Whipple to jump into high pursuit once Yellen entered the transfer portal.

That’s quite a group. It’s not necessarily long on experience (beyond PIckett), but it does represent the first time Pitt has had three scholarship quarterbacks with at least one career game played since 2012 (that year, Pitt had Tino Sunseri, Trey Anderson and Tom Savage, who was sitting out due to transfer).

This is also the first time Pitt has had four scholarship quarterbacks on the roster since 2017, so the efforts of the 2017, 2018 and 2019 recruiting classes plus the work in the transfer portal are paying off.

It’s a good group, but how does it compare to previous years? Well, let’s look.

Here’s what the quarterback room was in each of those years. These are just scholarship players, and the names in bold represent players who had playing experience prior to the listed season. And make sure to scroll over so you don't miss that fifth name in 2008.

Anybody stick out in there? Any group look noticeably better than what we expect this year’s group to be? Nothing really jumps off the page from where I’m sitting. The 2012 team had Tino Sunseri, Tom Savage, Chad Voytik and Trey Anderson; that might be the best overall collection of quarterbacks prior to what 2020 looks like.

Really, if we’re going to find the last group that compared to this one in terms of potential, it’s probably the 2003 Panthers. That roster had Rod Rutherford as a returning starter, Tyler Palko and Luke Getsy battling for the backup job as sophomores and a freshman newcomer named Joe Flacco.

That’s a pretty good group, and that’s probably how far back we have to go.

I realize we’re dealing almost exclusively in potential here. If Beville and Yellen don’t turn out to be any good and Pickett doesn’t get better as a senior, then all of this hype about the 2020 group isn’t going to be worth very much. But as we sit here right now, six months before the season starts and even longer before we know what these four guys actually can do, the quarterback room looks pretty good.

And anyway, if you think I’m over-hyping the quarterbacks, you haven’t seen anything yet, because...

ONE PREDICTION

We’ll be talking about the receivers that way, too
Here we go. We’re riding the hype train. Let’s pull the throttle and see this locomotive jump the gun. It’s gonna 90 miles an hour down the main line run.

I think that when we get to the end of the 2020 season and when we start getting ready for Pitt’s 2021 season, we’re going to be filling in the blank on the Panthers having their best collection of receivers since <blank>.

Yeah, I said it. And I actually believe it.

Look, nobody will say that Pitt’s receivers had a great season in 2019. Maurice Ffrench set the Pitt record for receptions in a season with 96, but he was a product of volume and had fewer yards on those 96 receptions than any receiver in school history who caught at least 60 passes (for another comparison, Ffrench had 849 yards on 96 catches; in 2016, Jester Weah had 870 yards on 36 catches).

Taysir Mack made some huge catches for the Panthers last season, but he also had six drops, according to Pro Football Focus.

Ffrench dropped five passes himself, and Shocky Jacques-Louis had that same number on just 37 targets. Jared Wayne had three drops on 26 targets. He also fumbled once and French fumbled three times.

Also, the entire group of receivers combined to catch just 12 touchdowns despite playing in a pass-heavy offense. So there was a little good and a fair amount of not-so-good. But I think 2020 has the potential to have plenty of good. Maybe lots of good.

Ffrench is gone, and I do think that’s a loss for the receiving corps. But every other major contributor at receiver is back. Mack will resume his role as a downfield threat who can make contested catches, but the real boosts to the position group are Wayne and Jacques-Louis.

Wayne made his first career catch with a huge grab on the game-winning drive at Duke, but an injury sidelined him until the final four contests of the season. When he returned, he was a key player in the passing game: the freshman was targeted 22 times in the final four games and caught 17 of those passes for 244 yards and one touchdown.

He was Pitt’s second-leading receiver over those four games, trailing only Ffrench who caught a whopping 12 passes in the Quick Lane Bowl. Wayne did have three drops in those four games, but two of them came in the rain-drenched loss at Virginia Tech; otherwise, he showed himself to be a fairly sure-handed receiving target. I think he can catch a lot of passes this season.

Ditto for Jacques-Louis. His biggest problem since he got to Pitt - and it’s an issue that literally dates back to his arrival as an early enrollee last January - has been staying healthy. He was never really healthy as a freshman in 2018, but when he got to 100% (or close to it) this past season, he showed what he could do. The highlight was the North Carolina game, when he caught four passes for 104 yards, including a show of speed on a 74-yard catch-and-run touchdown reception.

Jacques-Louis is brimming with potential. If he can stay healthy this season, he can step into the Ffrench role as the receiver who sees a ton of targets.

And then there’s Jordan Addison. I’ve certainly raved about him plenty since he committed to Pitt and then throughout his sparkling senior season, and now that he’s on campus, there’s no reason to slow down. Everyone at Pitt - players and coaches - seems to be really impressed with the freshman from Maryland, and it’s almost a foregone conclusion that he’s going to get on the field this season.

How much Addison - or fellow freshman Jaylon Barden - contributes in 2020 remains to be seen and will depend on how he develops over the next six months. But the early returns are very positive.

Put all of those guys together, and I think there’s plenty of reason for optimism. I won’t make a spreadsheet of the last 15 years of Pitt receivers just yet, but maybe we’ll be having this conversation again next March.