MORE HEADLINES - Impressive spring game earns Pitt offer for Florida WR | New Jersey DB cuts list to five ahead of June official visits | Local forward Parham's offer sheet grows to five | Pitt gets a transfer tight end | PODCAST: More tight ends, baseball success & five recruits to watch | Five stand out for 30-offer CB from Cincinnati | Philly DB keeps Pitt in mind | Johnson's journey to Pitt

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re talking about two tight end additions, how Pitt used the transfer portal this offseason, a different approach for Jeff Capel and what to expect from June recruiting.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Rooting for the story
I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for a good story.

I loved it when the Steelers took Kenny Pickett in the first round, not necessarily because I am a huge Steeler fan or really anything to do with football. I loved it because it was a great story to see the Pitt quarterback go as a first-round pick to the team in town, a storybook ending to a pretty incredible year.

When Pickett got drafted, I said that those of us who do this job professionally don’t cheer for the teams we cover, but we do root for the people and we root for the stories, and the Steelers drafting Pickett checked both of those boxes.

Along the same lines, I don’t know if Karter Johnson, the junior-college player who committed to Pitt last week, is going to be a major contributor for the Panthers or not. But I do know that the person and the story are worth rooting for, so count me as a fan.

If you haven’t been following along:

Johnson was a four-star recruit from Ohio in the class of 2019 who signed with TCU as a 300-pound defensive tackle. He spent a few months with the Horned Frogs but left the team in October of his freshman year. Johnson was in a dark place at that point in his life, unhappy with just about every circumstance and detail of his situation.

He wasn’t comfortable with where he was, who he was or what he was doing. He didn’t want to be a defensive tackle. He didn’t want to weigh 300 pounds. He didn’t want to be at TCU.

So he made a decision, not to run away from his problems but to confront them, deal with them and solve them. He went home; he healed himself mentally with the support of family and friends; he lost weight; and he committed to doing what he wanted to do in football, which was to play offense.

The problem was, nobody believed he was an offensive player. College coaches still saw him as a defensive lineman, even after he dropped to less than 220 pounds. The only coaching staff that would give him a shot at playing tight end was at Butler Community College. But Johnson wasn’t discouraged; he wanted to play offense and Butler was the place he could do it, so he became a JUCO player.

And for two years, he toiled away in the sparse anonymity of junior college football. The cliches about JUCO are true: you really are buried in the middle of nowhere, with limited resources and little to go on beyond your own determination and the brotherhood you share with your teammates.

It was in that environment that Johnson grew into being a tight end. He kept his weight under 240 pounds and became a fairly reliable offensive weapon for Butler. After two years, he picked up a few offers and committed to Coastal Carolina earlier this month, but when Pitt showed interest, he quickly scheduled a visit and committed shortly thereafter. He’ll be on campus later this summer to join the team for training camp.

I don’t know what Johnson’s college career will be. He’s got three years to play, so there’s time to adjust to the Power Five level. And he has some interesting versatility: he can play as a traditional inline tight end, but he can also move around as an H-back, a fullback or even in the slot if the matchups favor it.

We’ll see how all of that goes. I can’t predict the future on how he’ll play at this level, but I can see the past, and when I look at Johnson’s journey, at everything he has experienced and how he has handled the situations he has faced, I can’t help but pull for the guy.

I won’t sit in the press box and root for Pitt; that would be unprofessional. But every time Johnson gets a snap, a target, a catch or a touchdown, I’ll have a little extra appreciation for how he got to this point - and how much every one of those contributions means to him.

Needs: Addressed
Pitt got a second tight end - at least, that’s where Johnson will be listed, even if his position is more versatile - when Georgia Tech transfer Dylan Deveney committed on Tuesday.

We’ll talk more about the tight end additions in a moment, but let’s look overall at what Pitt has gotten out of the transfer portal this spring:

Quarterback Kedon Slovis
Wide receiver Bub Means
Wide receiver Konata Mumpfield
Tight end Dylan Deveney
Linebacker Shayne Simon
Linebacker Tylar Wiltz

That’s six guys from the portal, and you can pretty much include Karter Johnson, too; he’s coming directly to Pitt from Butler Community College, so he’s not technically a transfer. But he’s a spring addition to the fall roster, so he’s close enough.

Regardless of how you classify Johnson, I think it’s interesting to compare that list of transfer acquisitions against the early lists of transfer needs we came up with when the 2021 season ended.

I think we all agreed that a transfer quarterback was key, and we all knew that outside linebacker would be a target area, too. Beyond those two priorities, it seemed likely that the staff would look for depth at tight end and another receiver, if a good one was available.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Pat Narduzzi went to the transfer portal for a starting quarterback and got one. He went looking for depth at linebacker and tight end, and he got two of each. And then he topped off the skill positions with a pair of receivers who look pretty promising (each in his own way).

We’ll see what Slovis becomes. He’s obviously the most important of the transfer portal additions, and his success will directly correlate with Pitt’s success this season. If he plays well, the Panthers are going to have a good year. If he doesn’t, it’s going to be a lot tougher to repeat as champs of the Coastal, never mind the ACC.

But overall, I think the Pitt coaches filled just about every need they had entering the offseason - and they have two more spots they can fill if they want a couple more pieces.

For all the talk about the good and the bad of the transfer portal, I think this is the upside of how it can work: identify needs and find players who fill those needs.

Let’s see if this works
Hoops, for a moment…

There’s a common sentiment among some segments of the Pitt fan base that, in the wake of a fourth consecutive losing season, a year that saw the Panthers win just 11 games, Jeff Capel opted not to make any changes and instead stay the course on what seems to be an errant path.

In terms of the coaching staff, that is accurate. Capel did not make any changes with his assistant coaches this offseason, despite the results on the court.

But I would contend there is more than one way to make changes, and if we look at it a different way, there are definitely some adjustments that have been made.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that this season’s roster, the way it looks right now, is different from any roster Capel has had at Pitt so far.

It really starts in the backcourt, where pretty much every defining characteristic is a change from what we’ve seen in the makeup of Pitt’s guards over the last four years.

Like experience. Even in the 2020-21 season, when the Panthers had Xavier Johnson coming back as a junior and Ithiel Horton and Nike Sibande finally available, they didn’t have the kind of experience they’ll roll with this season.

That year, Johnson had two years of playing time under his belt. Sibande had three and Horton had one (Sibande at Miami OH and Horton at Delaware). That’s not bad, and in college hoops, where there’s always a decent amount of personnel turnover, it’s a solid amount of experience.

This year, Pitt has three sixth-year guards and one fifth-year guard. Nelly Cummings, Jamarius Burton, Sibande and Greg Elliott have combined to play in 454 games, make 274 starts and score 4,319 points.

Pitt hasn’t entered a single season with a career 1,000-point scorer since Michael Young and Jamel Artis in 2016.

The Panthers will enter this season three career 1,000-point scorers.

Those guards have one other trait in common:

They’re pretty good shooters.

Not great shooters. Not lights-out sharp-shooters. But good enough to make opponents respect it.

Remember that last part, because we’re going to come back to it.

Cummings (35.7%), Burton (33.3%), Sibande (34.2%) and Elliott (40.9%) have all shot at least 33% from three in their careers. Last year, the lowest three-point percentage for any of those four guys came from Burton, who hit 32.9% of his 79 attempts.

I don’t know the last time Pitt had a quartet of guards who shot above 33% with the volume of shots that Cummings, Burton, Sibande and Elliott took. They might not all hit the same quantity of shots this year, but if they can keep at or above that 33% rate, the goal will be accomplished.

What goal?

The goal of being a threat.

Sometimes, it’s enough to have the threat of three-point shooting. If Cummings, Burton, Sibande, Elliott and Blake Hinson - a 6’7” 250-pound forward who is a good three-point shooter himself and will start at the power forward position - can shoot in the 33-35% range or above and do it with a decent amount of volume, then there will be a threat that opponents have to respect. And if opponents have to respect that threat, they’ll have to pull at least a little bit of their attention off John Hugley, which is the ultimate goal.

So for this season, things will look a little different. Pitt will have a group of veteran guards who can shoot a little bit.

Let’s see how that approach works.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Did they need two tight ends?
Back to the transfer portal…

When Dylan Deveney committed to Pitt on Tuesday, one of the top talking points was about why the coaches felt like they needed to take a second tight end this spring.

Granted, Karter Johnson is going to do more than just play tight end, but he and Deveney are both probably going to be listed as tight ends, bringing the total number of scholarship tight ends on the 2022 roster to six.

Is that a lot? It seems like a lot. If it’s not a lot, it’s quite a bit.

Is it too many?

I don’t think so.

I don’t know if Pitt “needed” two more tight ends, but like I mentioned earlier, I do think tight end depth was a focus for the staff this offseason. Gavin Bartholomew is coming off a freshman All-American season, a spectacular debut that saw him catch 28-of-29 targets for 326 yards and four touchdowns as he quickly became one of the Panthers’ top offensive players.

So he’s back, and that’s good for the offense. But beyond him? There isn’t much.

Kyi Wright has seen five targets since he arrived on campus in 2019. He has dealt with injuries and only played in three games last season, and his career total of offensive snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, stands at 246 entering this season.

By contrast, Bartholomew played 489 offensive snaps in 2021 alone.

Beyond Wright, Pitt has Jake Renda and Cole Mitchell at tight end; both joined the Panthers with the 2021 recruiting class and redshirted without seeing the field last season.

You don’t need a calculator to see that Pitt’s tight ends weren’t exactly deep coming into the season, at least with experienced players. It’s more or less Bartholomew and three guys who have combined for less than 250 career snaps.

That put “tight end depth” on the board for Pitt’s transfer search, and I think the coaches kicked the tires on a few potential targets. They settled on Johnson and Deveney to help fill out the position, and I think Deveney makes sense not just as a tight end with some experience but also in the particular role he can fill.

Whereas Bartholomew played 489 offensive snaps last season and 268 of them saw him lined up somewhere other than a traditional tight end spot - either in the backfield, the slot or out wide - Deveney has spent far more time inline. He has played 468 career offensive snaps, according to PFF, and he was inline for 315 of them.

As such, Deveney helps some with the question of how Bartholomew would be used this season. Would he be expected to transition to a role that was different from what he did in 2021? Or will he continue to operate in different spots? With Deveney on the roster, he won’t need to be inline all the time, since Pitt now has an experienced tight end who can line up there.

And then, as I’ve said a few times, Johnson is a weapon who can move around and do a bunch of different things.

So I think these two tight end additions make a lot of sense. I don’t think bringing in these two guys is necessarily an indictment on Wright, Renda and Mitchell; rather, I think the coaches saw an opportunity to improve an area where there wasn’t much experienced depth to work with, and they got two guys who should fit into the offense well.

Did Pitt win or lose the transfer portal market this offseason?
As we continue the transfer conversation, the numbers are pretty stark. Pitt has had 17 scholarship players from the opening roster of the 2021 season enter the transfer portal. On the flip side, the Panthers have added six players from the transfer portal.

That’s a minus-11 rating, if you’re into grading things in that fashion. But I think we all know that using a grading system like that would be pretty foolish and not tell anything close to the full story.

The full story is that, of Pitt’s 17 departures, four are going to Power Five schools. Wendell Davis is headed to Northwestern. Cam Bright is going to Washington. Jordan Addison is, of course, going to USC. And Davis Beville, in possibly the most curious move of all, is headed to Oklahoma.

I’m not going to draw too many conclusions on the other 13 transfers out who didn’t land at a Power Five school; everybody has to find their own level, and I think guys like A.J. Davis (James Madison), Todd Sibley (Albany), A.J. Roberts (Stony Brook) and Noah Palmer (Duquesne) probably made good decisions. Those guys will get opportunities at their new schools that they weren’t really getting at Pitt, and I think we’ll see a number of the departing transfers have success at their next stops.

Meanwhile, the six players the Panthers have added include this coming season’s top candidates to be the starting quarterback and leading receiver, along with a top-six linebacker, another receiver who will contribute (provided he gets a waiver) and a tight end who will probably get on the field a decent amount.

Put most succinctly, Pitt may be minus-11 in total players added/lost, but when we narrow that to starters/contributors, the net gain is probably an even split: Kedon Slovis, Konata Mumpfield, Shayne Simon, Bub Means and Dylan Deveney added; A.J. Davis, Wendell Davis, Shocky Jacques-Louis, Cam Bright and Jordan Addison lost.

Of course, we can drill into that list a little further and note that not every starter/contributor is equal; losing Jordan Addison and gaining Shayne Simon is not a one-for-one tradeoff, on a number of levels.

But when you look at the sum total of what Pitt lost to the transfer portal and what the Panthers gained from said portal, I think they did okay.

Yes, Pitt lost would-be starters in Addison, Bright and Wendell Davis. But the Panthers also had some specific needs when approaching the transfer portal this offseason - starting quarterback; depth at tight end and linebacker - and addressed them rather well, in addition to targeting Konata Mumpfield in a “best player available” pickup.

Observing the balance of transfers in and transfers out, as well as the way coaches manage all facets of the transfer portal, will be an annual offseason exercise. For this year, Pitt did pretty well, all things considered.

ONE PREDICTION
This is when the class will be built
Pat Narduzzi likes to say that Pitt is 80% or better on its hit rate with official visits.

The number isn’t quite that high, but it’s still pretty good. So as June, with all of its official visit activity, approaches, I thought we could take a look back at the success Pitt has had in previous years - and talk about what this year might bring.

First, the numbers: In the last four recruiting classes (three of which saw Pitt host official visits, since recruits in the class of 2021 couldn’t do it), the Panthers have brought 81 recruits to campus for official visits in June.

Okay, stop right there. That’s a ridiculous number. 81 kids over three recruiting classes? That’s right. Pitt hosted 20 recruits from the class of 2019 for June official visits, 32 from the class of 2020 and 29 last year. And I think this year’s group might top 35, so that trend is only going to continue - and increase.

Of the 81 recruits who took June official visits, 31 have ultimately signed with the Panthers.

I’ll have to check the calculator, but that seems like it’s less than 80%.

Of course, there are caveats. Not all 50 of those guys who got away were “takes” for Pitt - that is to say, some of them couldn’t have committed to the Panthers if they wanted to (and, in some cases, they tried to commit but were turned away).

Looking at the visit lists and without naming names, I can find somewhere around 15 or 16 recruits who took official visits and likely would have committed to Pitt if they were given the opportunity.

So if you take those guys out of the list of 81, you’re looking at a hit rate that pushes over 50%.

Not bad. Not 80%, but not bad.

Some of this a volume play. Pitt brings a ton of kids to campus in June. The Panthers obviously aren’t going to get all or even most of those kids; the numbers simply don’t allow it.

But what Pitt has done is largely fill its recruiting classes with the June official visits. In the class of 2019, the Panthers signed 19 prospects; eight of them visited in June. A year later, 14 of Pitt’s 18 signed recruits took June official visits. And last year, Pitt announced 12 signings in December; nine of them took official visits in June,

You’re looking at 31 of Pitt’s 49 signings in those three classes - 2019, 2020 and 2022 - all taking June official visits.

So forget the hit rate; the more important number is what percentage of the class ends up getting filled in June. This right here is the time when Narduzzi and company have been building their classes. And while there will inevitably be June commits who later back off their pledges - Pitt has had at least two June visitors decommit in each of those three classes - that’s built into the way the coaches approach the class makeup.

Either way, here’s the prediction:

The next month of official visits, which kicks off on Thursday when the first group of visitors arrives in town, will provide the bulk of Pitt’s 2023 recruiting class.

So get ready, because here they come.