The 3-2-1 Column: Offensive issues, playmaker questions, decommits and more
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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about decommits, playoff stars, the lasting impact of a final game, playmakers and more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
The final cut
We’re still a little more than two weeks away from Pitt’s appearance in the Sun Bowl against Stanford, but there has already been some discussion about the game and the impact it could have on the perception of Pitt’s season.
I sometimes think we place too much significance on individual event. One game almost never makes or breaks a season; even when that one game stands out as a crowning achievement like the Miami win in 2017 or the West Virginia win in 2007, that probably had as much to do with the fact that there was little else to celebrate from those seasons, so those upsets carried even more importance.
(By contrast, the Clemson win in 2016 or the Notre Dame wins in 2008 or 2004 don’t stand out quite so much because those were, for the most part, pretty solid seasons overall.)
So I shy away from making too much of one game, because a season really is a 12-game story (or 13 or 14). You can’t judge on one 60-minute performance to render a verdict on a season; you have to look at the whole picture, look for things like consistency of performance, season-long improvement and how the team played against varying levels of competition.
Did they get better over the course of the season? Did they beat the teams they were supposed to beat? How did they do against the higher competition? That’s how you judge a season.
But there’s something about the last game. That bell rings a little louder. That’s the game that sends you into the postseason, and while the lingering taste from the result of any individual game during the season can be replaced a week later by the next game, the aftereffects from the final game of the season last roughly the length of a full-term pregnancy, which is kind of a fitting metaphor. The memory of the last game grows and becomes the defining characteristic of its carrier over the course of that period.
Fairly or unfairly, whether it represents the season or not, the final game is going to be what people take into the offseason. So this past offseason, there was a fair amount of optimism and it was based almost exclusively on the Miami game. There were threads from the preceding games - improved defense, for one - but the biggest source of optimism was the Miami game.
Going further back to an oft-cited example, 2007 was similar. Sure, there was optimism due to having LeSean McCoy back and a defense that looked pretty good, but the way it all came together in the win over West Virginia set the tone for the offseason to come. It was a 5-7 team, but one that catapulted itself into the offseason with a monster of a win.
Of course, a year later the script was flipped. Pitt won nine games in 2008 but had the infamous 3-0 loss in the Sun Bowl. That game plus a few personnel matters - losing McCoy and Scott McKillop, returning Bill Stull - created a lot of pessimism despite coming off the second nine-win season in a quarter-century. And it pretty much all stemmed from the Oregon State game.
There are more examples. The Little Caesar’s Bowl, with impressive performances from James Conner and Chad Voytik, set the bar high for 2014, even though Pitt was a 7-6 team in 2013. The offseasons after 2015 and 2016 - Pitt’s first back-to-back eight-win seasons in six years - had some dark clouds due to less-than-inspiring showings against Navy and Northwestern in the respective bowl games.
So yes, there is something riding on this game. It may or may not move the needle on recruiting, and I don’t think it translates all that much to ticket sales, but in terms of perception for the next nine months, Pitt’s performance in El Paso will make an impact.
Wish you were here
Pitt lost a commitment this week. And to make matters worse, that recruit turned around and committed to North Carolina, a division rival who has had the Panthers’ number on the field and is now rebuilding under the guidance of 67-year-old Mack Brown.
There aren’t a lot of positive angles in that situation.
Khadry Jackson had been committed to Pitt since June, when he picked the Panthers over offers from Iowa State, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, N.C. State, Rutgers and more. He is listed in the Rivals.com database as a safety but Pitt projected him to play outside linebacker; that’s where he worked out at Pitt’s prospect camp, and he seemed like a good fit at the “Star” linebacker position, which has some elements of being a hybrid linebacker/safety.
After Brown was hired, the UNC staff re-offered Jackson and convinced him to get on campus last weekend for an official visit. By Sunday morning, he had made up his mind and tweeted his decommitment. The Pitt coaches got one last shot him on Monday night, sending defensive coordinator Randy Bates, linebackers coach Rob Harley and safeties coach Cory Sanders for an in-home visit, but it wasn’t enough, and on Tuesday, he announced for UNC.
Simply put, that hurts Pitt’s recruiting class. Jackson is a good athlete who could have done well playing that outside linebacker role for the Panthers. We saw this season that the coaches are keen on rotating linebackers if they have the depth to do it, but they didn’t really have the depth at Star linebacker, so adding another one to the roster would have helped in that regard.
Ultimately, though, this is college football recruiting. As much as some might like to make it a bigger reflection on the coaching staff, the reality is, decommitments happen all over the place. Penn State lost a recruit last week to North Carolina, of all places. N.C. State lost one this week. Texas A&M lost three in the last two weeks. Miami lost three in one day this week. And those are just the ones I see with a quick search of the word “decommit” on Twitter (although if you search that, you’re going to find an awful lot of salty fans with anonymous screens and plenty to say about other people’s decisions, but that’s another topic for another day).
The thing is, every one of those decommits - and the countless others across the country - had their own reasons for decommitting, and for most of them, it probably came down to a simple conclusion:
They liked School B better than School A.
It’s really that simple. And the early official visit period factors into this as well. A recruit like Jackson committed at the end of his official visit in June, so by the time December rolls around, he’s six months removed from getting the red-carpet treatment at Pitt. Then UNC, with a beautiful campus and a strong brand and a new staff comes in and gets him to take an official visit. The Pitt memories, strong as they may be, aren’t quite as fresh, and now School B looks like a more appealing option.
That’s what happened with Jackson and probably has happened with a bunch of other decommits, too. That’s not the only reason recruits have decommitted - each kid has his own motivations - but it’s what happens. If Pitt doesn’t lose anyone beyond Jackson and JUCO tight end Travis Koontz from the 2019 class, the Panthers’ retention rate will be as high as any team’s.
Shine on, you crazy diamond
Unless I’ve missed a really late playoff schedule, the 2018 high school football season is over. Some of Pitt’s commits had senior seasons to forget. Others had some success but fell short of their ultimate goal. And a select few went all the way - and had a big hand in their team’s success.
Like Kyi Wright. The Pitt linebacker commit - or maybe defensive end, or maybe tight end, or maybe H-back - plays quarterback for Farrell, and while the Steelers had a bunch of playmakers in their offense, Wright led the way. He threw for 29 touchdowns and just two interceptions and ran for 16 more touchdowns. He also had a score on defense, where he was Farrell’s leading tackler and leader in tackles for loss.
Farrell was pretty dominant all season, but the team turned it up in playoffs. The Steelers outscored Shade, Coudersport, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and Lackawanna Trail 200-44 (that’s an average of 50-11, if you’re doing the math at home) and Wright had some big games as well. He accounted for six touchdowns in those four playoff games; that included some monster games in the semifinals and the state championship game - he rushed for 100+ yards and scored twice in each of them, in addition to recording a combined total of 18 tackles.
Wright deserves every award he has received and will continue to receive this offseason. He had an outstanding senior season.
The same goes for Vincent Davis. The Pitt running back commit from Cardinal Gibbons in Fort Lauderdale had an okay regular season, rushing for 668 yards and seven touchdowns in 10 games with an offense that sported a lot of weapons. In the playoffs, though, Davis stepped it up. He wasn’t needed much in a 49-14 blowout of Merritt Island - 6 carries, 25 yards, 1 touchdown - but in the final four games of the postseason, he carried the ball 78 times for 414 yards and five touchdowns.
Those performances pushed him past the 1,000-yard mark for the season. He topped 100 yards in two of the four games, including a 21-carry/130-yard/2-touchdown game in the state title game, a 48-10 win over North Marion.
It’s anyone’s guess what Wright and Davis will do when they get to Pitt - although a speedy back like Davis and a big athlete like Wright seem like they should be able to find a role - but it’s hard to deny what they’ve done so far. And it’s always good to see young players stepping up on the biggest stage, as those two guys did.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
What was the biggest problem with Pitt’s offense this season?
The problems in Pitt’s offense, let me count them…
Just kidding. I don’t need to and I know that you don’t need me to. While there are plenty of people who would simply point to the offensive coordinator and stop there, I think most realize that it’s more than just one thing or one person.
Watson didn’t take the penalties, for instance (although he might have born responsibility for some of the delay of game calls). Watson didn’t miss blocks in pass protection or reads in the passing game. Watson didn’t drop passes. Watson didn’t injure the center (don’t start on the idea that the play call for Pitt’s final touchdown at Wake Forest was the cause of Jimmy Morrissey’s injury; it was a freak accident).
So it’s not all on Watson. It might not even be mostly on Watson.
When it comes to Pitt’s offensive struggles this season, there are many fathers. We’re talking about plurality here, not majority.
The offensive line has some culpability. On penalties alone, that group had a rough season. Alex Bookser alone was flagged 10 times, and while he stands out for such a large number, the fact is, the line had a penchant for taking penalties at the worst time. To be honest, though, any time was a bad time for a penalty with this offense, given how tough it was to get consistent effectiveness.
Beyond the penalties, the offensive line had major issues in pass protection, as evidenced by the 30+ sacks Pitt gave up in 2018 and the fact that Kenny Pickett was, according to Pro Football Focus, pressured on 38% of his drop-backs.
That’s a tough percentage for any quarterback, let alone a first-year starter whose inexperience showed early often throughout the season.
The running backs played pretty well this season; I would put them down the list of problems. There may have been occasional issues with blitz pickups, but it’s hard to find a lot of fault in how Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall played this season.
The receivers did okay with what they had to work with. They weren’t perfect and they didn’t always make life easier for Pickett - there were 18 dropped passes this season, according to Pro Football Focus - but their jobs are so dependent on so many other factors that it’s tough to say they were the biggest issue. Plus, I thought Taysir Mack and Maurice Ffrench both showed some flashes of potential.
The tight ends were…listed on the roster. They also appeared in games.
That leaves the quarterback. Was Pickett the biggest issue with the offense this season?
Well, I already said that this discussion would be decided more on plurality than majority, so by that measure, I’m going to say that Pickett was not the biggest issue. But he was up there. Quite simply, he didn’t have a great first year as a starter.
12 touchdowns and 6 interceptions in 13 games is not a very good set of stats. 1,833 yards in 13 games is not very good. 6.5 yards per attempt is not very good. And this one really stood out to me: Pickett converted just 24 third downs via the pass this season, despite completing 45 passes in those situations. He also had more sacks (13) than converted third downs via the run (12).
Those numbers are not good. In fact, they’re downright bad. And they got even worse in the final two games: against Miami and Clemson, Pickett completed 5-of-14 passes on third down and converted just two third downs via the pass.
Unless it was third-and-short and Pitt could hand off, the Panthers had virtually no chance of converting third downs against those two teams.
So does Pickett get the top spot among offensive issues? You can make a case for it. Just as Watson has to wear the production numbers since he’s the coordinator, Pickett has to own his stats, too, as ugly as they may be. It was all affected by the other issues mentioned above, but when it comes time for criticizing, the coordinator and the quarterback are going to get the brunt of it.
Pickett is probably helped a little in the realm of public perception because fans are so down on Watson, but there’s no doubt about it: Pickett’s first year as a starter was a disappointment, and he’s got a lot of work to do before next season. Pat Narduzzi is invested in him and believes in him, and 2019 has to be a whole lot better than 2018 was at the quarterback position.
Who’s the best playmaker now?
Someone mentioned something along these lines on the message board, and I thought it was an interesting discussion topic:
Who’s the best playmaker or game-changer or impact player this staff has recruited?
For some, the question is a trick, because they would contend that this staff hasn’t recruited any real playmakers. Unfortunately, there’s a case to be made there. You can look at players like Darrin Hall and Jordan Whitehead and Quadree Henderson; they technically signed with this staff two months after Narduzzi was hired, but the reality is, they were inherited commitments, having pledged to Pitt when Paul Chryst was still the head coach.
That’s not to say this staff wouldn’t have landed those players, and they did have to re-recruit them to get them to stick with Pitt, but there’s an asterisk that has to be applied.
The next three classes are all Narduzzi’s, and those are the ones we should be considering. It’s a small sample size, particularly when most of the 2018 class stayed on the sidelines this season. But it’s worth considering the question:
Has this staff recruited any game-changing impact players?
Well, we can give Narduzzi credit for Nathan Peterman. He was a grad transfer but he did more than any Pitt quarterback since Tyler Palko, leading a pair of back-to-back eight-win seasons and putting up career numbers in the upset at Clemson. Peterman wasn’t spectacular, but he was pretty good.
After Peterman, the pickings are slim. Plenty of players from the 2016 class and even some of the 2017 class have become starters and solid contributors, but are they stars? Are they game-changing impact players? That’s a tougher standard to meet.
I mentioned Ffrench earlier when talking about the receivers, and I think he’s got the potentials. His numbers make a strong case: This season he scored 10 touchdowns and gained 1,170 all-purpose yards despite only getting 57 touches (and not more than 30 rushes, receptions or returns).
For context, when Quadree Henderson was an All-American in 2016, he also scored 10 touchdowns on 132 touches. He crossed the 2,000-yard plateau in all-purpose yards, but his average of 15.8 yards per touch is a few yards below Ffrench’s 2018 average of 20.5 yards per touch..
Ffrench also had five touchdowns of at least 50 yards - two kickoff returns and three receptions - and averaged 46.1 yards per touchdown, which is a considerable distance when we’re talking about 10 total scores. So he’s got potential, I think; he just hasn’t gotten enough opportunities to make that much of an impact.
(For one more number: if Ffrench produced at the same rate and got Henderson’s volume touches, he would have had 2,709 all-purpose yards and 23 total touchdowns.)
V’Lique Carter certainly looked the part this season. He was Pitt’s third-leading rusher despite only playing in six games and recording 23 carries. There were some exciting performances in there, but again, with such a small sample size, can you crown him just yet?
Pickett looked like he would be the game-changing impact player after the Miami game last year, but that hasn’t happened.
And then there are a bunch of guys who I think can be that type of player for this team, but they’re not there yet - players like Jason Pinnock and Rashad Weaver and Keyshon Camp and Jaylen Twyman and Mychale Salahuddin and even an unproven freshman like Shocky Jacques-Louis. I think all of those guys can be really good and change games for Pitt, but they haven’t done it yet, so for now, it’s all potential.
ONE PREDICTION
Pitt will win out
At least the next three games…
Turning to hoops for this week’s prediction, I think Jeff Capel’s squad breaks the current two-game losing streak and go into the ACC scheduled with a three-game win streak.
Now, that’s not exactly predicting Pitt to the Final Four. The Panthers finish the nonconference part of the schedule with Maryland Eastern Shore, New Orleans and Colgate, so I’m not looking for heroics here. What I am looking for is a young Pitt team to learn from its mistakes.
Like the Niagara game; that was a mistake. A big one. And the kind of mistake a young team can make, where the players might be feeling pretty good about themselves and they don’t approach an opponent with the kind of respect and focus that every game in Division I basketball merits.
Like Jared Wilson-Frame said after that game, there aren’t many teams that are good enough to overlook any opponent or take any opponent lightly, and Pitt is certainly not good enough to do those things and get away with it. That’s why they didn’t get away with it two weeks ago.
I thought they were more focused when they went to the Coliseum to face West Virginia last Saturday, but that was an easy one to get up for: WVU is a major-conference opponent and a rowdy atmosphere, so while Pitt was sloppy - which will probably be a problem all season - and continued to get beat on the glass - which will also be a problem all season - the Panthers had the energy they need to have on a nightly basis.
I think they’ll have it tomorrow afternoon and drop Maryland Eastern Shore to 1-9 on the season. Then, next Thursday, they host New Orleans, who is currently 4-3. The players should have learned their lesson from Niagara and put it into action against Maryland Eastern Shore, making them primed and ready to beat the Privateers at home.
That leaves Colgate who, at No. 160 in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, isn’t far behind Pitt (No. 113). The Raiders are 7-4 this season but, like Pitt, they haven’t beaten anyone of consequence. In this season of learning, I think the Panthers will have a good understanding of how to approach a game like December 29 matchup with Colgate, and I think they’ll get the job done once again.
They’re not going to magically get better on the glass and they’re probably not going to magically develop any real consistent scoring beyond the top four or five, but those three freshmen, along with Wilson-Frame and Malik Ellison, should continue to improve and beat these three teams before heading into the ACC.