MORE HEADLINES - The latest news and notes from training camp | Dayon Hayes looks for a step forward as a sophomore | PODCAST: Linebacker depth, recruiting questions and more | The Kenny Pickett Show, Ep. 2: #WeNotMe | Slideshow: Pitt puts on pads | Davis and linebackers will lead Pitt's defense In 2021

In this week's 3-2-1 Column, we're thinking about the latest from training camp, Pitt's 2021 motto and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The ongoing battles
Pitt is one week into training camp 2021 - it started last Friday - and there are inevitably several dozen conclusions to draw and not draw.

Ultimately, we all know there will be plenty of storylines that develop and emerge over the course of this month, and many of them will have little carryover to the actual season. That’s how it goes: there’s been no football in eight months, so we make as much as we can out of what we get in August

That process gets even foggier when you view it through the limited access we actually have to camp.

Still, there are some things we’ve picked up on through one week, and a particular point of interest has been on position battles.

On offense, there aren’t really too many, it seems. Obviously the quarterback is locked in and Israel Abanikanda seems to have a grip on the first-team running back job. The receivers will rotate, so ‘starts’ will matter less than ‘snaps’ and ‘targets’ when the games begin. And at tight end, Lucas Krull is the top option.

Really, at quarterback, running back and tight end, the biggest competitions and battles are for the jobs behind the starter - who will be the No. 2 at those positions? That’s still a work in progress.

The offensive line has some intrigue, though. We’ve all been talking about the battle at tackle, and I think that’s still ongoing with Matt Goncalves and Carter Warren seeming to fight for the left tackle job, although I don’t entirely think that means Gabe Houy has locked up the right tackle spot (and Branson Taylor isn’t out of the mix either).

Center is also interesting. I’m still expecting redshirt senior Owen Drexel to be the guy, but as Jim Hammett pointed out yesterday, Belle Vernon’s Blake Zubovic has been getting some work there, and he could potentially push Drexel. So that’s one to watch.

On defense, I have a tough time getting too caught up in starting designations. The guys who take the field for the first snap of the game will be the guys who have practiced the best and have most earned the trust of the coaches, but there is going to be rotation at virtually every spot on defense.

The ends will rotate. The tackles will rotate. The linebackers can go two-deep or even three-deep. And there are a lot of defensive backs to step into those roles. I don’t think it will be surprising for 20 or more players to see playing time on defense in just about every game this season.

That’s serious depth, but it also clouds the picture with position battles. The matter of who’s ahead at Star linebacker is a little less notable when you know that everybody is going to play.

The key now is making sure that the drop-off from “starter” to “reserve” is as minimal as possible.

Overall, I don’t think I expect too many surprises, personnel-wise. The offensive line is the key area where positions have to be settled, but the rest of the offense seems to be more or less in place and the defense is just about finding a pecking order (while knowing that a lot of guys are going to play).

Not too worried, pt. 1
This will be one general topic in two sections, because I’ve picked up on something lately - or maybe I’m just thinking it myself - and I figured we should address it.

It seems like nobody’s too concerned about the players that Pitt lost from last year’s roster, and that’s kind of wild when you consider which players we’re talking about.

Let’s start in the secondary.

Pitt lost three starting defensive backs from the 2020 roster, and those three combined to record 131 tackles, eight tackles for loss, 15 pass breakups and eight interceptions. As a team, Pitt had 14 interceptions, and these three guys had eight of them.

Of course, you know that I’m talking about Damar Hamlin, Paris Ford and Jason Pinnock. And while Ford left the team after just seven games, he still finished the season as Pitt’s fifth-leading tackler.

That’s to say nothing of Ford’s outstanding 2019 season, when he led the team in tackles with 97 and interceptions with three.

Actually, if you look at that trio - Ford, Hamlin and Pinnock - the last two seasons saw them combine for 328 tackles, 43 pass breakups and 13 interceptions.

That’s an awful lot of production to replace, and yet…nobody seems to be too worried about it, at least from my perception.

I’m not necessarily talking about the coaches here. Sure, they seem to be confident about the players they have coming back, but I’m more thinking about the fans in this situation. I just don’t see a lot of concern about losing three key pieces of the secondary.

I wonder why that is.

I’ll admit that I’m kind of bullish on the defensive backs, too. I’ve laid out the case for the corners before: with Damarri Mathis rejoining the group to go with all the guys who got experience last season - and the addition of M.J. Devonshire - they’re arguably in better position than they were entering last season.

The safeties are a bigger question mark. Hamlin and Ford weren’t quite generational players, but they were iconic, in a way, as four-star recruits from Western Pa. who stayed home and tried to get Pitt over the top.

They both had a lot of experience - Hamlin was a three-year starter and Ford started 18 games over the last two seasons - and more than a few highlight-reel plays. They were a force in the back end of the defense, and it won’t be easy to replace them.

Brandon Hill and Erick Hallett seem like the top options, with Hallett having appeared in more than 20 games since 2018 and Hill getting on the field for 10 games last season. Redshirt junior Judson Tallandier and sophomores Rashad Battle and Buddy Mack are also in the mix, and yet none of those five really has much on his resume. I think they all have a lot of potential, but that’s all it is, for now.

But I don’t see a lot of concern about losing Ford and Hamlin, for whatever reason.

I suppose this is just a random August observation, but it will be interesting to see how those positions perform this season.

Not too worried, pt. 2
Here’s the other one that doesn’t seem to have people all that concerned:

The defensive line.

Specifically, the defensive ends.

Pitt lost two of them, as you might have heard. Good ones. All-Americans.

Okay, enough dancing around. It’s Rashad Weaver and Patrick Jones, and since we did the 2020 stats for Pinnock, Hamlin and Ford, get a load of Weaver and Jones:

79 tackles, 27.5 tackles for loss and 16.5 sacks in 2020.
That’s a lot to replace. More than you could reasonably expect Pitt’s collection of defensive ends to get in 2021. And yet…

I don’t see a lot of fretting about it. Sure, everybody would love to have Weaver and Jones back for another season, but most fans seem to be assuming a kind of smooth transition to the next wave of ends. That very well may happen, but I’m going to have to be in the camp of believing it when I’m seeing it.

That’s not to say that I don’t think Habakkuk Baldonado and John Morgan and Deslin Alexandre can’t produce at end this season. Rather, it’s that I have to see them actually do it first.

I think my rationale throughout this offseason has been that the ends could play well but still fail to produce at the level of Weaver and Jones - which is more a testament to Weaver and Jones than it is a knock on Baldonado, Morgan and Alexandre.

Those two guys last year were just occupying some rare space.

But still, I think there’s a lot of optimism about the ends who will attempt to step in for Jones and Weaver. Alexandre is a veteran player who put up 10.5 tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks when he moved into a starting role after Weaver missed the 2019 season due to injury. Morgan had seven TFL and four sacks as a reserve last season. Baldonado had four sacks as a reserve redshirt freshman in 2019. And Dayon Hayes, who figures to be the fourth end as a sophomore this season, has a really high ceiling after putting up 2.5 sacks last year.

I don’t know if there’s an All-American among those four (time will tell on that) but I do think it’s a pretty talented group with a lot of potential. I think the recruiting has been good at defensive end, and when you consider the numbers they have put up on a per-snap basis, there’s a fair amount to be encouraged about.

They may not be Weaver and Jones, but I think they can be pretty good as a group.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What are we saying this year?
Pitt doesn’t put out a press release about its new team slogan each year, probably because it doesn’t need to. The slogans are hard to miss.

Once training camp starts every August, the tweets get rolling. Pitt’s official account starts tweeting, the coaches start tweeting and even the players will tweet. And usually most of those tweets will include that year’s slogan or mantra or motto or whatever you want to call it.

Earn the jersey. Lock the gates. Trained to go. You’ve seen all of these and probably a few more that I can’t remember right now.

This year, it’s #WeNotMe (which apparently is being used by some groups advocating for masks in Arizona public schools, but that’s a different topic).

#WeNotMe

I have to admit, I didn’t - and still don’t - know what “Trained to go” meant. And I always thought “Lock the gates” was probably better in concept than execution (although in 2019, they actually did lock the gates at Beaver Stadium during a pre-game thunderstorm). But this one - #WeNotMe - isn’t too tough to decipher.

It’s about putting the team ahead of yourself, prioritizing the goals of the group over your individual goals and making sure that the focus is always on what’s most important: the team’s success.

That all makes sense. As does putting “TEAM” on the back of everyone’s jerseys in camp. Pitt doesn’t usually have nameplates on its practice jerseys, so it’s not like they replaced everyone’s name with “TEAM,” but the action of adding it to the practice jerseys is notable.

Of course, the real question is whether or not any of that stuff matters. Slogans and mottos are nice, but I don’t think anybody ever won a game because of one.

That said, this one stands out to me. I don’t necessarily think Pitt had an issue with selfishness in the last few seasons, but I do think there are things you can point to and say, “That guy probably needed to think a little more about the team and how his actions would impact the team in that particular instance.”

Just think about some of the penalties, things like unsportsmanlike conduct and other 15-yard burners that likely could have been avoided with a little more clarity of thought. Some men you just can’t reach, as Strother Martin would say, but perhaps emphasizing the point a little more in camp can get a few guys to adjust their approach on the field.

And that can even carry over to how the players hone in on the details that really separate teams in any given game. If the priority really is on the team and doing what’s best for the team, maybe that focus can lead to some of those mental errors getting cleaned up.

Either way, I doubt we’ll look back and give credit to the slogan, but I think it’s worth noting that Pat Narduzzi has picked that for an area of emphasis. It seems to offer a commentary of sorts on the last few seasons of Pitt football.

What are they feeding these guys?
We don’t have a lot to go in when it comes to making judgments from training camp.

That’s always the case: we watch some portion of practice and then interview coaches and players, and by the end of August, we might - might - have some idea of what’s going on with the team.

But one thing we get is photos. Pitt’s state media takes and releases its own photos, and we have Matt Hawley shooting for us. And as we look through the photos from Pitt or from Matt, we can at least form a few opinions about the players based on how they look now.

Like Bangally Kamara.

As a recruit, the sophomore linebacker from Ohio was thought to be too slow for safety and too small for linebacker. I don’t know about the former critique, but I’d say he has outgrown any legitimacy the latter possibly had.

He looks like a beast now. We’ll see if he can play, but he looks the part.

I was also impressed with this picture of John Morgan.

I know, it’s just a photo and maybe it’s the angle, but Morgan looks like he has bulked up. He is still going to rely on his speed and quickness, but some added strength is never a bad thing.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, at least from what I’ve seen, has been some of the defensive tackles like Keyshon Camp and David Green.

Those guys look, to me, like they have slimmed down. You want some bulk in the middle of the defensive line, but those fast pass-rushing defensive tackles - I don’t know, but Pitt has had some success with those types of guys in the past.

Overall, it seems like this team looks pretty good right now. I’m willing to credit second-year strength coach Mike Stacchiotti for that one. He seems to have done some solid work with the players this offseason.

ONE PREDICTION

Pitt’s 2021 sack total will top 2020
Okay, part of this is in the details. Pitt only played 11 games last season and should play 13 this year, so beating 2020’s total of 46 sacks should be doable, just in terms of volume.

I guess the better way to compare sacks in 2020 and 2021 would be the average per game. Last year, the Panthers averaged 4.18 sacks per game, the highest total for any team that played at least four games (Miami of Ohio had 13 sacks in three games, an average of 4.33 per game). The actual bold prediction would be to claim that Pitt will improve its average in 2021.

That’s a tougher one to call.

Let’s start by looking at how Pitt got those 46 sacks and 4.18-per-game average. Weaver and Jones had their 16.5 and led the team in that category. They’re gone, but everybody else who had at least one sack last season is back:

Cam Bright (4.5), Phil Campbell (4.5), SirVocea Dennis (4), John Morgan (4), Deslin Alexandre (3), Dayon Hayes (2.5), Devin Danielson (2), Chase Pine (1.5), Calijah Kancey (1.5) and David Green (1.5).

That’s 29 sacks returning. We won’t assume that all of those guys meet their 2020 totals, but I think we can go with 30 or so as a baseline of returning production.

How, then, does Pitt add onto that 30 to get over 46? And can the Panthers get to 55 (the total they would need in order to top last season’s sacks-per-game average)?

I would start with two guys who didn’t have any sacks at all last season: Habakkuk Baldonado and Keyshon Camp.

Baldonado had four sacks in reserve duty in 2019 but missed most of the 2020 season due to injury. Camp has been limited by injury virtually every year of his career, but when he saw his most playing time in 2018, he had two sacks over seven games.

Both Baldonado and Camp are high-level and possibly elite pass-rushers; it is not hyperbole to assume that Baldonado could get 6-8 sacks and Camp could get 4-6 if they each have full, healthy seasons.

Call it somewhere in the middle - let’s say those two combine for 12 sacks - and now the 30 we were working with goes up into the 40’s. That’s still a long way from 55, but we’re getting closer.

The next place I’m looking is at the rest of the defensive ends. Morgan and Alexandre had seven sacks combined last season, but they were playing as backups to Jones and Weaver. The two starters were All-Americans for a reason, but with increased reps, I think you can get 14 sacks out of Morgan and Alexandre. That would be an increase of seven total, so putting those with the 12 we’re expecting from a healthy Baldonado and Camp, and you’re at +19 on the 30 returning sacks.

From there, you just need to add another six sacks to get to 55. Which means Bright, Campbell, Dennis, Hayes, Danielson, Kancey and Green - plus other reserve linemen and reserve linebackers - need to combine for a net gain of six sacks.

I don’t know, that doesn’t seem too crazy over 13 games.