The 3-2-1 Column: Preseason rankings, strength on the line, and more

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In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we discuss preseason expectations for Pitt football, the strength of the offensive line, and we also update the recruitment of top Pitt target and five-star recruit Hykeem Williams. The opening game against West Virginia is less than two weeks away, and there is plenty to talk about this week as we gear up for the 2022 season.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The preseason rankings are in
The preseason Associated Press poll was released earlier this week, and Pitt came in at No. 17 to start the season. The Panthers finished last season ranked No. 13, and while there were some key losses from that 11-win team, the expectations are still high heading into the new year.

The initial preseason ranking for the 2022 season marked the first time since 2010 that Pitt will start the year in the top 25. The 2010 Pitt team started the year No. 15 after it came off a 10-win season the year prior. The expectations in the preseason did not match the team’s outcome that year, however, as Pitt finished with an 8-5 record.

It has not been since 1989 where a Pitt team started the year in the preseason top 25 (preseason No. 20) and finished the season inside the rankings at number 17. So needless to say preseason rankings are arbitrary not only for Pitt, but really for any program. Remember last year how North Carolina was everyone’s darling in the preseason? Well the Tar Heels started at No. 10, and finished with a meager 6-7 final record.

So to put it simply, nobody really knows who the best team is in the 2022 college football season or the 10th best, or 25th at this very moment. The preseason rankings are a launching point of sorts, a guideline if you will, and that’s fine, but I think they still matter.

The point here isn’t to talk about what can happen in a college football season, but rather to acknowledge this Pitt team has legitimate expectations for the first time in over a decade. Yes, Pitt lost Heisman finalist Kenny Pickett and Biletnikoff winner Jordan Addison, but the bulk of that team that won the ACC a year ago is still around, and the preseason polls seem to recognize that. It does not matter what Athlon, Sports Illustrated, or ESPN says about Pitt in the preseason, when you turn on your TV for the Backyard Brawl in two weeks, on the broadcast there will be a little number 17 next to Pitt’s name on the scoreboard.

Some will say preseason rankings do not matter, hell Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi may be the biggest proponent of that, but in a sense they kind of do. Pitt had an outside chance of making the College Football Playoff around mid-year last season, and that team had to climb from the unranked category to get there. This Pitt team is already on the radar to start the year, and if they can get off to a fast start, they won’t be an afterthought when the rankings that matter start to get released.

People already know about this team.

Preseason rankings also matter from a perception standpoint. Pitt’s first two games of the year are in prime ESPN TV time slots. This is a team that voters will see and one that is being given a nice spotlight to start the year. Recruits don’t have to look for the game on the ACC Network or ESPN3, they can flip on ESPN or ABC and see this team playing against marquee opponents right off the bat.

Winning matters, and Pitt did a good bit of it last year, and the carryover effect to this season means expectations, preseason rankings, prime television spots, and just plain old attention. Pitt has been an afterthought for many years, but last season opened some doors and it’s up to this year’s team to take advantage of it. Take preseason rankings with a grain of salt if you’d like, but I think there is some value to them.

A 'once in a lifetime' opportunity
I asked Pat Narduzzi late last week about which position group he feels the best with at that point in camp, and he said the offensive line. I then asked Offensive line coach Dave Borbely about his group, and he called this season a ‘Once in a lifetime opportunity’ and if you think about it, it really is.

I have written about this veteran offensive line throughout camp, and I wanted to hit on it a little deeper here, and really examine that particular quote by Borbely and what he meant by it.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed college football in each of the past two seasons, and I think its effects will certain factor into the 2022 Pitt football team. The NCAA allowed for any player that participated in the 2020 season an extra year of eligibility. It created some logjams, roster confusion, but a few teams took advantage of it in a big way. The 2021 Pitt team certainly felt the benefits, maybe more than anyone. Kenny Pickett got his extra year and ran with it, and he led Pitt to its best team in 40 years while shattering school records along the way.

The 2022 team may also get that same benefit, and it isn’t in the form of a star quarterback, but rather the strength in the trenches. Pitt’s offensive line features four seniors that really shouldn’t be here, other than having an extra year due to COVID-19. Carter Warren and Gabe Houy were senior starting tackles in 2021, and they’ll be senior starting tackles in 2022. Marcus Minor and Owen Drexel are in the same boat. Guys like Jake Kradel, Blake Zubovic, and Matthew Goncalves are also back after playing a lot of football in the past two seasons.

You don’t ever get the chance to have a senior-led offensive line in one season, and one that had a lot of success at that, and have the exact same opportunity to run it back with the exact same group of guys. It’s a quirk, it may never happen again, but Pitt stands to benefit from it for a second year in a row.

But it goes even further than that. Borbely said his second group right now should really be the starters this year, and he would have been OK with those guys anchoring the line. Those players are now forced to wait another year for their chance, but they aren’t exactly sitting off to the side accepting their roles, but rather pushing the returning players for playing time…and that's a good thing. Branson Taylor is a player the coaches have been excited about since he arrived on campus and by now he really should be the team’s starting right tackle, and now he’s a backup, though a capable one at that.

The offensive line wasn’t perfect last year, though they were very good. They will be asked to operate a new offense in 2022 with the switching of offensive coordinators, but the luxury of having that experience should translate into learning on the fly with ease. Not to mention, it’s very likely the best defensive line these guys will see all season is the one they practice against every day.

I mean, it’s just hard not to be bullish with this unit. Football games can be won up front and this Pitt team has to feel about as good as it possibly can with the offensive line it will be sending out there this season to do just that.

Pitt is rock-solid at safety
Pitt had an exciting safety duo in the 2019 and 2020 seasons. Damar Hamlin and Paris Ford were both former four-star recruits from the Pittsburgh area. They chose to stay home and picked Pitt over countless offers from many top programs. In 2019, that pairing was great as they finished first and second on the team in tackles. The Hamlin and Ford combination combined for 181 tackles and four interceptions. Ford was a first-team All-ACC selection for that performance, and after flirting with the idea of going pro, both opted to return in 2020.

The results were mixed in that second season together, with Hamlin earning second-team All-ACC honors and eventually getting drafted, while Ford opted out of the year after only seven games. It was an uninspiring end to a group that had a lot of promise.

I’m not sure if this current Pitt tandem at safety brings the same hype or fanfare as the previous one, but they are solid as they come. Brandon Hill and Erick Hallett are a more than formidable duo and should help facilitate this defense into being a very good one in 2022.

Hallett came to Pitt as a three-star recruit in the class of 2018 and had one other power five offer in his recruitment from Washington State. He was the MVP of the ACC Championship a year ago with two interceptions, the second of which went for a pick-six and the icing on the cake in Pitt’s 45-21 triumph over Wake Forest.

“I think he’s a very mature young man,” Pitt safeties coach Cory Sanders said earlier this week of Hallett. “When he sets foot on this field, you can tell it’s football; he’s not bringing any other baggage, anything else from the outside or anything going on to that field. He’s just focused and locked in to his details and his technique and his fundamentals and just getting better each and every single day.”

That kind of says a lot about Hallett’s game. He is a workhorse, and a quiet leader back there in the secondary. Hill may be the bigger name after garnering second team All-ACC honors in 2021 and landing as a semifinalist for the Thorpe Award, but he too, brings a workmanlike effort to his game. Hill was a three-star recruit himself and one that has something to prove.

With 34 starts between the two safeties, they have plenty of experience and both have played a lot of football. These may be two of the unsung heroes on the Pitt roster, but it’s a pair that should have a big hand in the team’s potential success in 2022.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Can the ACC take a step forward this season?
Conference realignment talk has dominated the offseason after the bombshell of USC and UCLA announcing their intentions to join the Big Ten back in July, one year after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were heading to the SEC. Those were two groundbreaking events in college athletics, and the ripple effects likely will be felt for years to come. The Big Ten announced a landmark television deal this week. It has been one thing after another in the past month.

The name of the game in collegiate athletics has always been the same: money, but the dollar amounts have gone way up in the past few years and it’s coming from all angles, with giant television deals for the conferences and now athletes themselves are getting to be part of the machine, albeit indirectly through NIL.

In some respects, the conference realignment talk has gone on the back burner for now with the anticipation of a new season starting to mount, but it is still on everyone’s minds: how could it not be?

So how does this all tie into Pitt and the ACC? Well, here is the thing: Pitt is in the ACC, which is not the SEC and the Big Ten. The longterm fate of Pitt and the league itself really depends on how far those other two leagues want to expand, (or if Notre Dame ever does something). So the best thing for the other three ‘power five’ leagues out there to stay relevant is the same recipe as it has always been: just win games.

The most direct way to expand your brand both as a conference and an individual school is being successful on the field. Though the ACC has had trouble doing that through the years, but the conference enters the 2022 season with five ranked teams, which is one less than the SEC and one more than the Big Ten.

The league has Clemson to lean on like always, and a rebound for them would be helpful all around for the leagye, but it also needs teams like Pitt, Miami, Wake Forest, and NC State to live up their preseason billing as well. It wouldn’t hurt to have a sleeper like North Carolina, Louisville, or Virginia to emerge either.

The ACC’s worst enemy has long been itself. Clemson has carried the weight for too long, and for the league to remain in relevant, it needs the Miami’s of the world to wake up, and for teams like Pitt to continue to step forward.

Nobody knows the next domino in the college football landscape. One league can consume the other, or the SEC and Big Ten could be eyeing something or someone else. For the ACC to stay at the table, starting to have teams other than Clemson win at a high level would help a lot.

What is the latest with Hykeem Williams?
We are inching closer to the decision date for five-star wide receiver Hykeem Williams. The Fort Lauderdale standout is slated to announce his college decision on September 23rd. If you haven’t been following along with this recruitment, the quick backstory is this: Williams is one of the very best prospects in the entire country and checks in as the No. 16 recruit in the latest Rivals.com rankings. Williams has an announced top-six of Alabama, Georgia, Florida State, Miami, Texas A&M, and Pitt. That’s not normally a recruiting war the Panthers find themselves in, but thanks to a strong relationship between Williams and Pitt wide receivers coach Tiquan Underwood, the Panthers are in the thick of it, despite what anyone else may be saying.

It has been interesting tracking the recruitment this past week, as Pitt has upped the public pursuit of the five-star player. Pitt quarterback commitment Kenny Minchey tweeted out a graphic of the two of them on a mock Sports Illustrated cover, saying it would be a great connection.

Williams’ mother actually has not been too shy about interacting with Pitt fans on social media either, and really I think a lot of Pitt’s push in this recruitment is tied to his mom believe it or not. Pitt has typically emphasized recruiting the entire family in recent years, and it has paid off in some cases. In the class of 2022, four-star Ryan Baer cited Pitt treating his sister well during a visit. In the current class, three-star commit Kenny Johnson was surprised that the Pitt coaches had a birthday cake ready for his sister on his official visit.

“It was my sister’s birthday and they got her a cake, sung her happy birthday and made everybody sing for her and just the fact of the matter they cared enough to do that for her was just amazing,” Kenny Johnson said following his commitment.

It’s the little details like that that Pitt might need to find an edge to land a top prospect over recruiting juggernauts like Georgia and Texas A&M, and in this particular recruitment I think that has been one of Pitt’s better pitches to land Williams.

Of course, I think on-field success will potentially have an impact here, as Williams is slated to visit Texas A&M and Pitt early on in the season for game visits. Williams will be making his third trip to Pittsburgh in 2022 alone, when he visits for Pitt’s game against Tennessee on September 10th.

So Pitt has amped up the pressure it seems with pushes coming from fellow commitments. They are working to sway his mother over, and of course getting him on campus one more time before the big decision date is huge for Pitt's chances.

So his top six is out there, but it does feel like Pitt is certainly in the top half of that group right now. Pitt, Texas A&M, and Florida State kind of feel like the big three here, and the Panthers have done everything to put their best foot forward to this point. Of course, the wind can change quickly being involved with this caliber of prospect, but Pitt is doing everything necessary to keep themselves at the top of his mind about a month away from his decision date.

ONE PREDICTION

SirVocea Dennis ends up being the best linebacker in the ACC
The one thing about college football in August is you have every single detail of the sport analyzed. Everyone has a preseason ranking, a list of top players, breakout candidates - you name it. In the world of making content, you have to fill in the offseason gaps...I get it because I have to do it myself.

The one thing that has miffed me a bit this offseason when reading outside prognostications about Pitt is the lack of buzz around SirVocea Dennis. I mean, I think he is really, really good.

Dennis’ story is well known by now. He was an under-the-radar recruit set to head Air Force, but on a chance recruiting visit Pitt found Dennis and offered him on the spot. The rest has been history. In 2020, Dennis worked himself onto the field, by the 2021 season he was a third-team All-ACC pick after racking up 14.5 tackles for loss. Last season, Dennis made it on the conference’s second-team after leading Pitt with 87 tackles. He also posted 9.5 tackles for loss, four sacks, a blocked field goal, a fumble recovery, and a memorable pick-six in the team’s win over Clemson off a shovel pass.

Pitt had the most returning All-ACC players of any team heading into this season, but I was a bit surprised that only two made the preseason All-ACC team: Calijah Kancey and Habakkuk Baldonado. It just felt like Dennis was almost a glaring omission.

My call is Dennis will be the best linebacker in the ACC this season or at least a first teamer by the end of it. Truthfully he has already been one of the best linebackers this program has had since Scott McKillop in 2008. Dennis was everywhere for Pitt last season, and I have no reason to think that won’t continue in 2022.