We're thinking a lot about recruiting in this week's 3-2-1 Column, from the June run of commitments to the value of official visits and a lot more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
Recruiting can still be fun
A month and a few weeks ago, I released a Morning Pitt episode with the following headline:
Where’s the buzz for football recruiting?
The details of that release are quite inconsequential, but I think the headline tells the story. Whether brought on by the caliber of Pitt’s commitments or a growing weariness from the transfer portal, there seemed to be a malaise in the fan base around recruiting, and that was unfortunate.
After all, recruiting is supposed to be the one thing fans can always rely on. The promise of a better tomorrow is a tremendous potion, and recruiting makes that particular cauldron bubble like nothing else.
(As an aside, I sometimes wonder if people in my profession sometimes take it upon themselves to help generate “the buzz.” I see a lot of exclamation points and all-caps in tweets and posts from recruiting reporters; maybe if I did more of that, there would have been more buzz. But alas, I’m not big on exclamation points unless we’re using them ironically - kids who grew up in the 90’s are just like that, I suppose. But I digress.)
When I released that episode of the Morning Pitt, the Panthers had six commitments and were fresh off landing Elijah Dotson, one of the top prospects in the class. But there just didn't seem to be much buzz. Between the message boards and social media, I could feel it, and I started wondering if the whole exercise was losing something.
Then June happened, and you can insert a quote from Dumb and Dumber (“Completely redeem yourself”) or Godfather III (“They pull me back in”).
After 15 commitments since the start of that month - since June 8, actually - and all of a sudden, Pitt’s class has nearly quadrupled in size. And those 15 commitments include some of the most promising recruits in the class, like four really good defensive backs, a bevy of offensive skill players and some intriguing athletes at defensive end.
I know that not all of the recruits have Pitt fans thinking national championship, but there’s always going to be a certain amount of betting on potential when you recruit at Pitt’s level.
And while you might have questions about, say, the offensive line recruiting, I think there’s a lot to like about the secondary, the receivers and the linebackers in this class, just to name a few positions.
We’ll talk more about the specifics in a minute, but I want to stick to the general for now.
Because in general, it was a pretty fun June. And the fun extended into July when Pitt landed a trio of top targets on the first of the month.
Denim Cook, Josh Guerrier and Cole Woodson are really good prospects, and by the end of the day on Monday - after their staggered commitment announcements that ranged from noon until 7 pm - I think there were some pretty good vibes.
Which is how it’s supposed to be. Recruiting is supposed to be fun and exciting and full of promise. I think we got a little taste of it in June.
Official visit hit rate
I raised a concern a couple weeks ago about numbers.
Setting aside the quality of the recruits taking official visits to Pitt in June, I was somewhat concerned about the quantity. With less than 30 recruits coming in for visits, June 2024 stands as one of the quietest Junes we’ve seen since June official visits became a thing (not counting the pandemic year, of course).
Pitt hosted 29 official visitors in June this year; for comparison, in the summer of 2019, the Panthers had 22 official visitors come in - just for the first weekend.
That became something of a trend over the next few years: the Pitt staff brought in a ton of official visitors in June and landed a bunch of them. But with bigger overall numbers, the percentages took a hit from what had been a pretty effective enterprise over the first few years of the Narduzzi era.
In the 2016 class - Narduzzi’s first full recruiting class - Pitt hosted 27 recruits for official visits in December and January and signed 23 of them (a hit rate that’s even more impressive considering that probably only two of the four they missed on had committable offers by Signing Day).
The next year, Pitt hosted 31 recruits for official visits and signed 23 of them (that was the year when the Panthers missed on a ton of defensive ends, which accounted for six of the eight misses, if you recall).
Pitt hosted 28 official visitors in the 2018 class, but I would say only about 24 or 25 of them had committable offers, and Pitt got commitments from 20 of them.
The point is probably pretty clear: Pat Narduzzi and his staff historically did pretty well on landing guys from official visits. Narduzzi would often tout a success rate exceeding 80 or 85%, and while the math on that one sometimes did check out and sometimes didn’t, there’s no doubt that Pitt was really good at getting commitments from official visitors.
When the June official visits started, though, the approach - and the results - changed. In June 2018, Pitt hosted 20 recruits for official visits. When we think back on that weekend - it was all one weekend - we generally think of it as a huge success. But the Panthers actually only signed eight of those 20 recruits (three more did commit, but they flipped their commitments to other schools).
Eight out of 20 - or even 11 out of 20 - isn’t quite up to the standard of the previous years, but with the overall numbers Pitt brought in for those official visits, it’s kind of understandable that the hit rate dropped a bit, percentage-wise.
This year, though, the number of overall visitors dropped and the hit rate went up - 29 visitors and 21 are currently committed to Pitt. There are a few recruits still lingering out there as uncommitted prospects, so the Panthers could get a couple more. But even so, this June was far more in line with what we’ve seen in previous years.
Which leads back to this: Narduzzi and his staff have been pretty good - sometimes really good - on official visits. This June showed it again.
The appeal of the official visits
So what works so well on official visits? Why has Pitt had such a high hit rate on those weekends?
I think there are a few reasons - and a few reasons why official visits are such a crucial piece of the recruiting puzzle for Pitt.
Let’s start with that second part, because it’s something Pat Narduzzi and Jeff Capel have both talked about a lot.
Pittsburgh the city is, in a lot of ways, a place you have to see to believe. Or, at the very least, a place you have to see to understand. A lot of people have conceptions about Pittsburgh, most of them born of commercial-break imagery from an NFL on CBS broadcast, and while TV producers are kind enough to include aerial shots of river life and the Point, those images only briefly interrupt the more historic Steel City references.
And even if today’s youth aren’t consumed by notions of molten steel, they probably view Pittsburgh in much the same way that they view its Rust Belt colleagues: Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit and the like.
That’s not to say they think those cities are bad; rather, that they assume they’re all rather bland and unappealing.
Then they drive through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and, well, we’ve all seen that. The first time you come out of the tunnel and the city unfolds before you on a sunny afternoon…that’s pretty special, and more than a few recruits have cited that moment as the exact moment when Pitt became an actual option for them.
Aaron Donald’s name recognition might get them interested, but the emergence from the tunnel makes it real.
It’s not just the surprisingly nice nature of the city, though, that makes the official visits so successful. Because what Narduzzi and his staff have done is to master the most effective element of an official visit:
Convincing recruits that this - Pittsburgh and Pitt - is a place they want to live.
I’ve said this a million times: other schools can tout their game day attendance, and Pitt has no counter for it. Narduzzi can’t pretend that Pitt’s attendance numbers at Acrisure Stadium are anything other than what they are, and efforts to highlight the “big games” - Penn State, West Virginia, Notre Dame, etc. - only serve to further highlight how low the attendance is for “not big games” by virtue of how stark the contrast is between the two.
So instead of trying to rationalize the numbers, Narduzzi’s best approach is to change the conversation.
“Yeah, it’s true: those crowds of 100,000 are awesome. It’s a great game day experience and something everyone should get to be a part of. But here’s the other reality: you get to experience that for seven game days every year. For the other 358 days in the year, you still have to live in that place. So make sure that you’re not just picking for the seven game days.”
I don’t know if Narduzzi says that, but he should. Regardless, I think the official visits make that point, even if it’s not stated explicitly. And the way they do it is by leveraging Pitt’s players and support services to give the recruits a real idea of what it’s like to live here, to be a student here.
That’s the key: give the recruits a real-life view of what real life is really like at Pitt. The current players do a lot in that regard, taking the recruits around and giving them a sense of what campus life is like. And the support services help a lot, too, but showing the recruits what school at Pitt is like.
That’s Pitt’s biggest sales pitch. More than players in the NFL and famous alums and all of those things, the Pitt coaches have to convince recruits that Pitt the school and Pittsburgh the city are places they want to be - places they want to live for four years.
That’s what the official visits do: they give the recruits a real idea of what it’s like to live here. And I think that’s why the visits are so effective.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
What have been the best defensive back classes?
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think Pitt’s current crop of defensive back recruits is really good.
Cornerbacks Shawn Lee, Elijah Dotson and Mason Alexander and safeties Josh Guerrier and Cole Woodson make up the current group of commitments, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume the staff will stand pat with that group (with the inevitable caveat of avoiding any decommitments).
If that’s what the class ends up being, I think it’s going to be one of the best classes of defensive backs we’ve seen Pitt sign under Pat Narduzzi.
Time will tell how good this class will turn out to be, but thinking about superlatives with defensive back recruiting got me thinking about some of the previous classes.
As the title said, which classes have been Narduzzi’s best?
To me, I think there’s an obvious candidate:
It’s the class of 2017.
That class brought Jason Pinnock, Damarri Mathis and Paris Ford to Pitt. Those are three starters and big-time players, and while there’s a lot that can be said about the missed opportunity of Ford’s career, he remains the only Pitt defensive back in the Narduzzi era to earn first-team All-ACC honors.
He could have done so much more in his Pitt career - and beyond - but that 2019 season was special.
I think that class is the winner. I tend to think of the 2016 class as being really strong, but ultimately, Damar Hamlin was the only contributor from that one. The 2018 class produced Marquis Williams and Erick Hallett. That’s a good haul, and so was 2019, when Pitt signed Brandon Hill and A.J. Woods.
2020 wasn’t so hot. Rashad Battle hasn’t done much in his career, largely due to injury, but he’s the only member of that year’s defensive back class who is still on the roster (Hunter Sellers, Jahvante Royal and Buddy Mack have all transferred).
After that, you start getting into classes where the verdict is still being rendered. Javon McIntyre was in the 2021 class and so was P.J. O’Brien, but Noah Biglow and Tamarion Crumpley need to step up this year to help that class’s reputation.
Ryland Gandy was the only defensive back in the 2022 class; he could end up being a starter this season, which would give that class a pretty high hit rate, but he’s only one guy.
Then we come to 2023, which is the class that might be able to give 2017 a run for its money. Cruce Brookins was one of the stars of spring camp, and fellow safety Jesse Anderson wasn’t far behind. The one I’m still waiting on is Shadarian Harrison; the Pitt staff was just as excited about him as anybody in the class, but injuries have held him back through the first year of his career.
If Brookins and Anderson live up to the hype and Harrison gets on the field, that group could surpass Pinnock, Mathis and Ford.
For now, though, the 2017 class takes the cake.
How many more recruits will Pitt take?
As it stands after the June rush, Pitt is sitting with 21 commitments for the class of 2025. Now the question shifts from who Pitt will get to how many more the Panthers will take.
Let’s look at the class.
Of the 21 commitments, 11 are on offense and 10 are on defense. That includes four receivers, two running backs (with some flexibility among those two groups), one tight end, one quarterback, three offensive linemen, two defensive ends, one defensive tackle, two linebackers, three cornerbacks and two safeties.
That’s a more or less balanced group. There’s a heavy emphasis in on the offensive skill guys; we’ve talked about that a lot in the last few weeks. And the coaches have taken commitments from nearly as many defensive backs - again, an understandable focus with some lighter classes in recent years.
We can spend a lot of time assessing the current class, but for this week, let’s talk about what’s next in the class. I don’t expect the coaches to stand pat with 21 commitments; they’ll add more, for sure, so what will those additions look like?
I think they should be good with the receivers and running backs, at least for now. We can talk about the quality and physical attributes of the skill players they’ve added thus far, but it’s clear that the coaches wanted to rebuild the receiver room in this class, and they’ve done so with a bunch of additions; barring any decommitments or no-matter-what options appearing, I think they’l be set with the six they have.
They probably would like another tight end, but I have my doubts about being able to pull that off (simply because tight end recruiting is such a black hole, it seems).
Quarterback is a really interesting spot, because when Mason Heintschel committed, we started hearing talk that Kade Bell was interested in signing two quarterbacks. Given the high volume of turnover - via the transfer portal - that the quarterback position experiences, I can understand why Bell might want to load up his room in this class. It remains to be seen if Pitt can get a second quarterback, but I think that’s on the table as an option and one to keep an eye on.
As for the offensive line, we’ve heard all along that the plan is to take two guards and two tackles. They’ve got two guards committed (Shep Turk and Torian Chester) and one tackle (Akram Elnagmi), so that leaves one more tackle. We think they’ll get a tackle from the group that visited in June, and that should wrap up the offensive line class.
On the defensive side, let’s start with the back seven.
I think the coaches are content with the defensive backs they’ve got committed. We all know that the threat of decommitments is ever-present, but if Pitt can hold onto the current group of five, I think the staff will be thrilled.
They should be good at linebacker, too. Pitt has signed three linebackers in each of the last two classes - providing some much-needed rebuilding of the depth after some small classes in the previous few years - so two should be enough for this year.
The biggest question on that side of the ball is the defensive line. Pitt has only two defensive linemen still on the roster from each of the last three classes, so while the coaches brought in five defensive linemen in the 2024 recruiting class, the group overall feels pretty thin.
The problem is, I’m not sure how likely it is that the staff will be able to get more linemen for this class. I think they need at least one more tackle, but they didn’t host any other tackles for official visits, and given the changes in the recruiting calendar, it’s going to be tough to get any others in for official visits.
Still, I think they have to try to get at least one more tackle in this class. If they do that plus another offensive tackle, that would push the class to 23, and if you ask me, there’s no reason to stop there; if a couple quality recruits want to commit to Pitt, I think the staff should absolutely push for 25 or more in the class.
In terms of needs, though, I think the staff has done pretty well to address some priority targets with the class so far.
ONE PREDICTION
This class will end up with a similar ranking to most of Narduzzi’s classes
There’s an ongoing - some would say endless - discussion of recruiting class rankings, so let’s finish today’s column with that.
Pitt’s 2025 class is currently ranked No. 28 with 21 commitments. The team recruiting rankings are cumulative, so having more commitments will help boost your ranking. For example, Florida State’s 2025 class is currently ranked No. 32, but the Seminoles’ 10-man class features one five-star prospect and nine four-stars.
It seems to me that’s a better class than a bunch of the classes currently ranked ahead of FSU. Like Syracuse, who has the No. 24 class with 27 commitments and just one four-star. Or Duke, the No. 23 class with 23 commitments and zero four-stars. Or Rutgers, the No. 13 class with 28 commitments and just three four-stars.
Quantity wins out, at least at this part of the cycle. Things will eventually stabilize and a class like Florida State’s will rise to the top 10 where it belongs. We’ll continue haggling about the current class rankings, but inevitably, the rankings will settle in where they should be.
So no, Pitt probably isn’t going to have a top-30 recruiting class this cycle.
What we’re predicting here, though, is that the Panthers will end up pretty much where they always do - somewhere in the 40’s.
If you look at the last nine classes - all of Narduzzi’s full classes - the average class ranking was 41.4. That includes a few extremes. There was the 2022 class, which ranked No. 68 but only had 13 prospects. The class before that, though, ranked No. 21 with 23 signings.
(The irony, of course, is that the 2022 recruiting class could very well end up having more starters on the 2024 roster than the 2021 class.)
Starting in 2016, the class rankings by year are 29, 37, 36, 49, 44, 21, 68, 52, 37.
Again, there are extremes in there, but more often than not - five out of the nine classes - the ranking was somewhere between 36 and 49.
Which is exactly where Pitt will end up this year.
I don’t have a specific ranking to predict, but as the class fills in with a few more commitments and a couple shakeups among the 5.5 three-stars. I think we’ll see something in that 36-49 range. The most specific I would get is, say, 40-47. I think they’ll be right around there.
That's the type of class Narduzzi has signed since he arrived. It's the type of class that won two Coastal Division titles and one ACC championship. And it's the type of class he will continue to recruit and develop.
