The 3-2-1 Column: Recruiting, the season that could have been and more
MORE HEADLINES - Take advantage of a special offer from Panther-Lair.com and Nike! | Recruiting rundown: Recapping the contact period | Dorin's Dish: Dickerson on the end of Pitt's season, the bowl game and recruiting | PODCAST: Reconsidering the last two seasons | Weekend visit leads to offer for an underclassman | Pitt is going to Detroit for the Quick Lane Bowl | An early look at Eastern Michigan
In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re looking ahead to Signing Day, looking back at the season and more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
It’s always interesting
There are a few points on the recruiting calendar when things get a little more exciting, when the activity level goes up a couple notches and when there’s just more to look at, talk about and discuss.
June is one of those points, because the coaches annually get a big haul of commitments. And the winter is the other point, because the coaches hit the road to secure their class in advance of Signing Day.
But with NCAA changes to the recruiting calendar in the last two years, those points have become even livelier. Recruits can take official visits in the spring now, and that has turned into more June commitments than before. And there’s also a Signing Day in December, which puts more pressure on off-campus recruiting during the weeks after the regular season ends.
As such, the last two weeks have been hectic, to say the least. Pat Narduzzi has been in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, New York and New Jersey for recruiting visits over the last fortnight, and he also had a stop in Michigan this week for a press conference to preview the Quick Lane Bowl. He has often hit multiple states in the same day (he was in three states the day of that press conference in Detroit) and his staff was just as active.
Suffice to say, those guys didn’t spend a lot of nights at home over the last two weeks. But that’s how it goes during the contact period. If you think of recruiting has a series of periods, we’re now in the time when coaches can go on the road and visit recruits in their homes.
They’ve had the kids on campus, they’ve hosted them for official visits, they’ve done all the X’s and O’s and film sessions and sent all the cool graphics and everything like that; this time of year, it’s all about going into a kid’s living room and convincing him and his family that your school is the right school for him - and for them.
It’s sales, but it’s more personal, because those families are trusting you to take care of their son. There’s a lot riding on these visits, and that’s why coaches dive right in as soon as the season ends.
So to say it’s been a significant two weeks is an understatement.
For Narduzzi and company, the last two weeks have mostly been about locking up the commits. They lost one during the season in cornerback Tee Denson, and on Wednesday running back Henry Parrish made his long-anticipated decommitment official; we’ll talk about those guys more in a second. But Narduzzi’s focus has been on the 15 remaining commits and making sure they’re all set to sign next Wednesday.
In addition, Narduzzi has been in plenty of homes and high schools to see potential targets who could be added to the class. That’s a small but interesting group, and we won’t really know how successful these visits have been until next Wednesday.
There’s no denying it, though: the last two weeks have been pretty interesting to follow.
Decommits
Certainly, one of the most disappointing things to happen in the last week was Parrish’s decommitment. He had a huge senior season at Miami Columbus, rushing for 2,000 yards and 28 touchdowns. He’s a stud running back and Pitt doesn’t have many of those, so when he committed in June, it was a huge get for the Panthers.
But by the end of the summer, it was clear that Pitt was going to have to fight to keep him. Parrish started talking about taking other official visits, initially saying he would only visit South Carolina but then adding Miami and eventually Florida to the list of schools he was considering.
Miami got a commitment from four-star back Jaylan Knighton in late November and that seemed to move the Hurricanes down Parrish’s list, but Florida’s surge was notable.
Even more notable, though, was the fact that Parrish’s decommitment was pretty much seen coming from a mile away - or, said differently, from four months away.
From the time Parrish started taking official visits to other schools, he became a “soft verbal” commitment, at best. He didn’t formally decommit during the season and Pitt defensive line coach/south Florida recruiter Charlie Partridge maintained the relationship, but everybody - fans, media, the coaches - knew that a decommitment was likely.
And yet when Parrish finally did decommit, some of the first responses from fans seemed to tie his decision to Pitt’s poor finish to the season. Sure, if the Panthers had beaten Miami and Virginia Tech and Boston College and finished 10-2 and were going to the Orange Bowl or something, maybe then he would have held off on decommitting.
Maybe.
I’m guessing not.
Decommitments happen, and they’re usually not tied directly to on-field results. Usually, it’s a matter of a recruit’s situation changing, either with the schools he’s hearing from or where he wants to play in college. That’s not to say the Pitt coaches couldn’t have or shouldn’t have done whatever they could to keep Parrish; rather, it’s to say that the kids make the decisions, and while fans are certainly disappointed with the end to the season, it probably had less of an impact on Parrish and Denson than it did on your psyche.
And let’s not forget that if we go all the way back to June, when Pitt had just pulled in 13 commitments over the course of basically two weekends, we said it plainly in this column:
Decommitments will happen.
They happened last year. They were going to happen this year. And if the Panthers get a baker’s dozen of commits next June, they’re going to lose one or two of them before Signing Day. It’s just the law of averages: get that many commitments in June with no ability to bring those recruits back onto campus in December for an official visit, and you’re probably going to lose a couple.
It hurts that Parrish is one of the two, because he’s very good and Pitt needs a real pop in talent at his position. I can’t deny that. But the Panthers do have another running back in the class and he’s pretty good, too.
The quarterback question
This is a question in the observation section of the column. And after the decommitment news, it’s probably as big a talking point as anything with Pitt recruiting right now.
Of course, I’m talking about quarterbacks. The Panthers don’t have one in the 2020 class, and as things like as of this column being published (and things can always change), it doesn’t look like they will get one before Signing Day on Wednesday.
Sure, something crazy could bubble up. As it stands right now, though, that doesn’t seem likely. But that brings us back to something we talked about late in the summer:
Is it conceivable that Pitt could finish a recruiting class and not sign a quarterback?
It wasn’t too long ago that the idea was unthinkable. “You have to take a quarterback in every class,” the thinking went, and for good reason. You didn’t want to get stuck in an in-between year where one guy transfers out and one guy gets injured and now you’re playing a freshman or an upperclassman you really don’t want on the field.
But that was 10 years ago and college football is different now.
The biggest difference is that the pool of available quarterbacks each year is not what it used to be. 10 years ago, you went into the offseason looking at a quarterback pool that was 80% - or more, probably - high school kids and the rest were junior-college players and transfers.
The equation has changed. High schoolers still make up the majority of the pool, but there has been a huge increase in transfers. For the last few years, we’ve seen plenty of second and third-year quarterbacks leaving when they don’t see a clear path to starting. That puts a bunch of guys into the pool, and while you don’t want to rely on that approach, it’s there and it can function as a fallback plan if you have a year where you don’t land a quarterback recruit.
Of course, there shouldn’t be many of those years. There shouldn’t be any of those years, really. But sometimes circumstances conspire against you, like when you change offensive coordinators and the new guy doesn’t really like any of the recruits the old guy offered and then he moves slow on finding new recruits to offer and ultimately settles on just one or two prospects so that when you miss on those two prospects you’re left with nothing.
Sometimes that happens.
In those instances, you have a fallback option.
I’m not saying that I expect Pitt to bring in a transfer quarterback. That may or may not happen; I’m not suggesting it’s likely (or unlikely, for that matter). My point is that, if you whiff on a class like Pitt could do this year, you can make it up later with a transfer because there will be plenty available.
So could Pitt actually finish this cycle without a quarterback? It’s possible, not out of the realm of possibility and actually kind of likely, given the way things look right now.
And for this year, they might be okay doing that. They have three scholarship quarterbacks returning for 2020; Kenny Pickett will be a senior, Nick Patti will be a redshirt sophomore and Davis Beville will be a redshirt freshman. If the coaches believe in Beville and Patti, and I think they do, then they can get by this year without a quarterback recruit.
I just wouldn’t recommend making a habit of it.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
What might this season have been?
Let’s turn our attention to the team for a bit here, because I’ve really been hung up on this topic for the last week or so.
We know what the 2019 season became, but what could it have been?
It’s kind of interesting - and slightly infuriating - to think about the possibilities. I really circle two games: Miami and Boston College. Those were the two that got away. Those were the two games where Pitt was facing beatable teams, teams that were not very good and had vulnerabilities that the Panthers should have been able to take advantage of.
And they failed to do so.
Both Boston College and Miami ended up 6-6 and bowl-eligible - thanks to Pitt’s egg-laying in those two games. So, I guess that’s at least good for the ACC, right? More bowl-eligible teams? Thanks, Pitt.
For the Panthers, those two games were the difference between a respectable, solid, even successful 9-3 and a disappointing, average and borderline mediocre 7-5. And it wasn’t a bridge too far for Pitt to get those wins. You saw the mistakes that doomed the Panthers in both games. They weren’t outplayed to such a degree that they never had a chance; they shot themselves in the foot over and over and over again.
Against Miami and Boston College, Pitt fumbled seven times and lost four of those. Kenny Pickett threw three interceptions. The Panthers’ receivers, tight ends and running backs dropped eight passes. And the team committed seven procedure penalties.
If you’ve read this column before, you know that I consider those things - turnovers, dropped passes and procedure penalties - to be correctable mistakes. And you know that I think that was a major issue for this team all season long. I’ve written about it a lot.
But add those numbers up. 10 fumbles and interceptions. Eight dropped passes. Seven procedure penalties. That’s 25 correctable mistakes - 12 in the Miami game, 13 against Boston College - and that is exactly how those two games were lost. Pitt blew those games and, in the process, blew an opportunity for nine regular-season wins and 10 overall wins. It was right there to be had.
And then we can get even more depressing about it if we throw in last year. I’ve suggested that the losses to North Carolina, Miami and Stanford fit into that category of winnable games that got away. It has been pointed out to me that maybe Miami doesn’t fit, and that’s fine. Even if we just talk UNC and Stanford, that’s still two should-have-won situations. Get those, and 7-7 is 9-5. Not great, but it’s an eight-win regular season and a bowl win for some nice offseason momentum.
Four games. Four winnable games. That’s the difference between 14-12 over two seasons and 18-8. How much better would you feel about Pitt right now if the Panthers were 18-8 over the last two seasons, with a Coastal championship in their back pocket and quite possibly a spot in the Orange Bowl this year?
Totally different vibe. Totally different feel. Totally different outlook.
How do you win at Pitt?
This is connected to the last section, even if the question seems weird.
When I think about how to win at Pitt, how to build some sustained and continued success, it’s really a pretty simple answer:
Win the winnable games.
Seriously. Just win the games you’re supposed to win. Sure, you need to sprinkle in the occasional upset every now and then, but for the most part, if you win the games you’re supposed to win, you’re going to do fine.
Like I just said in that last section: winning the winnable games turns 7-5 into 9-3 year this and 7-7 into 9-5 last year. That should have been back-to-back nine-win seasons for the first time in a decade. And we can play that game for more than a few seasons.
In 2014, Pitt won six games but should have gotten at least eight with Georgia Tech and Duke in the regular season and nine with Houston in the bowl game. In 2013, Pitt was 7-6 but should have won eight by beating Navy. In 2012, Pitt lost to Youngstown State and UConn - those two would have turned 6-7 into 8-5.
Even if we ignore the Todd Graham year and just go 2012-19, Pitt should have won at least eight games in seven of those eight seasons (2017 being the lone exception). Not by knocking off top-five teams or staging crazy upsets, but simply by winning the winnable games.
Instead, Pitt has won eight games just twice in the last eight seasons.
What’s the difference between two eight-win seasons and seven eight-win seasons? Youngstown State, UConn, Navy, Georgia Tech, Duke, Houston, North Carolina, Stanford, Boston College and Miami.
There isn’t one of those 10 games where you could convince me Pitt shouldn’t have won. Not one of them. We don’t have to stretch our imaginations far at all to see the Panthers winning those 10 games; in fact, I’d argue that we would have had to stretch our imaginations to see Pitt losing some of those games (Youngstown State in 2012, Georgia Tech in 2014 and that bowl game against Houston come to mind).
So that’s really what it comes down to: just win the games you’re supposed to win. To Pat Narduzzi’s credit, he mostly did that through the first three years of his time at Pitt. Even in 2017 when Pitt went 5-7, the only game I would really point to as a “should-have-won” was North Carolina; that was a tough loss, but I probably wouldn’t put that in the same category as those other games I mentioned.
Of course, the flip side - and the more concerning side - is that Narduzzi mostly avoided those kinds of losses in his first three years but has four in the last two seasons.
That trend has to stop. Starting in, oh, about 13 days.
ONE PREDICTION
This will be Narduzzi’s best class
Okay, it might not be his top-ranked class. That distinction belongs to the 2016 class, which was No. 29 when all was said and done.
And even though a few breaks went against Pitt this week, I still think pretty highly of Pitt’s 2020 class and the recruits that will sign with the Panthers next Wednesday. It hasn’t been the best week for Pitt, what with Henry Parrish decommitting and a top quarterback target seeming to be headed elsewhere and a wrench being thrown into some renewed interest with a four-star receiver and a top receiver commit potentially taking a visit to another school; those aren’t the kinds of headlines you want to see in the week before Signing Day.
But when it’s all said and done next Wednesday, I think Pitt will be looking at a very good signed recruiting class that features 14 of the 15 current commits and at least three more additions, if not more.
I think this class can provide an immediate boost of offensive skill players, with Jordan Addison and Jaylon Barden at receiver and Israel Abanikanda at running back all looking like they can contribute as soon as next season. I’m really intrigued by Sam Williams and Emmanuel Belgrave; those guys looked better on their senior film than I expected.
The linebackers look like a really good group, too. Bangally Kamara, Solomon DeShields and AJ Roberts are going to bring a good deal of athleticism and speed to that room.
Oh, there’s also Dayon Hayes, who might be the best overall prospect in the class and is probably under-ranked as the No. 3 recruit in the state of Pennsylvania. He’s a stud, and he’ll see playing time next season.
And that doesn’t even touch the guys who haven’t committed yet; that group of potential additions to the class could bolster it even more.
Like I said, this class might not beating that 2016 class’s No. 29 ranking, but on the whole, I really think it has the potential to be Narduzzi’s best class yet. The staff capitalized on the Coastal title and the ACC Championship Game appearance - yes, those things resonated with the recruits - and turned it into a strong June that built the foundation of a class that should be pretty good.