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The 3-2-1 Column: Reid's decision, a winnable schedule and more

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about Efton Reid’s decision, football schedules, decommitments, the Draft and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW
Here we go
Today is the day.

It’s finally time for Efton Reid to make his decision, as the five-star center prospect is set to announce his commitment at noon today.

I’ll say right off the bat that I don’t have any idea what he is going to do. I don’t think anyone does. I don’t think his high school coaches know. I don’t think the college coaches who have been pursuing him know. Reid’s recruitment really has been operated in a very small orbit: Reid and his mother, it seems, are the only ones who know which way the wind is blowing.

That’s not the worst thing, even if it does leave the rest of us craving a bit more info. But we’ll all find out today - we’ll find out if Jeff Capel will land one of the most important recruits he has targeted since he got to Pitt.

I do think the Panthers are right in the thick of it. They’ve been a constant in his recruitment all along; other schools have come and gone, but Pitt has been a factor throughout. And while Reid and his mother don’t say a lot publicly in recruiting, their silence doesn’t extend to the private side of the process, and it seems like the Pitt coaches have regular and consistent contact with the prized center target.

Really, there are two things Pitt has going in its favor with Reid: relationships and playing time. I don’t think any of the other schools Reid is considering - mostly Florida State and LSU - can offer the playing time that Pitt can. The Panthers can legitimately offer something close to 30 minutes per game in the ACC if he plays at a level that merits those minutes.

That’s a pretty unique opportunity.

Similarly, I think Pitt’s relationship with Reid is fairly unique. LSU and FSU are relatively new in his recruitment, whereas the Panthers have been developing a connection with him for years. I believe Reid is tight with the coaching staff and the relationships are strong.

So Pitt has that going for it. Which is nice.

But I don’t know if it’s nice enough to finish the deal. Pitt can offer playing time and the staff has strong relationships, but the Panthers also won 10 games last year. They started 8-2 and went 2-9 over their final 11 games. They were one-and-done in the ACC Tournament.

Meanwhile, Florida State won more games in the ACC than Pitt won overall, finished in the top 15 and was a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. LSU won 19 games, went to the SEC championship game and was a No. 8 seed in the Tournament.

Those things matter, too.

So I don’t know what will happen today at noon. I do think that Reid would be a huge boost to the 2021-22 roster, but I also don’t quite think that his decision - whether he picks Pitt or not - is a make-or-break situation for Capel and the Panthers. Pitt’s team in the coming season is going to have a guard-oriented attack, regardless of what Efton Reid chooses to do. The scoring is going to come from the back court, and even if Pitt lands Reid and Justin Champagnie chooses to return, I think the guards will be a primary focus and a driving force behind Pitt’s success.

But getting a five-star center on the roster…yeah, that would be a good thing.

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Two kind-of unbelievable streaks
Switching over to football, something occurred to me this week. It wasn’t new necessarily, but it still kind of made me do a double-take.

Two things, actually, and they both have some relevance for the coming season.

The first one is something we’ve talked about before, but I’m going to state it again:

Since Pitt joined the Big East in 1993, the Panthers have never had an undefeated non-conference record in a single season.

Before you bring up 2020, I think we can all agree that going 1-0 in the non-conference with just one game against Austin Peay probably shouldn’t count as breaking that streak. We’re basically applying asterisks to every aspect of life in 2020, right? Pitt football is no exception, and I’m not considering that as a perfect non-conference season.

Nope: 27 seasons as a member of a conference, and not once has Pitt gone undefeated against non-conference opponents. And I don’t even need to include bowl games; the Panthers have never had an undefeated regular-season non-conference record.

So that’s one streak. Here’s another one:

Pitt scheduled two Power Five non-conference opponents in each of Pat Narduzzi’s first four seasons.

In 2015, Pitt went to Iowa and hosted Notre Dame. In 2016, Pitt hosted Penn State and went to Oklahoma State. In 2017, the Panthers faced the Nittany Lions (away) and Cowboys (home) again. And in 2018, it was Penn State (home) and Notre Dame (away).

2019 broke the streak, although it did see Pitt follow a series-ending trip to Penn State with a home game against then-No. 15 UCF. So yeah, that wasn’t light.

I think we all know in general terms that Pitt hasn’t done itself any favors with the non-conference scheduling in recent years, but I can’t imagine many other teams faced multiple Power Five opponents in four consecutive seasons like Pitt did from 2015-18.

Why do I bring up these two points now? Because the 2021 schedule presents an opportunity.

With only one Power Five non-conference opponent - a Week Two game at Tennessee that should be winnable - the Panthers are heading into the best chance they have had in a long time to go undefeated in the non-conference.

I would say that 2014, when Pitt hosted Delaware, Iowa and Akron and went to Florida International, was probably the last time the Panthers’ chances of a perfect non-conference record were as good as they are now. And it goes without saying that it’s the most winnable non-conference schedule Pitt has faced since Narduzzi became head coach.

I think this should be the year that Pitt breaks the non-conference streak - the streak of never having an undefeated non-conference record.

Going 4-0 twice
Going undefeated in the non-conference is important, but it’s really just part one of the equation.

I’m going to make this a recurring theme for the offseason and come back to it once every month or two, not necessarily because I am sure it will happen, but more so because I believe it needs to happen.

It needs to happen in most seasons, and it really needs to happen in 2021.

What needs to happen?

Pitt needs to sweep two of the three four-game segments on the schedule.

In my view, the 2021 schedule breaks down into three four-game segments. There’s the non-conference, the winnable conference and the tough conference.

The non-conference is easy enough to identify: UMass, at Tennessee, Western Michigan, New Hampshire.

The winnable conference should be clear, too: at Georgia Tech, at Duke, Virginia, at Syracuse.

And that leaves the tough conference: at Virginia Tech, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina.

I think the schedule breaks down pretty cleanly into those four groups, and if 2021 is going to be a success, then the Panthers have to go 4-0 in two of those three segments.

Obviously I’m not predicting 4-0 against Virginia Tech, Clemson, Miami and UNC.

No, it’s those other two, the non-conference and the winnable conference: Pitt needs to go 4-0 in each of those segments of the schedule.

It’s very doable. The non-conference is the most winnable of any Pat Narduzzi has faced since coming to Pitt. Like we said before, the Panthers have had five years in a row of really challenging non-conference schedules from 2015-19, but this year isn’t like that. Pitt will only face one Power Five non-conference opponent this year, and that one Power Five opponent is Tennessee; the Volunteers are in their first year under new head coach Josh Heupel after going 3-7 under Jeremy Pruitt last season and posting losing records in three of the last four years.

It’s a road trip to the SEC so you can’t assume a win, but if Pitt is where we think it is - or where we think it should be - in Year Seven under Narduzzi, then a victory at Neyland Stadium should be in the offing.

Beyond that in the non-conference, I know Pitt fans are conditioned to believe any game is losable, and while Narduzzi has had some clunkers against the likes of Boston College (twice) in the past, he has still avoided the non-P5 loss since he got to Pitt, and I assume that will continue in 2021.

So 4-0 in the non-conference - that should happen.

Then we get to the winnable conference games: at Georgia Tech, at Duke, Virginia, at Syracuse. This is a theme I have brought up in the past and I’ll say it again - Pitt should win those four games every year. That’s not meant to be any disrespect to those programs, but if Pitt is going to be at a certain level, then those games have to be annual wins.

Narduzzi has beat them fairly consistently over the last six years, too; his combined record against Georgia Tech, Duke, Virginia and Syracuse is 19-3. Two of those losses - one each to Georgia Tech and Syracuse - came in 2017, easily Narduzzi’s worst season. And the third loss was to Virginia in 2019, when the Cavaliers won the ACC Coastal Division.

In my view, those four games should be wins if Pitt is going to have a chance to really build some success. Because if you go 4-0 against those teams and you go 4-0 in the non-conference, then you are sitting on eight wins before you even get into the challenging games. And to me, that’s how a season should play out: the challenging games should be the ones that really decide the fate of the season.

If you lose a non-conference game or one of those winnable conference games, then you have to beat Clemson or Miami or UNC or Virginia Tech just to get to eight wins. That’s less than ideal. Beating the tough teams should be the icing on the cake, the victories that put you over the top to nine or 10 or however many wins you can stack up.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Where did you guys go?
We took a little trip down memory lane this week. Over the course of two days, we worked on tracking down the fates of the recruits who committed to Pitt but signed with a different school (or didn’t sign at all) since Pat Narduzzi became head coach.

It’s a rather lengthy list, with 21 recruits in total. Not all of them were true “decommits,” necessarily; some were dropped by Pitt either through the decision of the staff for reasons ranging from legal to academic to performance-based, and in other cases, the parting of ways was more mutual.

Regardless, at some point, those 21 guys were on Pitt’s commitment list, but by the time Signing Day arrived, they weren’t any longer.

When I first put that list together, the number seemed large. 21 is a lot of decommitments, even if it’s over the span of roughly seven years (seven recruiting classes from 2015-21). But I think when you break it down, the numbers make a little more sense.

Here’s where the decommitments came from, by class:

2015 - 5
2016 - 2
2017 - 1
2018 - 2
2019 - 4
2020 - 3
2021 - 4

So you start with the 2015 class, and the first thing you should already know is that the class of 2015 was the transition class from Paul Chryst to Pat Narduzzi. Four of those five decommitments were guys who committed to Chryst but flipped after the coaching change (two followed Chryst to Wisconsin; the other two were guys from Kittanning and Altoona who flipped to Penn State and might have done so even if Chryst never left Pitt).

That puts the numbers in a little more context for that year.

The next big number is in the 2019 class, where four recruits decommitted. Three of those four were true decommitments - guys the staff wanted to hold onto but lost. The context for that group is the class year: 2019 was the first class that could take official visits in the spring and early summer.

Surely, you remember June 2018 and the Father’s Day massacre, when I was late for a family gathering because Jim Hammett and I had a couple dozen commitments to track down.

Okay, it wasn’t that many, but it felt like it; commitments seemed to be popping every hour on the hour. That was really exciting, but June is a long way from December, and when you get that many commitments in June - Pitt got about 14, by my count - it’s going to really tough to keep all them. You’re almost bound to lose a few, and that’s what happened.

It happened in the 2020 class again; Pitt lost a couple of June commitments - Tee Denson and Henry Parrish - and those losses definitely set the class back, even if Narduzzi and staff finished pretty strong.

In the 2021 class, Pitt had four decommitments, but three of them were decisions the staff made.

So between inherited commitments in the 2015 class, a handful of guys who were let go by the Pitt coaches and the somewhat inevitable decommitments that come from a big surge of early commitments, that number - 21 - doesn’t seem quite so bad. Overall, I think Narduzzi and his staff have done a pretty good job of holding onto commitments.

Who could have helped the most?
Naturally, when we take these trips down memory lane and talk about decommitments, we start talking about which guys could have helped the most if they had stuck with Pitt.

The 2015 class has a few of them: Alex Hornibrook, Nick Bowers and Kevin Givens. After Hornibrook bailed, Pitt scrambled and offered Ben DiNucci and brought in Nathan Peterman as a grad transfer. Peterman likely would have been a target anyway; Pitt’s quarterback depth was pretty thin at that point, but getting both Hornibrook and Peterman on the roster would have meant the latter could have started in 2015 and 2016, as he did, and then Hornibrook could have taken over in 2017 and possibly beyond, when an efficient quarterback likely would have functioned well with the developing running game.

Bowers didn’t produce much at Penn State, but that was largely a function of Mike Gesicki and Pat Freiermuth being really good as well as Bowers having some injury misfortune. At Pitt, though, he likely would have played a bigger role than he did in State College, and his flip to Penn State was one of the first in a long line of daggers that killed the tight end position for the Panthers.

As for Givens, Pitt’s defensive line depth has become a strength of the team, but that wasn’t the case in the early years of the Narduzzi era. Givens played and even started a few games as a redshirt freshman at at Penn State in 2016, and Pitt absolutely could have used him that year and in 2017; by 2018, when Patrick Jones and Rashad Weaver really started coming into their own, the presence of Givens at defensive tackle could have accelerated the emergence of Pitt’s strong defensive line units by a year or two.

I think Juwann Winfree probably could have boosted the receiving corps in 2016 and 2017 (or 2017 and 2018; he missed the 2016 season at Colorado due to an ACL injury).

Of course, just like Bowers could have boosted the tight ends, I imagine Matt Alaimo and Travis Koontz might have, too. I don’t know if those guys can play, but I know what Pitt’s tight end position has been, so I’m not sure that any option should be rejected.

The other two guys I think would have been useful additions to Pitt’s roster are Tee Denson and Henry Parrish in the class of 2020. Denson was kind of an under-the-radar decommitment; when he backed off his Pitt verbal and ended up at Kansas State, I don’t think there was too much teeth-gnashing about it among Pitt fans. But his freshman season with the Wildcats was fairly strong, including a start in the finale against Texas, and it seems to bode well for a bright future. Pitt ultimately added Rashad Battle late in the 2020 cycle, and that offset the loss of Denson a bit. I also think we’re all pretty conditioned to assume this staff will recruit defensive backs well. But Denson would have been a good piece to add to the secondary.

As for Parrish, Pitt certainly has numbers at running back, but a talented player like him would always be welcome. And a future dual-threat of Parrish and Israel Abanikanda seems like it could be pretty potent.

ONE PREDICTION

Next year’s Draft
I’m not much on predictions for the NFL Draft, but then again, I’m not very good at predicting anything, so let’s have some Draft talk for a minute.

Pitt did pretty well in last weekend’s Draft, what with six players selected and four more signing undrafted free agent contracts shortly thereafter.

There were some unexpected results - Damar Hamlin falling to the sixth, Paris Ford falling out altogether - but overall, it was a pretty solid weekend for the Panthers. But now that’s over and we’re looking ahead to the next one.

Unlike last year, Pitt doesn’t seem to have any early draft locks. A year ago at this time, there was a lot of talk about Ford, Jaylen Twyman and Patrick Jones, as well as some mentions of guys like Hamlin and Kenny Pickett being potential draft picks.

This year, it’s a bit harder to find Pitt names being bandied about. I mean, I’m sure you can find them: if we’ve learned anything, it’s that you can find a mock draft to support just about any theory you have. If you want to believe your team’s quarterback is a first-round pick, you can probably find a mock draft that lists him there.

But overall, the Pitt players who will be eligible for the 2022 Draft aren’t showing up on many lists.

Of course, we have to say right from the start that it’s way too easy for any 2022 mock drafts. Things can and most certainly will change a lot between now and then. But what’s more interesting to me is the potential for 2022 draft picks.

I think Pitt’s 2021 roster has a bunch of players who can - and most likely will - play themselves into draft prospect status over the course of the season.

Kenny Pickett is probably the guy who will get the most preseason pub and hype as a draft prospect, but Lucas Krull’s ceiling is really high. If he can have a healthy and productive season in 2021, he will be drafted; I’m fairly confident about that. Guys who can run like he can at his size play in the NFL. The only thing missing for Krull is actually producing on the field. He’ll get an opportunity to do that this fall.

I think Taysir Mack can play himself into the lower rounds of the Draft with a productive season, too. And I think some of the offensive linemen are intriguing, but again, they’ll need to have good senior seasons.

On defense, I think there are a few players who could turn strong seasons into a draft pick. Cam Bright and Phil Campbell are the two that come to mind first; both have been good outside linebackers at Pitt with a fair amount of production, but if they can have their best seasons in 2021 and follow them with impressive Pro Day performances, they’ll get picked.

I think Damarri Mathis is in that group, too. He is something of an unknown after missing last season due to injury, but like Rashad Weaver went from not playing in 2019 to a fourth-round pick after his senior season, I think Mathis will have a chance to get into the middle rounds of the Draft.

So my prediction here is that while Pitt doesn’t have many draft prospects getting talked about right now, there will be a good handful of Panthers who play their way into that status by the end of the season.

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