The 3-2-1 Column: Revis, retired numbers, the secondary and more
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In this week’s Panther-Lair.com 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about Darrelle Revis, retired numbers, four-star recruits, the secondary and more.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
One of the best
Darrelle Revis announced his retirement this week, and as is always the case when someone retires, the retrospectives and grand statements began.
Talk of Canton, of being one of the best ever and being a game-changing player all took off in earnest, and not one of those statements was inaccurate. Far from hyperbole in the wake of a player’s career ending, Revis really was all of those things.
Which is to say, he was one of the best.
A four-time All-Pro selection and a six-time Pro Bowler over the course of 11 seasons, there was a legitimate case to be made for Revis as the NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 2009; another cornerback, Charles Woodson, won the award that year, but that was not a unanimous pick (Woodson received 28 votes; Revis got 14).
The Jets went to the AFC Championship game that season, led almost entirely by the team’s defense, which was led almost entirely by Revis. Rex Ryan even said so on multiple occasions, pointing out that the team’s aggressive blitzing scheme couldn’t have been executed without Revis effectively shutting down an entire side of the field.
Revis’ Pitt career was a little tougher to quantify but no less impressive. Remember, this was in the days before Pro Football Focus was assigning a score to every individual player’s performance, so we had no way of really knowing how effective he was outside of interceptions. He had eight picks over the course of three seasons, which was nothing to sneeze at. But the reality was that Revis’ numbers were limited not by his performance but rather by the fact that opposing teams simply refused to throw at him.
Quarterbacks knew that the risk-vs-reward ratio was very much not in their favor when going against Revis. Really, in three years of covering Revis when he was at Pitt, I can only recall one play where he legitimately got beat on a play. It was the home game against Louisville in 2006. Pitt was trailing 24-17 in the final minutes of the first half, and on a third-and-7 from the Pitt 31.
Louisville’s Mario Urrutia, a very good college receiver, somehow got past Revis with a clear shot to cover the 31 years for a touchdown. Brian Brohm’s pass to Urrutia was on point, too, and it was all set to give the Cardinals a two-touchdown lead heading into halftime.
Revis knew he was beat, so reached out and grabbed Urrutia’s jersey, preferring to take a 15-yard penalty over a sure 31-yard touchdown. It was a smart play - the smartest thing an unbeatable corner could do on the rare occasion he got beat.
And, of course, there was this:
What’s funny is, I remember thinking as that play developed, “Man, that block by Derek Kinder is one of the best plays I’ve ever seen in a football game.” Then Revis got to the sideline and somehow made Kinder’s block, where he took out two players, only the second-best play on the return.
One of the best since
Revis’ partner at cornerback in that 2006 season was Kennard Cox, and that wasn’t a bad duo (Pitt’s trouble against the pass that year was more due to the lack of a pass rush; Cox and Revis both played in the NFL).
For my money, the best tandem of corners I’ve covered at Pitt was a year earlier, when Revis was matched with his cousin and fellow Aliquippa native Josh Lay. A sixth-round pick of the Steelers who kicked around the NFL for a few years mostly on practice squads, along with some time spent in NFL Europe and the UFL, Lay didn’t have much of a pro career but he was quite good at Pitt.
Here are the other primary corner tandems Pitt has used since 2005:
2005 - Darrelle Revis, Josh Lay
2006 - Darrelle Revis, Kennard Cox
2007 - Kennard Cox, Aaron Berry
2008 - Aaron Berry, Ricky Gary (and Jovani Chappel)
2009 - Aaron Berry, Jovani Chappel
2010 - Ricky Gary, Antwuan Reed
2011 - Antwuan Reed, K’Waun Williams
2012 - K’Waun Williams, Lafayette Pitts
2013 - K’Waun Williams, Lafayette Pitts
2014 - Lafayette Pitts, Avonte Maddox
2015 - Lafayette Pitts, Avonte Maddox
2016 - Avonte Maddox, Ryan Lewis
2017 - Avonte Maddox, Dane Jackson
There are some pretty good individual players on that list. Revis, obviously, but Lay and Cox were effective, as was Berry. Reed was solid. Williams was really good. Pitts had a lot of potential - and showed it in 2012 - but never quite got to the level he seemed capable of reaching. And I think Maddox is probably going to be underrated due to some of the challenges he faced, but he played pretty well this past season.
Really, if I look at that list, I like the Maddox/Jackson duo from 2017 as much as just about any of them since the groupings in 2005 and 2006. Jackson had a breakout season last year and Maddox finished his career playing well. The pass defense numbers were not good for Pitt in 2017 - 254.2 passing yards allowed per game, No. 105 nationally - but I put that more on the lack of a pass rush, struggles at safety and inexperience at linebacker than I put it on the corners. Really, Maddox and Jackson were probably the most consistent bright spots on the defense last season.
And going forward into this season, I think the corner pairings will be even better than they were last year. Jackson is back for his redshirt junior season and should be poised for an all-conference performance, and it’s hard not to feel confident about whichever player lines up across from him.
The preseason two-deep had Jason Pinnock at that spot ahead of Paris Ford, which was more or less what they did in the spring, but it really doesn’t seem like you can go wrong with either option. Ford’s ceiling is as high as anyone else’s on the team, and Pinnock, by all accounts, is a future NFL player.
No matter the pairing - Jackson/Pinnock or Jackson/Ford (and that doesn’t even include Damarri Mathis, who looked good in limited reps as a freshman last season) - Pitt’s corners should be really good this season.
One of the rest
With ACC Media Days comes the inevitable run of preseason prognostication. Every ACC talking head chimed in with predictions and expectations and the like, and the results were about what you would expect.
Clemson should be very good. Clemson’s defensive should be very, very good. And the rest of the teams in the conference have a smattering of good individual players, with the results of the league depending on which team’s good individual players can play better than the other teams’ good individual players.
Pitt wasn’t very well-represented among this lot of predictions and projections, and I can’t say that’s much of a surprise. The Panthers are coming off a 5-7 season that saw them go 3-5 in the conference and an offseason that saw three top players go to the NFL plus a handful of top seniors depart as well. Add to that a daunting schedule, and the expectations are pretty low.
Let’s look at those items, though.
Last year’s record - Yes, Pitt’s record in 2017 was not good, but the Panthers also had that most vexing of problems: inconsistency and ineffectiveness at quarterback, an issue that has been the downfall of many teams whose other issues were less severe than Pitt’s were last season.
Three top players went to the NFL - Brian O’Neill was a big loss. Jordan Whitehead was a very good player who inconsistency on and off the field cost Pitt in 2017. And Quadree Henderson’s biggest impact was on special teams, as he never seemed to make much noise in the passing game.
Top seniors departed - Pitt did lose some key seniors, like Jester Weah and Avonte Maddox and…well, that might be it. Jaryd Jones-Smith and Brandon Hodges are gone from the offensive line, but both were inconsistent last season. And one of the biggest things going for this Pitt team is the experience it returns on defense, rather than what it lost. But we’ll get to that.
The daunting schedule - I talked about this before. Yes, playing Penn State and going to UCF and Notre Dame make for a rough stretch. But those games don’t mean a thing to the ACC rankings, which everyone has been projecting; the only games that affect those rankings are the eight conference games, and from that perspective, the schedule isn’t too bad. The Coastal is the Coastal, Syracuse is Syracuse and Wake Forest is not as challenging as N.C. State was last year.
Now, the biggest thing to point out with the lack of preseason respect for Pitt is this: the Panthers haven’t done anything to earn any respect. They did go 5-7 last year. They did get shredded by Oklahoma State last year. They did lose three of the biggest names on the team (four, if you include Weah). These things happened.
But what also happened was Pitt’s defense grew up a lot last season and played well by the end of the schedule. And Kenny Pickett emerged as a viable and playmaking quarterback. Those two elements are the basis for any optimism surrounding this team in this offseason, and they seem to be getting overlooked by the media at large.
So Pitt’s not getting respect, and that’s okay. The Panthers haven’t earned any yet. But they’ve got some pieces that could change that narrative and find themselves listed among the best in the conference by the end of the season.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
Should 25 be retired?
This question comes up pretty regularly, and in the aftermath of Revis’ retirement, it came up again:
Should Pitt retire No. 25?
It really kills two birds with one stone, since both Revis and LeSean McCoy wore No. 25 at Pitt (although I wonder whose name would go on the banner). But my answer on retiring No. 25 is the same as it has been any time the question has been raised about a variety of numbers:
No. Don’t retire it.
For one thing, you can only retire so many numbers. Pitt has already hung nine in the rafters of Heinz Field, and you can’t go too far before you run into serious logistical issues.
But also, for as dominant as Revis (as well as McCoy) was at Pitt, was he truly on the same level as Larry Fitzgerald or Tony Dorsett or Dan Marino? Revis was great. He was one of the best in the game. But it seems like he’s still maybe one tier below those other guys. The separation isn’t huge, but it exists, and I’m not quite sure if he’s retirement-worthy.
So go for the happy medium: the ring of honor. Others have suggested this before, and now that Pitt is doing more to recognize and honor the past by creating a Hall of Fame, I think a ring of honor for football would be in line with the general movement.
And the great thing about a ring of honor is that you could be more flexible with who gets in. Curtis Martin’s Pitt career didn’t merit a jersey retirement, but he’s fourth on the NFL’s all-time rushing list. So while you wouldn’t retire his Pitt jersey for his NFL accomplishments, you could certainly put him in the ring of honor and further establish that link between Pitt and an NFL great who wore a Panther uniform.
Revis and McCoy could go in the ring of honor. Scott McKillop and Ironhead Heyward could, too. And James Conner. Even Tyler Palko, if you want; with a ring of honor, you can play to the fan favorites.
To display the ring of honor, you obviously wouldn’t be able to create anything permanent at Heinz Field. But you could create banners either on the walls surrounding the field itself or strategically hung throughout the stadium. And if the Hall of Fame ever turns into a physical entity, a permanent solution for the ring of honor could be created.
One cool thing Pitt could do with a banner at Heinz Field for the ring of honor: era-appropriate jersey images, like this thing the Reds used to do.
No, you probably wouldn’t like seeing all of those uniform combinations; some probably bring up bad memories. But I think it would be a nice touch and give the fans something else to look at before the game or during breaks. Perhaps you could get era-appropriate jersey replicas made and hang them in the Great Hall on game day.
I need to email Heather Lyke.
Is there really a four-star problem?
Earlier this week, I wrote an article with a rather ominous headline:
Even I’ll admit: that headline was more ominous than it needed to be. Does Pitt have a four-star problem? No. Is there an interesting trend of four-star recruits leaving the program? Yes.
Charles Reeves was the latest, joining Chris Clark, Kaezon Pugh and Ruben Flowers in this offseason alone. Each guy left for his own reasons (Pugh wanted a better opportunity; Flowers probably did, too; Clark had personal issues to work through; Reeves was dismissed), but the fact that those players, who were among Pitt’s top recruits, have all left early without really contributing anything, is either curious or concerning, depending on your perspective.
The bigger problem, in all reality, is not that four-star recruits have left the program; rather, it’s that Pitt has added just 15 four-stars in the last four years (I said 14 in the article, but I neglected to include Dewayne Hendrix). I think Pitt needs to average at least four recruits who are rated as four-stars or better in each recruiting cycle, and preferably those would be four-star high school prospects, not just transfers and grad transfers.
That’s probably the biggest four-star problem Pitt has: the team needs more four-stars. And that problem compounds the problem/trend I wrote about, because when you get fewer top-end recruits, it tends to sting more if they don’t pan out.
Pitt needs a receiver to step up this season, but the highest-rated receiver Pat Narduzzi has signed left the team this spring. The Panthers also need something to break open at tight end, but the two top-rated tight ends Narduzzi has brought to Pitt are also no longer on the roster.
The recruiting rankings aren’t perfect; we all know that and we all understand that not every recruit lives up to his projection. But if you’re not going to get a lot of top-rated prospects, then the ones you do get had better work out.
ONE PREDICTION
Pitt’s safeties will be the difference in the secondary
I think Pitt’s defensive backs will continue to be overlooked throughout the preseason, and that’s fine. Preseason hype never won anything, and it probably has caused more problems than it has solved as far as players getting a big head or thinking a little too highly of themselves.
So I’m sure Pat Narduzzi and his staff have no issue with Pitt’s secondary getting very little respect this offseason. They want those players to have something to prove, and I think Dane Jackson and the rest will go into the season with that mindset.
But here’s the thing: the key to the secondary, the key to making a big improvement over the early-season struggles of 2017 and the full-season struggles of 2016, will be the safeties. Dane Jackson’s going to be really good. Jason Pinnock and Paris Ford and Damarri Mathis should be pretty good, too. I think there are multiple NFL players in that group of corners.
But the safeties…that’s where a few big steps need to be taken.
Damar Hamlin will be the starting field safety and Phil Campbell should be the starting boundary safety. I like that pairing and think they can be pretty good. But they’re not there yet; both guys have to get a lot better this offseason to make a positive impact in 2018.
Because for as much as we talk about the corners, the safeties probably had more to do with the breakdowns in the passing game last season, particularly against Oklahoma State. The lack of a pass rush didn’t help, but the safeties struggled, for a variety of reasons.
As such, they need to get a lot better, because they really will be the difference in the secondary - good or bad.
Pitt’s pass rush should be better this season than it was last year. The linebackers should be a very solid group this season, too. And the cornerbacks should be really good. That leaves the last line of defense; if the safeties can become much more effective than they were in 2017, then this defense has a chance of being surprisingly good.