The 3-2-1 Column: Senior Day, expectations, offensive improvement and more

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about Pitt’s seniors, whether the Panthers’ offense can get better, what’s realistic for the program and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

The end of the road, pt. 1
Feel free to put on a Boyz II Men CD while you read this…

It’s Senior Day, and I think there’s always a bit of extra interest in this if you come from our little corner of the world. I’m talking about the people who follow recruiting, because for those of us who pay attention to that stuff, Senior Day isn’t just the culmination of a four or five-year career; it’s a bit longer timespan.

Take somebody like Jazzee Stocker. The first interview we ever published with him was on Halloween 2013. That’s six years and a month of following Stocker, dating back to his junior year of high school. A few weeks before that Stocker article, we ran our first interview with Tre Tipton. And a few months later, we wrote our first article on Dane Jackson.

Those guys ended up in the class of 2015 and they’re now redshirt seniors, but the story is the same for the 2016 recruits who are graduating after four years. We first wrote about Damar Hamlin in June of 2014 after he got his offer from Pitt.

That’s a long time to be covering these guys and a long time to be reading about them, following them, watching their recruitment until they committed and then their development once they got on campus. Everybody who is a Pitt fan has been watching Damar Hamlin since he was a freshman, but those who follow recruiting have seen a little more. They know a little more of the backstory.

Now all of those guys who went from skinny high-schoolers (seriously, you should have seen Dane Jackson and Tre Tipton back in the day), who showed up and looked like kids wearing college uniforms for the first time - those guys are all grown up. They’re college football players. They’re adults.

And when you get to Senior Day, you watch them run out onto the field for the last time and start thinking about some of those stories. Like how Hamlin was supposed to have a private workout for Paul Chryst’s staff to earn an offer in the summer between his sophomore and junior year. But he had a broken hand or a broken wrist or something like that and couldn’t do much - but they offered him anyway.

Or how, in that same summer, Tipton was getting his name out there on the camp circuit and surprised everyone when he got an offer at Michigan State’s prospect camp. Two days later, he went to Pitt’s prospect camp and got an offer from the Panthers. Nobody really knew how Chryst and company would do recruiting against MSU, which was one of the best programs in college football at that point.

Turns out, the Spartans’ success didn’t matter; Tipton always wanted to go to Pitt, and after thinking about it for a week, he picked the Panthers.

I still remember seeing Maurice Ffrench at Pitt’s prospect camp in the summer of 2015 and hearing someone comment that there must be a misprint on the camp roster since his name had two F’s in it. I remember seeing Aaron Mathews as a freshman playing for Clairton in Pitt’s annual seven-on-seven passing camp; he stood out because he was like 6’4” already, even back then.

There’s a story (or two) like that for every one of these guys, and while this year is a little unique in that only eight of the 14 seniors being honored were scholarship players recruited out of high school, the occasion of Senior Day still jogs the memory a little bit, and I think that’s one of the underrated aspects of following recruiting: You get stories that go beyond the four or five years those guys are on campus.

The end of the road, pt. 2
As to this year’s particular group of seniors, it’s a small bunch with a mix of backgrounds. Like I said, there are eight guys who came to Pitt as recruited scholarship players out of high school. But they are complemented by six others who arrived under less conventional terms.

Five of them came to Pitt as graduate transfers: tight ends Will Gragg and Nakia Griffin-Stewart, quarterback Jeff George Jr., offensive lineman Nolan Ulizio and linebacker Kylan Johnson. And tight end/fullback Jim Medure, who played a fairly-considerable role last season but hasn’t seen the field much this year, came as a walk-on but eventually went on scholarship.

Those other eight, though, represent a pair of significant classes for Pat Narduzzi.

The first was the class of 2015. That was the group that Narduzzi inherited and had to work to retain when he was hired to replace Paul Chryst in December of 2014. Narduzzi didn’t keep everyone in the fold - the most notable departures were Kittanning tight end Nick Bowers and Altoona defensive lineman Kevin Givens, who defected for Penn State after Narduzzi’s hiring; quarterback Alex Hornibrook and defensive tackle Kraig Howe also decommitted and followed Chryst to Wisconsin - but he held on to most of the class.

The key retention, of course, was Jordan Whitehead; he played his last game in a Pitt uniform at Heinz field two years ago. Quadree Henderson was in that group, too; he also left two years ago. And Darrin Hall was an important retention, as well; he ran out of eligibility last season.

Three players in the class did finish their eligibility prior to this season: Hall and JUCO transfers Allen Edwards and Rafael Araujo-Lopes. The rest - Gentry Ivory, Ben DiNucci, Anthony McKee, Tony Pilato, Malik Henderson and Alex Paulina - never panned out. That’s not altogether atypical for a transition class - a class that gets recruited through a coaching change - but I think the guys who are still here have earned a little appreciation.

There are four remaining members of that 2015 class on the current roster: Tipton, Jackson, Stocker and Saleem Brightwell. Narduzzi inherited commitments from Tipton and Jackson, but Stocker and Brightwell were January adds, the product of strong recruiting by the staff to close on a couple of long-time Pitt targets.

Jackson has developed into one of the top cover corners in the country. He came to Pitt as a versatile athlete who was stuck between offense and defense and grew into an NFL cornerback and a team captain. Brightwell has been an on-again/off-again starter at two linebacker positions and he’s having a strong finish to his college career. Stocker has been a consistent backup safety but has generally been reliable in his time.

As for Tipton, his career has been pretty much derailed by injuries. He played four games as a freshman before he got hurt. Then he played nine games as a sophomore before suffering another season-ending injury that kept him out all of 2017. Last year he finally got in a full season and caught five passes for 42 yards (he had more receptions and yards the previous year, but we all know about Pitt’s passing offense in 2018). This year, he was off to a good start with seven catches for 81 yards through three games before, in a most unfortunate twist, he got hurt again. Tipton has missed enough time to merit a sixth year from the NCAA if he wants one. If he doesn’t, I think he’ll probably be pretty successful at whatever he does.

Jackson, Stocker, Brightwell, Tipton. That’s a small group, to be sure. And like I said, it’s not crazy to have such a small group left over from a transition class. But those four guys have stuck it out.

End of the road, pt. 3
And then there’s the group from the 2016 class. There are four of them graduating this year, and they represent some key pieces from one of the most important recruiting classes a coaching staff can assemble:

The First Full Class.

I’ve used that term a lot of times over the years, whether talking about Dave Wannstedt’s 2006 class or Paul Chryst’s 2013 class. That’s the class after the transition class, the first class that a coaching staff has a full year to recruit, and if I listed some names, you’d know what it’s so important.

2006: Dorin Dickerson. Jason Pinkston. John Maleck. Greg Romeus. Nate Byham.

2013: James Conner. Tyler Boyd. Dorian Johnson. Scott Orndoff. Alex Officer. Tyrique Jarrett.

Those guys were all key pieces of the success that Pitt would eventually have when they hit their third and fourth years. When the class of 2006 - Dickerson, etc. - was in its fourth year, Pitt won 10 games for the first time in nearly three decades. When the class of 2013 was in its fourth year, the Panthers upset the eventual national champion on the road.

The recruits in those classes formed the foundations of those teams, and that’s the way it has to be. A new coach gets hired and his first job is to hold onto the class he inherits. As soon as that’s done - and even before it’s done - he has to dig in deep on his first full class, because that class is probably going to get him fired or retained.

Which brings us to Pat Narduzzi’s 2016 class. That group achieved its first goal, which was to bring some major enthusiasm into the program. It’s hard to argue with that: do you remember the buzz when Damar Hamlin announced his commitment on KDKA-TV and on the same night Aaron Mathews flipped his commitment from Penn State to Pitt?

Big-time buzz on that one, and Scott Barnes even told us that there was a rush on season tickets in the aftermath of that evening.

Hamlin was probably the face of the class. A local four-star prospect who had offers from everywhere and could have gone anywhere chose to stay home and build something at Pitt. That he took his recruitment to the week of Signing Day only built the drama, but he instantly became one of the key pieces of the class despite being one of the last to commit.

Getting Hamlin was a statement by Narduzzi, just like flipping Mathews was. Of course there was a backstory with Mathews, as he wanted to commit to Pitt over the summer but the Panthers had already filled the spot they allotted for a bigger receiver. So he committed to play defense at Penn State until Narduzzi came calling in late January and said, ‘Hey, we have a receiver spot open now…’

Never mind the details, though, because here’s the short version: Aaron Mathews flipped from Penn State to Pitt. That was the most important detail of the story anyway, right?

Amir Watts was a rare Pitt commit from Chicago; you don’t see the Panthers recruiting the Windy City very often. But more importantly, he was a four-star defensive line recruit for a team that desperately needed an upgrade along the defensive front.

And Maurice Ffrench committed to Pitt in the summer, scored 24 touchdowns in the fall, drew interest from other programs in December and signed with the Panthers in February.

Those four guys - Hamlin, Mathews, Watts and Ffrench - will walk into Heinz Field in Pitt uniforms for the last time on Saturday, and while they likely expected more success than they experienced, they were foundational. They, along with those 2015 recruits and the rest of the 2016 class, set the tone and the culture for this program. Narduzzi may have had the vision of what he wanted Pitt football to be, but guys like Hamlin and Ffrench and Watts and Mathews and Brightwell and Jackson and Stocker and Tipton made it what it is.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

What’s realistic?
So I’ve been stuck on this topic since the drive back from Virginia Tech. I talked about it on two podcasts, I’m writing about it here and I’m going to talk about it on the Panthers Insider Show on 93.7 The Fan Saturday morning.

It’s expectations and goals, what’s realistic for the Pitt football program and what should they achieve on an annual basis.

Like I said, I’ve been over this topic a few times this week, so I’ve got it down pretty well on what I think. Here goes, in bullet point format:

- Eight wins minimum. That should be the floor. Every year. And if you have a coach who can’t get there and stay there, then you need a new coach. With the scheduling practices of college football on an eight-game conference slate, you should be able to build in at least three non-conference wins every year. And if you’re at the level you should expect to be at, winning five ACC games every year is a reasonable goal. That’s eight, and that’s the minimum.

- Competitive in the Coastal four out of every five years. This isn’t to say winning it four out of every five years. This is to say being competitive. Like this year: in the penultimate week of the regular season, Pitt was still in the hunt for the Coastal title. I think it’s reasonable to expect to be in that range four out of every five years.

- Coastal title two out of every five years. This might be pushing it just a bit, simply because this division has been so competitive since the realignment in 2013. You all know the talking point: if Virginia wins, a different team will have claimed the title every year since the division expanded to seven teams. So somebody is going to become a repeat winner next year, but on the whole, these teams are all roughly around the same level program-wise. Getting two titles every five years could be tricky, but I think it’s something worth shooting for.

- Strike gold every now and then. It happens. The stars align, everything comes together and a program like Pitt has a magic season, wins 11 games and is in the conversation for the playoffs. We all know the landscape of college football; we all know that there are 10 or 12 teams - and maybe less - that can legitimately expect to be in the playoff hunt every year. And we know that for the rest of the sport, it’s more about hoping to get that everything-lines-up season once every 10 years or so. Michigan State had it and got into the playoffs. Washington has made the playoffs. Minnesota isn’t going to make the playoffs this year, but they’re having that kind of season. As Pitt’s program builds, I believe the Panthers can eventually have a season like that.

So then the next big question is the obvious one: where does Pat Narduzzi’s Pitt program fall when we apply the filter of those expectations? Well, I think there’s a case to be made for things more or less lining up as they should. Pitt won the Coastal last year, which kind of offset the fact that the Panthers fell short of eight wins. And if they take care of business against Boston College, they’ll be at eight with a chance to get to nine in the bowl game. So I would say the last two seasons more or less fit those goals and expectations I laid out.

Have there been frustrating losses along the way? Of course there have. North Carolina, Notre Dame, Miami and Stanford come to mind from last year, not to mention blowout losses to Penn State, UCF and Clemson. And then there’s the Miami game this year, for starters. But if you go 8-4 or 9-3, I’m willing to bet there will always be a loss or two that causes fans to look back in anger. It’s inevitable.

All that said, I think those are reasonable expectations for this Pitt program. They are attainable goals, and with the right leadership in place, I believe they are sustainable as well. The finish of this season and the whole of next season will tell us a lot about where Pat Narduzzi has the program.

Will the offense get better next year?
This is a million-dollar question, because we’re well past the point of acknowledging that Pitt’s offense is, against all odds, worse than it was a year ago. Save for passing yards and plays per game, the Panthers have regressed in almost every major offensive stat category, and I have to say: I’m shocked by that development.

Now, before we proceed, it’s worth adding one caveat to that statement: yes, the offense has not improved, but I can’t imagine that last year’s offense comes back against UCF, Duke or North Carolina. They might protect the Miami lead a little better, but once UCF, Duke and UNC took leads late in those games, I don’t think the 2018 offense could mount the necessary comeback.

So in that way, the offense has improved. But overall, it’s not really much better and in most ways, it’s worse.

Let’s bring in the question, then: will the offense be any better in 2020?

To start, I think it’s a positive that the offense will have a lot of players back. Really, it’s easier to count the contributors who won’t be back. Maurice Ffrench, Nolan Ulizio, Will Gragg, Nakia Griffin-Stewart, Aaron Mathews - I think that’s it. Returning are the quarterback, four starting offensive linemen plus two more who played a lot, top options at receiver and all of the running backs.

Plus, the offense will add some serious talent at receiver and running back with the 2020 recruiting class. You don’t want to count on freshmen, but I really think guys like Jordan Addison, Jaylon Barden, Israel Abanikanda and Henry Parrish (if he ends up at Pitt) are going to make some contributions next season.

That’s a lot of starters back - eight, by my count - and some good talent coming in. That should be an improvement, right?

Well, there’s one caveat: all of those starters coming back? They have to actually get better.

At the top of the list is Kenny Pickett. He has had some really good performances this year and he has had some major duds. And in some of those duds, he looked like the quarterback he was all too often last year: indecisive, not showing a great feel for the pocket and seeming to miss reads and throws. When he has had a little time, like in the UNC game, he has looked impressive. But when Virginia Tech got some pressure on Pickett, things seemed to fall apart.

So that’s a big one that has to get better.

And then there’s the offensive line. I think that with having Jimmy Morrissey and Bryce Hargrove and Jake Kradel and Carter Warren and Gabe Houy and Carson Van Lynn back, Pitt should have some good options to build a solid line. I mean, that’s six guys with quality game experience vying for five spots; Dave Borbely should be able to get solid play out of the group. He’s going to have to, because that unit has got to be better than it was.

If the line improves its run-blocking, that’s going to help the returning crew of A.J. Davis, Vincent Davis, V’Lique Carter and Daniel Carter (is there any other running back room in the country with two last names among four unrelated guys?) plus the newcomers. I think we can all agree that Pitt needs a bit more of an established running game next season, but it’s going to take the combined efforts of the linemen and the backs.

As for the receivers, I think Taysir Mack and Shocky Jacques-Louis are a good place to start. Both players need to be more consistent - who doesn’t? - but with Mack as a downfield option and Jacques-Louis as a slot receiver who can make plays in space, Pitt’s got a solid foundation, I think. They just need more out of the other returning receivers and the new guys coming in.

Overall, I think Pitt’s offense should be better next season. I mean, it can’t be worse, right?

Wait. That sounds familiar.,,

ONE PREDICTION

If you’ve read this column before, you know I don’t like to predict game outcomes. I tend to stay away from it, just because so many things can happen in the course of 60 minutes - or, in the case of the UNC game, more than 60 minutes.

Come to think of it, that UNC game was one of the few I’ve actually predicted this year. And I got it right. So I’m going for it again:

Pitt will beat Boston College.

The Eagles, as you know, are not having a great season. They’re 5-6 and lost to Kansas (who loses to Kansas?) and got killed by Notre Dame in South Bend last week. In some circles, it is said that Boston College is playing for Steve Addazio’s job in this game; it has been suggested that if the Eagles fail to get to six wins, Addazio could be on the way out (and he might be even if Boston College wins this game).

So there’s more than a little riding on this game for B.C. They’ll probably be fired up, just like Virginia Tech was last weekend.

But in the matchups, I think Pitt’s got an edge. We all know that the Eagles’ offense is built on the run game; they have the No. 6 rushing offense in the nation. But we also know that Pitt is good against the run; the Panthers have the No. 6 rush defense in the nation. Only five teams have rushed for 100 yards against Pitt this season; two of those five came in the last two games, but UNC and Virginia Tech combined to rush for 246 yards on 73 attempts. That’s 3.4 yards per carry - not exactly a model of efficiency.

Now, Boston College will be the best rushing offense Pitt has faced this season. The only teams in the nation who average more rushing yards per game are the three service academics, Ohio State and Louisiana (formerly and still kind of known as Louisiana-Lafayette). So I would expect the Eagles and star back A.J. Dillon to get some yards, but if there’s one thing I willing to bet on, it’s Pitt’s run defense.

Even when things were really bad for this defense in the early part of Pat Narduzzi’s tenure, the Panthers could still stop the run, so I think they’ll hold their own. But defense hasn’t really been the problem for Pitt this season, has it?

Well, on the other side of the ball, there should be some success, because Boston College’s defense has been plumed awful. The Eagles rank outside the top 100 nationally in total defense, pass defense and, most importantly, scoring defense. They’re also No. 98 in rush defense, so Pitt might even be able to have some success there.

Ultimately, this is a game Pitt should win. As of midweek, the Panthers were nine-point favorites, and this should finally be the comfortable win that has eluded Pitt all season. I’m not overconfident here; I’ve seen enough from this team this season to know that you never really know.

But Pitt’s biggest weakness is offense and Boston College’s biggest weakness is defense. Given that the Panthers have been able to move the ball against lesser defenses, I think they’ll find some success.

And I think they’ll win.