The 3-2-1 Column: Signing Day and more
MORE HEADLINES - 10 thoughts on the early signing period and more | Video: Narduzzi previews Stanford, talks bowl prep and more | Narduzzi on the freshmen, redshirts and more | Film review: What Pitt is getting in QB Davis Beville | Narduzzi's busy fortnight | Full rundown: Narduzzi on the 2019 early signing class
Reflections on Signing Day, a bump from the Coastal title, the value of the quarterback and more in this week’s 3-2-1 Column.
THREE THINGS WE KNOW
Signing Day is still fun
Even if we don’t know how these players will turn out
Signing Day is great. It really is. It’s all about hope and the future. If your team is among the best, it’s about getting the guys who will help your team stay on top. If your team is not so good, it’s about the getting the guys who will help you improve.
That’s the appeal right there. That’s what it boils down to. You take the most fanatical sport in the world - or at least the nation, since those futbol fans are pretty nuts - and tell the fans, “Here are the players who will lead you to future successes,” and you’re going to have considerable interest.
That’s why Rivals.com works as a business. Hell, it’s why Rivals.com exists in the first place. It’s like the NFL Draft, except instead of 32 fan bases, it’s 100+ fan bases all with a direct tie to the team they’re rooting for. You may have been born a Steelers fan, but if you went to Pitt, it’s inherently part of you. College sports fans have the best case of any sport’s fans to use the first-person plural pronoun “We” because a lot of them actually are part of the university they’re supporting.
That’s why people follow recruiting coverage and that’s why they care about Signing Day.
Then there are all of those people who don’t care about Signing Day. And they can’t wait to tell you that they don’t care about Signing Day. It’s important to them that you know they don’t care about Signing Day.
Which is fine. No one has to care about it. There are plenty of people who do care. But what always cracks me up is the people who say they don’t care about Signing Day because you don’t actually know what these recruits will turn into.
“Nobody knows if any of the recruits will become good players,” the thinking goes, “so it’s all a waste of time.”
Well, yeah. No one can predict the future. No one can predict how an 18-year-old will adapt to the demands of college football, whether it’s the “football” part or the “college” part. That’s impossible to predict with any certainty.
The thing is, I think everyone understands that. No one believes recruiting is a sure-fire science. Everyone knows that some recruits will pan out and some won’t, some will be instant hits and some will take longer to develop and some will never do anything. Maybe most will never do anything.
That’s the nature of the business, and I’m talking about the whole thing, not just recruiting coverage. College coaches don’t know who will pan out; if they did, they probably wouldn’t spend any time recruiting those guys who won’t pan out.
But even with the uncertainty, I think it’s also still okay to get excited about recruiting and enjoy Signing Day. Everybody looks good on a highlight tape, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking at a highlight tape and saying, “Man, my favorite team is going to be so good when that kid is doing that for us.”
Seriously, where’s the harm in that?
Signing Day is still fun
Even if it happens in two parts
So this was the second year of the NCAA’s dual-signing periods for football. Basketball has had two signing periods for as long as I can remember, but football was always strictly in one period: the first Wednesday in February through April, although everybody signed on that Wednesday and there was very little drama in late March (other than rare cases like Terrelle Pryor).
Anyway, the change has inevitably led to debate about whether it’s good or bad, as if something like this can be easily split down that line. On Tuesday night, there was even discussion on the message board about whether the early signing period had taken some luster off the concept of “Signing Day” specifically and, by extension, recruiting in general.
I don’t see that happening.
Professionally speaking, Wednesday was a very successful day. The site saw more traffic than it has seen in a long time - probably a year, dating back to last December’s Signing Day.
And anecdotally, I can say that the anticipation for Wednesday was just what it had been for all of those First Wednesday’s in February. If there was anything that dampened things this year, it wasn’t the early date for Signing Day; it was the fact that Pitt didn’t have many Signing Day decisions to wait on.
But that would have been the case in February, too. Pitt isn’t usually waiting on too many recruits to put hats on the table; that’s just not historically the scenario that has played out for Pitt, and to be honest, the track record isn’t great with those situation anyway (see also: 2011 when five local Pitt targets committed on Signing Day and one picked Pitt, or 2014 when two locals announced their commitments and Pitt didn’t get either one).
On Wednesday, Pat Narduzzi called Pitt’s 2019 signing class “drama-free,” and that was accurate; there really wasn’t any drama. The recruits who were expected to sign - they signed. The ones (there were two) who were expected to not sign - they didn’t sign.
Sometimes everything living up to expectations can be a bit…let’s say “uneventful.” But “uneventful” can be a good thing, and there’s still something to be said for getting all the commits officially on board. That moment when the verbal commitment turns into a signed, binding Letter of Intent is a culmination of months and sometimes years of work and relationship-building and recruiting.
With the high volume of decommitments and flips this year, it’s reassuring to finally see those verbals turn into something more concrete.
Signing Day is still fun
Even if Pitt didn’t get everybody on the wish list
Of course, there are always the ones that got away, and Pitt’s 2019 class has some of them. There was Damarius Good, the speedy Florida athlete who took an official visit to Pitt two weeks ago but signed with Central Florida.
There was Connor Grieco, a rising star in New Jersey who saw his recruitment take off in the first two weeks of December. Pitt offered him and hoped to get a January official visit out of him, but he visited and then signed with Boston College.
There was Brandon Mack, the six-month commitment at defensive end who was one of the stars of the class; he didn’t sign after taking several official visits, and on Thursday afternoon, he formally announced his decommitment.
There was Travis Koontz and Nikolas Ognenovic, two recruits - one from a junior college, one from a high school - at the position that has been, for the better part of five years, Pitt’s biggest recruiting struggle: tight end. Koontz was committed to Pitt over the summer but ended up signing with Texas Tech; Ognenovic was part of the big official visit weekend in June but decided to commit to Kentucky.
That June visit weekend had other recruits who committed to other schools, and there were plenty of Pitt targets who picked different options without taking an official visit to Pitt (like, for instance, the 12 committed recruits among Rivals.com’s ranking of the top 13 prospects in Pennsylvania).
But that’s recruiting: there will always be guys you don’t land. Even Alabama hosted nine official visitors who committed to or signed with other programs. That’s the nature of the business. So what Pitt and Alabama and every other school in the country does is focus on who they got, and what I always say is that a successful recruiting class is defined by meeting two qualifications:
1. Did you fill your needs?
2. Did you fill them with priority recruits?
What’s a “priority recruit”? I define that as a recruit you offer when you are still in the hunt for other prospects at a given position. It’s a recruit you offer because you want to (i.e., they earned it) not because you have to (i.e., you’ve missed on a bunch of targets and you’re dipping deeper into the pool).
To that end, I think Pitt’s class was fairly successful. The closest thing to a “backup offer” or a “Plan B” recruit would have been Nate Temple, who was originally offered over the summer but, when he tried to commit, he was told there was no room because four defensive ends committed in mid-June.
The staff doubled back with him in the fall and said they wanted him in the class and he committed shortly thereafter.
I guess Will Gipson could fit that category, too. He didn’t get his offer until late November, but there were some mitigating circumstances there - like his senior season when he exploded for 1,658 yards and 19 touchdowns on 62 receptions after catching just 12 passes the year before.
And even then, it’s not like Pitt started seeing receiver targets fall off the board and Gipson was an emergency offer; similar to Michael Smith two years ago, the offer was a result of senior film (yes, people still offer based on senior film, even in 2018).
So you’ve got a class with four-star prospects at quarterback and running back, a uniquely-skilled speed back, two high-ceiling receivers, restocked depth on the defensive line and at linebacker and two playmakers in the secondary. The question mark - as it will always be - is on the offensive line, and that’s on Dave Borbely to develop the players Pitt signed.
No, Pitt didn’t get everybody it wanted. But the coaches landed a bunch of recruits they targeted and seemed to fill most of the holes they were looking to fill in the class.
TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE
Is there a bump coming?
The first question at Pat Narduzzi’s press conference on Signing Day came from yours truly, and it was a pretty simple, timely query:
Did Narduzzi and the Pitt staff experience any residual effect from having won the Coastal Division and having played in the ACC Championship Game?
As soon as Narduzzi answered, I realized that I already knew the answer because it’s a theory I’ve been considering for years. Maybe close to a decade.
In almost every situation, a season does impact recruiting - in the next class. You rarely see the current season’s success have a big impact on the current recruiting class, save for extreme situations (like a coaching change or whatever else Miami has going on right now). But where you really see things reflect the on-field success is in the next class.
That’s the class you recruit with the previous year’s successes on your resume. That’s the class that gets to know you as the Coastal Division champions, whereas the current class has really come to know you as whatever you were last year (for Pitt, that was a 5-7 team).
Narduzzi wasn’t just rationalizing the class when he gave that answer on Wednesday; there’s precedent for it. Perhaps the best example happened about 10 years ago. In 2009, Pitt went 10-3 for the program’s first 10-win season since the early 1980’s. But the recruiting class that was signed a month after the bowl win over North Carolina - the last time Pitt beat UNC - didn’t really reflect such a successful season.
But the recruiting in the spring and summer of 2010 did. Dave Wannstedt’s staff was rolling as it recruited off the 10-3 record. We can reflect on the class and judge how some of the recruits turned out, but for awhile, it looked like Wannstedt was on his way to putting together the best class he signed with the Panthers.
Of course, it all fell apart when Pitt fired Michael Haywood and entered the new year without a head coach, but until that happened, the class that was being assembled was looking very, very impressive. That was the impact of the 10-win season - it affected the next class. And that’s what should happen now. If Pitt can finish the 2018 season with a strong win over Stanford - and by “strong” I mean, look good beating a prominent Power Five opponent - the Panthers should enter the offseason with a fair amount of momentum.
They can proudly wear their Coastal Division championship gear. They can have recruits on campus for visits and junior days and talk about how they are playing for championships and beating big-time teams. The whole vibe can change and, ideally, result in a nice recruiting bump.
Is Beville the quarterback of the future?
This is the million-dollar question in every recruiting class: can the quarterback of the class become the quarterback of the team and lead them to great successes down the road?
Every school in the country is asking that question (well, maybe not Ohio State or Florida State), and for Pitt, it centers on Davis Beville, the 6’5” 205-pound signal-caller from South Carolina who was elevated to four-star status in the latest re-rankings.
Beville is the No. 11 pro-style quarterback prospect in the nation, and he’s got the tools to be successful: he’s big, he’s got a strong arm, he can make a wide range of throws and, as our film analyst Josh Hammack pointed out, he’s got great anticipation.
Beville also has experience. He was a three-year starter at Greenville, and that’s pretty invaluable (inexperience may have been the biggest issue for former Pitt quarterback Thomas MacVittie, who got some much-needed playing time at a junior college this past season before signing with Kansas on Wednesday). Beville will also enroll early at Pitt and arrive next month, so he’ll be available to participate in spring camp.
Naturally, plenty of fans are looking for the freshman to unseat every upperclassman ahead of him. Naturally, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Kenny Pickett is going to be the returning starter, Jeff George Jr. and Nick Patti are going to battle for the backup job and Beville is probably going to redshirt.
I don’t mean to rule out the Pitt fan’s dream scenario of the amazing freshman quarterback who takes over from Day One and leads the team to great success. I’m just playing the odds, and the odds don’t favor that happening.
We’ll see what lies in store for Beville in 2019, but I’m more interested in the long term. George Jr. only has one more year left and Pickett will be a junior this season, so the long term is really centering on Beville and Patti.
Patti has received some positive reviews for his work on the scout team, but Beville’s high school film looks a little more impressive in terms of physical tools. There’s something to be said for spending time on campus learning the offense and the way things work, but by the time Beville and Patti are battling for the starting job, the difference of one year will be rather moot, as they’ll both should have a firm grasp on the offense.
So can Beville be the guy? I can’t answer that with any certainty; that’s why this is in the “TWO QUESTIONS section and not the “ONE PREDICTION” section. He’s got the tools, but now, as with every quarterback recruit - hell, every recruit, period - it will be a matter of what he does with them.
ONE PREDICTION
Hill will be the first one on the field
The second question facing every recruiting class after the one about the quarterback is the one about the first freshman to see the field.
From Pitt’s 2019 class, I’m putting the early odds on Brandon Hill.
I really think Pitt got a steal in the safety from the Orlando area. He’s officially listed at 5’10” and 205 pounds, and he starred on both sides of the ball for Wekiva this season, scoring six touchdowns on 36 rushing attempts on offense and grabbing five interceptions on defense.
Hill is a playmaker who was targeted by a fair number of Power Five schools, and while he was one of nine recruits to commit to Pitt on the Father’s Day weekend blowout, his commitment ranked right up there with those of Beville and Mack.
Will he be the first freshman to see the field, though? I think he’s got a pretty good chance.
Pitt returns a handful of experienced safeties - Damar Hamlin, Jazzee Stocker, Phil Campbell, Bricen Garner - plus a couple guys who could play safety - Therran Coleman, Paris Ford - and the coaches might even look at some of the current freshman cornerbacks to move to safety.
But I think Hill is good enough that he could see reserve time at safety and contribute on special teams. I could see the staff looking at him as a player with enough potential to merit giving him special teams snaps early in the season with the knowledge that they’re going to get him involved in the defense. The new redshirt rules allow coaches some flexibility in that regard, and I think Narduzzi and company will take that option with Hill.
It’s tough to pick a sure bet for a freshman to play from this class, simply because the depth has been built up considerably on the current roster. Running backs are always an option, and linebackers tend to have enough versatility that they could see time.
But if I had to pick one guy as a favorite to see the field first, I’m leaning toward Hill.