The 3-2-1 Column: The latest in recruiting, a missing spring and more

Working backwards
Earlier this year, I thought I knew how Pitt’s quarterback recruiting in the 2021 class was going to go. I even wrote about it in the “One Prediction” section of a previous 3-2-1 Column.

What I said would happen was this: Pitt wouldn’t get a quarterback in the spring. Instead, the coaches would sit tight and watch for a quarterback to emerge with a breakout senior year. They would offer a couple players who fit that mold and then try to get them in a whirlwind November-December recruitment.

That’s basically what they tried to do with Tate Rodemaker last year, but new Florida State head coach Mike Norvell had the same idea, and now Rodemaker is a ‘Nole.

So the plan didn’t work last year, but I went on record as predicting that it would work this year. Pitt didn’t seem to be in great shape with some of its previously-offered targets, so I expected the staff to watch senior quarterback prospects closely and try to find those guys who break out as seniors. Then the Panthers would get one of those guys.

That’s how I saw it happening. And that’s how it ended up happening.

Kind of.

I just had it backwards.

Rather than getting a quarterback commitment in November or December, Pitt got a commitment last week. It came from Austin (Tex.) Lake Travis three-star Nate Yarnell, and you probably know his story by now.

Yarnell wasn’t the starter at Lake Travis last season. He sat behind a four-star Texas commit but got the call-up when that guy got hurt. Yarnell ended up starting six games and led the team to a 6-0 record, but he was still under the radar with just two Power Five offers.

This year, Yarnell is primed to be the man, and there’s a pretty decent chance that he’ll have a breakout campaign. He certainly looked the part this year and Lake Travis is a pretty strong program, so he should have an opportunity to put up good numbers.

Pitt didn’t wait for the breakout, though; Mark Whipple and Pat Narduzzi got in ahead of the curve, and it seems to have paid off with a commitment. Of course, we’ll see what happens if that breakout season comes and new schools show interest, but that’s down the road. For now, Pitt is sitting in the first week of May with a quarterback commitment - not at all what I predicted would happen, and yet, it kind of was what I predicted. So I’m going to claim it.

Something else missing this spring
We’ve talked a lot about all the things missing this spring due to the pandemic.

I’m not straying into the real world of life-and-death consequences, of which there are many. Nor am I using this space to express sympathy for the seniors in high school who are missing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, although I do feel bad for those kids. And I’m definitely staying 500 miles away from anything political.

I’m just talking about the things in sports that we have missed out on. When it comes to Pitt football, there’s obviously spring camp. The Panthers only got in three practices, costing them 11 sessions and costing fans one spring game.

Recruiting-wise, the big things missed this spring thanks to COVID-19 have been visits. Recruits can’t go on college campuses to visit with college coaches right now because the NCAA instituted an emergency dead period. Spring is a huge time for visits, both official and unofficial, and none of it is happening.

That’s causing some major rifts in the recruiting process and leading to some unprecedented results. Like a huge run on commitments, which is happening nationally and locally, as Pitt got six commitments in April; that has to be some kind of record.

The lack of visits is the biggest impact on recruiting from this situation, but it’s not the only one. Because while recruits can’t visit college campuses, college coaches also can’t visit recruits.

Technically, they would never be able to visit recruits at this time of year. But they could go on the road to high schools and do evaluations - that’s why this point in the recruiting calendar is called the “evaluation period.” And while the evaluation period doesn’t tend to get as much attention as other points on the calendar, it’s important all the same.

For juniors, it’s a chance to get seen by coaches in person and convince them that what they saw on film was legit. A lot of times coaches will hesitate on an offer until they can confirm height and weight in person, so these evaluations can be crucial, even game-changing. And for younger players - who technically aren’t supposed to be getting evaluated but still do anyway - it’s a first chance to be seen by college coaches live.

A lot of offers go out in the spring, and that part of the process isn’t happening now. There are still offers going out, but it’s not the same; any coach will tell you that a lot is being missed without those in-person evaluations.

Take a guy like Nate Yarnell: he doesn’t have a ton of film - just six games as a starter, plus some reserve action - so coaches probably have some questions. Well, those questions could have been answered this spring. College coaches could have come to his school, seen him throw in person and made a decision on him then.

To be honest, I bet you would have seen Yarnell add some offers this spring, maybe a half-dozen or so, if the evaluation period had gone as planned. And that might have changed the situation with his recruitment. That’s not to say he wouldn’t have ended up committing to Pitt, but I think it’s possible he would have held off and taken more visits.

So put “no evaluation period” on the list of ways the spring of 2020 has been upside down in recruiting.

Loading up at a few positions
We’ve been talking a lot about recruiting the last few weeks. I mean, we talk a lot about recruiting every week, but the last few weeks have been really active for Pitt - more active than usual at this time of year - so recruiting has been even more of a focus than usual.

And one thing that has become really apparent is that the class of 2021 will be a big one for Pat Narduzzi. Not necessarily more important than any other class, since every class is important. But it will be big in terms of size.

Pitt is projected to have 18 scholarship seniors on the 2020 roster, and that’s where you start with the 2021 class. That number always gets teased up a few to account for attrition, either due to transfers or guys who leave early for the NFL or <insert reason for attrition here>.

That puts you over 20, and with the way things are looking, it’s probably safe to assume that this class will push right up to the limit of 25. And when you have a class that gets close to 25, you’re going to have room to load up on certain positions.

Like the offensive line. Pitt has signed six offensive linemen in the last three classes combined. That’s just not enough. You can’t expect to build a legitimate offensive line two-deep with six kids over three classes. The math doesn’t add up and you would have to be almost perfect in your recruiting and development - i.e., no misses, no busts - to make that work.

I expect the staff to make up for it this year. Pitt already has two offensive line recruits on board, and two more top targets are set to announce their commitments on Sunday (Terrence Enos and Brandon Honorable, both from Detroit). If Pitt gets both guys - and I think there’s a good chance of that happening - that will be the Panthers’ biggest offensive line class in four years, and I don’t know if the coaches will stop there; I could conceivably see Dave Borbely push for another lineman in this class and take five.

They simply need that kind of depth and numbers to stock up the position for the future.

I also think we’re going to see a lot of defensive backs in this class. That’s kind of cheating because it’s really two positions that I’m putting under one umbrella, but this Pitt staff recruits defensive backs with enough interchangeability (I’m surprised that’s a word) that we can look at them together.

As an example, Pitt signed four DB’s in the 2020 class, and right now, Buddy Mack is the only one who is penciled in at safety. But Rashad Battle, Hunter Sellers and Jahvante Royal could all play safety, too, and at least one of them (if not more) will likely move during their careers.

Pitt is looking at the potential of losing four defensive backs this offseason (seniors Damar Hamlin, Damarri Mathis and Jason Pinnock plus underclassman Paris Ford) so there is room on the roster to add numbers. Those departures will leave about 10 defensive backs on the roster, but I get the distinct sense that the coaches want to bring in some more bodies to fill out those positions and create a little more competition.

The same kind of goes for receiver, where Pitt has two commitments but could take a third after signing three receivers last year. Chris Beatty is trying to rebuild the talent in the receiver room, and if the right guy comes along, I think he’ll take another one.

This is the benefit of having a big recruiting class: you can really hit some positions hard, which is what the staff seems to be doing.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How did these numbers end up this way?
The conversation about numbers got me thinking about some positions on the team and why the numbers are what they are.

Like, how did Pitt end up getting just six offensive linemen over the last three classes?

Each class is different, of course. In the 2019 class, there were two linemen who took official visits to Pitt but the coaches ended up passing on them; at least part of that was probably due to the fact that the staff believed there were a few players in Pitt’s class who could move to the offensive line from other positions, and that already happened with former tight end Jason Collier.

In the 2020 class, though, it was simply a matter of missing on some guys. Vershon Lee, Deondre Buford and Aaryn Parks all took official visits, but the staff didn’t land them and settled for signing just two linemen.

And then in 2018, the coaches simply seemed content to just take two high school players (plus a junior-college transfer), but part of the rationale there may have been the fact that Pitt signed four offensive linemen in the previous class.

So you can kind of justify the 2018 class by that rationale and if the coaches signed Collier thinking he would become an offensive lineman - well, for one thing it calls into question the recruiting of tight ends in that class, but it also somewhat explains only signing two linemen.

Sometimes there are interesting number blips in certain years for certain positions. If you look at Pitt’s roster right now, there is only going to be one fourth-year defensive end on the team in 2020. That’s because Pitt only signed one defensive end in the 2017 class (Deslin Alexandre). And Pitt only signed one defensive end in that class because they struck out on at least a half-dozen other guys who took official visits with the Panthers.

The classes of 2016 and 2018 and 2019 and 2020 look strong at defensive end, but that one year - 2017 - stands out because the numbers are out of whack.

I think defensive tackle would be in that group, too. Pitt only signed one defensive tackle in the 2019 class and nobody in this last class. The Panthers do have four redshirt sophomores for the 2020 roster, so there is depth from the 2018 class, but you can’t recruit well for one year and then take just one guy over the next two classes - not at a position like defensive tackle where two are always playing and you want to rotate four.

And then there’s tight end. Everybody knows the disaster that has been. The Pitt staff didn’t sign a high school recruit in 2015 or 2016. They made up for it in 2017 by signing three guys, but only one of them is still on the team and he’s playing offensive tackle. Kaymar Mimes signed in the 2018 class as a defensive end but has since moved to tight end (after moving back to DE and then back again to TE), so I guess that counts as one for that class.

In 2019, Pitt signed Collier, who moved to the offensive line, and Kyi Wright, who is still actually playing tight end.

So in six classes signed by Narduzzi’s staff, you’ve got a grand total of five tight ends signed and one of them still on the roster playing tight end (plus one who switched to tight end from a different position).

Don’t ask me to explain those numbers because I can’t. Tight end has been the biggest gap in this staff’s recruiting for the last six years without any good explanation. So I failed to answer that part of the question.

Does Capel need to use 13?
Speaking of numbers…

Jeff Capel has five players committed in the class of 2020, a collection of talent that ranks No. 19 nationally and No. 4 in the ACC according to Rivals.com. That’s a big class, as you can see. It’s not quite on the level of Kevin-Stallings-signs-everyone-and-his-brother-just-to-fill-a-roster, but it’s bigger than what you usually see.

A brief aside on that: I was looking through the other classes in the top 20, and Pitt’s five-man class isn’t too out of the ordinary. The top three teams in the rankings - Kentucky, Duke and North Carolina, in that order - signed six each, as did No. 6 LSU. No. 4 Oklahoma State signed five. No. 14 Kansas State signed seven.

And eight of the other 13 teams ranked ahead of Pitt signed four each. So bigger classes, or at least classes of four or more, are the norm. But they don’t seem like the norm for Pitt. Maybe it’s because the Panthers of the past had a lot of players stick around for four or five years, but I don’t feel like Pitt had many five-man classes “back in the day” of the early 2000’s.

But I digress.

As I was saying, Pitt has five commitments, which is a big number, but it doesn’t actually fill the roster. Adding those five recruits to the seven returning players leaves Capel with 12 scholarship players for the 2020-21 roster, or one short of the limit of 13.

So the big question now is, will Capel will that 13th spot?

He didn’t last year. After signing three high school prospects, one junior-college transfer, a regular transfer and a graduate transfer, Capel went into the 2019-20 season with just 12 players on scholarship. That seemed like an okay plan until the guard depth was exposed; without a fourth guard to play behind Xavier Johnson, Trey McGowens and Ryan Murphy, the Panthers found themselves short-handed quite a bit.

When Murphy was hurt at midseason, walk-on Onyebuchi Ezeakudo saw some career-high minutes, and when he got hurt after a few games of action, the guard depth was really tight and had some questioning whether that 13th scholarship should have been used on another player in the back court.

One year and two guard transfers later, Pitt is potentially looking at the same situation, depth-wise. Johnson is back and he’ll be joined by Delaware transfer Ithiel Horton and freshman Femi Odukale, but Murphy and McGowens both left the program, putting the back court numbers right where they were: three.

With one spot to fill and a depth problem at guard, then, is Capel working overtime to get another player on the roster? It kind of doesn’t seem that way.

I mean, there are a few recruits who have been tied to Pitt late in the cycle, and I think Capel is more than willing to take one of them, but I also don’t think he’s desperate to fill the spot. I get the impression that Capel isn’t going to press for a full 13-man roster. If he can get one, he’ll take it; if not, he’s fine playing with 12.

ONE PREDICTION

This will be a good weekend for Pitt
I usually get predictions wrong, so this could blow up on me, but I’m going with it anyway:

I think the Pitt football team’s recruiting success is going to pick up some more steam this weekend.

The Panthers are at nine commitments for the 2021 class, but that number could very well grow by a few on Sunday, as a bunch of Pitt targets are planning to make Mother’s Day commitments.

The top two names on the list are offensive linemen from Detroit: Cass Tech’s Terrence Enos and Martin Luther King’s Brandon Honorable. Both guys have some good options on their offer sheets, but I think Pitt is good shape in both cases.

In Georgia, linebacker Preston Lavant is also planning to commit on Sunday, and here again, I like Pitt’s chances. He’s got a top three of Pitt, Louisville and Minnesota, but he has really strong relationships with the Pitt staff, led by cornerbacks coach/Georgia recruiter Archie Collins and linebackers coach Rob Harley.

In-state tight end CJ Dippre is also making his commitment on Sunday. He got a spring offer from Pitt, but I don’t get the sense that there’s much happening there, and I don’t think he’s going to Pitt.

Still, getting two more offensive linemen and a linebacker - if that’s how it plays out - would represent a pretty good haul for Pitt on Mother’s Day. It would push the 2021 recruiting class to a dozen, it would nearly fill the offensive line slots, it would be a nice step into Michigan and a continuation of the efforts in Georgia and it would generally add three more quality players to what is shaping up to be a pretty solid class for Pat Narduzzi and company.

So this should be a pretty good weekend for the Panthers.