The 3-2-1 Column: The latest on the season, recruiting, depth and more

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re thinking about the latest developments in college football, Pitt’s new commit, Jaylen Twyman’s departure and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Never a dull moment
I waited until literally Friday morning to write this first section of the column, because you just never know when things will change.

That’s how it’s been this week, when Sunday night’s depression about the inevitability of a canceled season turned into some rising optimism on Monday, which gave way to some full-blown confidence on Tuesday. That confidence maintained on Wednesday but took a hit on Thursday and, fortunately for this column, things mostly stayed at that same level heading into Friday morning.

Some key moments this week:

- The depression of Sunday night and Monday morning came from reports that the Big Ten and Pac-12 were leaning strongly toward canceling the fall season, or at least postponing it to the pipe dream of a spring season.

If the Big Ten and Pac-12 were going to throw in the towel, I thought, then the rest of the Power Five - most notably the ACC - couldn’t be far behind. And that was a bummer.

- Things shifted a bit on Monday when word started getting out that the ACC and SEC were still working on ways to push forward with a fall season. Additionally, there seemed to be a balance emerging with the ACC and SEC on one side, the Big Ten and Pac-12 on the other and the Big 12 as a deciding factor. If the Big 12 decided to hang it up and postpone the season, then the ACC and SEC would likely follow, but if they didn’t, then a season would potentially happen.

That created some optimism. Not a ton, but some. Maybe my confidence level in a season actually happening rose from 7% to 15%. That’s not a lot, but it’s something.

- Then, in what might have been the most significant event of the week (in my view, at least), Dr. Cameron Wolfe, the chairman of the ACC’s medical advisory team, went on the record with the Sports Business Journal Daily and said this:

“We believe we can mitigate it down to a level that makes everyone safe. Can we safely have two teams meet on the field? I would say yes. Will it be tough? Yes. Will it be expensive and hard and lots of work? For sure. But I do believe you can sufficiently mitigate the risk of bringing COVID onto the football field or into the training room at a level that’s no different than living as a student on campus.”

I don’t think I can overstate how big that interview was. You’ve got the conference’s top medical advisor going on the record saying that football can happen safely. This isn’t a guy who has been spending all of his time hitting the talk show circuit; this isn’t even someone whose name I had heard or read or in interviews all summer. And this isn’t a source speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. This is an infectious disease expert at Duke, someone who has stayed behind the scenes and wouldn't emerge if he didn't have the blessing of the conference, giving an on-the-record interview saying safe football is a real thing.

To me - and I could be reading too much into it - that’s a coordinated public relations campaign, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it came at the height of talk about the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceling their seasons, which they would eventually do later that afternoon.

If the ACC was willing to put Dr. Wolfe out there like that, then the conference must really believe a season can happen. And that inspired some confidence.

- The next notable event came out of the Big 12, when that conference voted to continue working toward a season. That was a big moment; like I said before, if the Big 12 decided to follow the lead of the Big Ten and Pac-12, then the ACC and SEC probably wouldn't be far behind. Keeping the Big 12 in their corner allowed the ACC and SEC to keep working on a season.

Again, confidence grew. I probably woke up Thursday with something like 35% or 40% confidence in a season. Still not better than 50%, but a whole lot better than Monday morning's 7%.

- Then came Thursday when Pitt got its first real scare training camp after multiple players showed symptoms similar to COVID-19. Practice was canceled, everybody was sent home and tests were done. In a bit of good news, those tests came back negative and practice is set to resume on Friday, but there were a few lessons from that one.

Clearly Pitt is not immune to possible infections. It seems they dodged the bullet(s) in this case, but you never know what the next day might bring. What we saw was how swiftly the program was able to move in identifying the potential threat and acting on it. We also saw that Pitt could test its players and coaches and get results that day: by Thursday evening, the program had gotten results back and determined that everyone tested negative (although we've been told that such swift turnaround isn't always the case; some tests have taken 24 hours or more to come back).

So here we sit on Friday, at the end of another long roller coaster week, waiting for the next twist or turn in this saga. We’re far from the end, of course, and even if the ACC doubles down every day on the prospect of playing, we all know that we won’t really know until the teams are actually on the field. And even if that happens, the shadow of cancellation will loom over the entire fall.

But for now, the ACC is heading toward games being played. Which is nice.

The new commit
The news this week wasn’t all about college football happening or not happening. There was news on the recruiting front, too, as Pitt added a commitment from IMG Academy tight end Jake Renda.

There are a few interesting angles in that commitment, not the least of which is that Pitt landed a tight end. It initially looked like that would make two tight ends for the class of 2021 after the Panthers got a commitment from Trey Andersen earlier in the summer, but it seems like Andersen will likely play on the offensive line in college, so the count is still at one.

But that one is an intriguing one. Renda is a 6’5” 230-pound athlete - his position in the Rivals.com database is listed as “athlete” - who played quarterback in his first three years of high school football. That means he’s got some refining to do at the tight end position and he’s got plenty to learn in that regard

But what he doesn’t have to learn is athleticism and size, and he’s got plenty of both of those. Yes, he has been playing quarterback, but he’s not just dropping back and throwing; if you watch his film, you see how he often tucks the ball and runs, and when he does that, it’s pretty impressive to watch, especially at his size.

So he’s got a lot of potential as a player, and he’s got quite a backstory as well. Renda will play his senior season at IMG Academy in Bradenton (Fla.) this fall, but he is a New Jersey native, having attended Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville (NJ) prior to making the move to IMG.

It’s even more interesting, though, because Renda’s family is from Pittsburgh. His father - and his father’s brothers - went to Central Catholic and still live in the area, while his grandparents live in Turtle Creek. Renda has been to Pittsburgh many times and already considers it to be home.

In fact, you could say that getting a chance to play college football in Pittsburgh was always something of a dream for him.

It’s kind of funny, but Renda checks a whole bunch of boxes for what Pitt fans are looking for in a new commit:

- He’s a tight end, which is always nice to get.

- He’s got a legit offer sheet (Boston College, Arizona, N.C. State and Michigan State offered him, and he was committed to MSU before flipping to Pitt).

- He always wanted to go to Pitt and when Pitt offered, it was an easy decision.

Pitt fans want guys who really want to be at Pitt, but they also like it when those guys are good players, too. That seems to be the case with Jake Renda.

The Twyman news
Last Saturday seems like a lifetime ago, but there was some news that came out and we should discuss it here in the column.

Pitt defensive tackle Jaylen Twyman announced that he is opting out of the 2020 season and will enter the 2021 NFL Draft.

I should say right off the bat that I believe those are two independent events - the opting out and the entering of the Draft - and that Twyman was primarily motivated by some family matters and responsibilities he needed to attend to.

He said in his public statement that his decision wasn’t driven by fear of COVID-19 or the ability of Pitt’s coaches, trainers and medical staff to keep him safe, and I believe him about that. Would he have made the same decision if the 2020 season wasn’t up in the air? I don’t know. But I don’t think his decision to opt out is the same as some of the others we’ve seen across the country.

Really, though, the motivation behind Twyman’s decision is less relevant for us in this discussion than the impact of that decision. We can - and do - all wish the best for him; he’s a great kid, a relentlessly hard worker and a consummate teammate. But our focus as media and fans turns pretty quickly to what Twyman’s decision means for Pitt football in 2020.

To be blunt, it hurts the Panthers. That’s not exactly a hot take, since any numbskull can look at the stat sheet from 2019 and see that when a defensive tackle puts up 10.5 sacks, it would be ideal to have him back. And when he’s not coming back, it’s a blow to the defense.

We got the obvious out of the way with that paragraph; now, how does Pitt go about replacing Twyman?

There aren’t a lot of easy answers. Well, there is one easy answer: Keyshon Camp. He’ll be a redshirt senior this season, and if he can stay healthy for 11 games (or however many games Pitt plays this season), then he probably has the best chance of any defensive tackle on the roster to put up stats that come close to Twyman’s. When Camp has been healthy, he has been productive; according to Pro Football Focus, he had a pass rush success rate in 2018 that was better than what Twyman or Patrick Jones did last season. So Camp should be good and lead the position - again, if he stays healthy.

Camp is the easy answer, but he's also not really an answer to this question. He was already going to be in the starting lineup this season, regardless of whether Twyman returned. Even with Camp healthy for a full season, Pitt still needs someone else to step up, and that’s the big question.

The most likely candidate to be a starter next to Camp is probably redshirt sophomore Devin Danielson. He was the third tackle last season behind Twyman and Amir Watts (after Camp got hurt in the first game), and the former Thomas Jefferson standout would seem to be next in line for a starting job this year.

That would put redshirt sophomores Tyler Bentley and David Green in the top reserve roles, which is more or less a continuation of where they played last season, when they were behind Twyman, Watts and Danielson.

There’s also Calijah Kancey; I think he’s really intriguing and I’ve heard a lot of positive reviews of his play since he got to Pitt last summer. He’s a smaller tackle, but he has some explosiveness and he can make plays.

The wild card is Deslin Alexandre. He has spent time at defensive tackle in the past during his Pitt career, and while he’s a returning starter at defensive end, the Panthers have a few of those they can turn to this season. So he’s an option to possibly move inside.

Ultimately, it’s unlikely that anyone will replace Twyman’s production (it’s even somewhat unlikely that Twyman would have produced on the same level in 2020 that he did in 2019). But Pitt has recruited some talented defensive linemen over the last few years; the Panthers might not get another Twyman, but they should be able to get decent play out of the interior of the line.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Which loss would hurt the most?
I’ve thought about this a decent amount at two points in the last eight months:

Of the four Pitt players who considered leaving after the 2019 season for the NFL - Damar Hamlin, Patrick Jones, Paris Ford and Jaylen Twyman - which one would have hurt Pitt the most in 2020?

I thought about that a lot eight months ago when those four guys were up in the air. Hamlin was seemingly out of eligibility (he wouldn’t get his waiver from the NCAA until the second week of January) while Ford, Jones and Twyman were all deciding whether or not to go to the NFL.

There was no question that losing any one of them - or more - would be a real blow to the defense, but the question remained, would one of them hurt more?

And now that one of them has actually decided to leave, I’m wondering about that question again. The immediate answer is Twyman since his departure is fresh and his absence is a reality Pitt will have to live with if the season is played.

But I’m not so sure Twyman is the answer. Yes, he led the team with 10.5 sacks, an Aaron Donald-esque stat that is pretty atypical for a defensive tackle. So atypical, in fact, that I think it would have been tough for Twyman to reproduce it in 2020.

He might have had a perfectly respectable five sacks. Maybe even seven or eight, and that would have been outstanding production. But I don’t know if he would have gotten to double digits, simply because it’s really tough to produce like that from the defensive tackle position. Even Donald wasn’t consistent at that level. Sure, he had 11 sacks as a senior in 2013, but a year earlier, he had 5.5.

Even in the NFL, Donald’s sack total has fluctuated over the course of six seasons: 9.0, 11.0, 8.0, 11.0, 20.5, 12.5.

Not one of those is a bad total; on the contrary, they’re really good, which is why he has been the NFL Defensive Player of the year twice. But those numbers also fluctuate a decent amount, particularly in that 8-11-20.5-12.5 stretch.

That’s not a negative reflection on Donald, of course; it’s just the nature of the position. And that’s part of the reason I think Twyman probably wouldn’t have hit double digits again. That doesn’t make him easily replaceable - none of these guys would be - but it does affect the expectation of what he would likely do in 2020.

Jones would be pretty tough to replace. There are some people who would tell you that he was Pitt’s best player on defense last season, and I think they might be right. He was a handful off the edge whose sack totals were slow in the early part of the season but his pressure numbers were strong; the sacks eventually caught up and Jones finished among the top edge rushers in the nation at making the quarterback uncomfortable.

But we’ve talked all summer about Pitt’s depth at defensive end, and it’s really impressive. 2018 sack leader Rashad Weaver is back after missing 2019 with an ACL injury. Deslin Alexandre is back after starting every game last season. And top reserves Habakkuk Baldonado and John Morgan also return, in addition to some promising young players.

The depth and talent at defensive end is impressive, and while Jones is a big piece of that depth and talent, I think Pitt could weather the storm if he had decided to leave.

Where the Panthers could not weather the storm, at least not for this year, is at safety. Unlike defensive end and defensive tackle, Pitt is remarkably thin at safety. Damar Hamlin and Paris Ford will be backed up by Erick Hallett and Brandon Hill this year; Hallett worked as a reserve safety last season and saw playing time as an extra defensive back in the Delta package, while Hill played a few games and redshirted in 2019.

If Pitt were to lose Hamlin or Ford - or, heaven forbid, both of them - it would be a huge loss. Hallett and Hill just don’t have the experience to lessen the blow, and it remains to be seen if they have the talent. That’s the other part of it: Ford and Hamlin are really talented, making the gap between them and their backups even more severe than the gaps at defensive end or defensive tackle.

Fortunately for Pitt, all four of those players returned. But if I had to pick a spot where the Panthers could least afford to lose someone, it would have been safety.

Can things slow down?
If you could see the various incarnations of this column, you would probably chuckle.

At one point early in the week, the Word document titled “3-2-1 8-14-2020” had one section that was written a week ago but tabled for what I thought would be this week’s column; it had two headlines for sections that were yet to be written and will not be written because the situation changed; and it had at least one headline for a section that I thought was a good topic on Monday, but when I came back to the document to actually write that section on Tuesday, I completely forgot what I was even going to say.

Such is the state of things in the month of August, 2020.

I thought we saw the extent of the craziness in March and April - mostly March - when things went from weird to wild, from no fans at NBA games to no March Madness and from a week or two out of school to remote learning for the rest of the semester.

It all happened fast - faster than we could keep up with it, in some cases.

Then August came, and we found out that we had no idea how fast things could change.

Really, June and July were all leading up to this. We all talked constantly about how there would or wouldn’t be college football; we talked about whether or not there would be any college to speak of at all, and if there wasn’t college, could there be college football?

We talked about what might be lost if the college football season was canceled, how Pitt would miss out on potentially its best team in a decade. At times, it felt like our heads were all spinning with the possibilities of what might or might not happen.

Then we got to August and, more specifically, we got to this week and everything went haywire. You saw how it all went down and we talked about the relevant points already. But the sheer speed of it, to go from announcing a schedule to canceling a season in less than a Haywood tenure (that’s a standard of measurement we can all understand), it’s dizzying. It truly is.

Of course, the crazy part about it is that these conferences are not under pressure to make these decisions with such haste. Why did the Big Ten and Pac-12 need to make their cancellations official on Tuesday, August 11? What was the rush to get it done? The Big Ten planned to start Sept. 5 but allowed itself the flexibility to move later in the month or even into October. Same with the Pac-12.

So why hurry into it? Why not give yourself as much time as possible to explore every possible option for having a football season as safely as you can? I suppose the Big Ten and its medical advisors were convinced that no such option existed, so they proceeded.

But I think that time was on their side, to a certain extent. I think that doctors and experts could have continued working on finding solutions to some of the vexing problems that surround a potential season. I think that the procedures and protocols could have been further honed and developed over the next couple weeks.

I just find it hard to believe that those conferences had really hit a point where they threw their hands up and said, "We can't figure this out. We quit." With so much at stake, it's bewildering to me that they felt like now was the time to throw in the towel - especially when they could have had at least two more weeks, probably three and potentially as much as a month to consider the options. But I appreciate that the conference is apparently willing to go to great lengths to find a way to play before giving up.

ONE PREDICTION

There will always be recruiting news
This has been one of the longest columns in the history of the 3-2-1 Column, so we won’t spend too much time in this last section, but I did have something else on my mind.

Ever since March, when all sports were put on the shelf, there’s been a recurring refrain of, “There’s no sports happening.” I hear it all the time when friends or family ask me, “How’s the site doing with no sports going on?”

And every time, my answer is the same:

There’s plenty going on.

Because no matter what is happening on the field, recruiting never ends. We saw that this week when Jake Renda committed. Or a couple weeks earlier when Elliot Donald committed. Or June when four guys committed. Or May when five recruits committed. Or April when five kids committed.

Since March 12 - that’s kind of D-day, right? - Pitt has gotten 16 commitments. That’s a lot of news at a time when we were told nothing is happening. And it’s not going to slow down. The Panthers might not get 16 commitments over the next five months, but the coaches will keep working to finish the 2021 class and get started building the 2022 class and continue growing relationships with the 2023 class.

Recruiting never ends. It’s a constant, and whether the team is playing every Saturday or sitting at home, taking classes remotely and looking ahead to the 2021 season, the coaches will still be recruiting.

Which means we’ll still have things to write about and talk about.

I think we’re all - fans and media - pretty lucky in that regard. Recruiting is a big chunk of the sports we follow, and while NBA fans and NHL fans and MLB fans had to sit and wait with nothing to do while their sports were on hold, college sports fans had no such lull.

This is the case every year: even when games aren’t being played, recruiting is still happening. And now, when things are more uncertain than ever, we’ll still have recruiting to fall back on. So whether Pitt lines up for 11 games or zero in the fall of 2020, I’m confident that those of us who visit this site every day will have plenty to keep us occupied and engaged.