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In the final 3-2-1 Column of 2018, we’re thinking about the Sun Bowl, the most important coach and player, Paris Ford and more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

This is a good test to end on
In a few days, Pitt will finally close the 2018 season and all of its inconsistencies, its maddening lows and its surprising highs. We’ll have plenty of time to put a final wrap on the season that was after the Sun Bowl on Monday - and I suspect a lot of that wrapping will be influenced by what we see in El Paso - but before we get to that finish line, there’s one last test.

The Stanford Cardinal, that singularly-mascotted foe from the Pac-12 who has been, in recent years, something of a model for the success Pitt would like to achieve. Stanford isn’t a traditional power - Pitt has a more decorated history - but the Cardinal have been quite good for the last decade.

After Jim Harbaugh led Stanford to a 12-1 record and a win in the Orange Bowl in 2010, David Shaw took over and continued the success. The Cardinal won 11, 12 and 11 games in each of the next three years and posted double-digit wins in two of the last three seasons prior to 2018.

And, for the most part, they’ve done it the way Pitt would generally like to do it: by running the ball. Stanford has been one of the teams to stay focused on running the ball in whatever terms you choose - throwback, old-school, pro-style, they all apply. That’s what Pitt has wanted to do since Dave Wannstedt replaced Walt Harris, and it’s what Stanford has done with great success.

Like in 2015, when the Cardinal went 12-2, won the Pac-12 and beat Iowa in the Rose Bowl. Stanford had a top-20 rushing offense that season led by Christian McCaffrey’s 2,000 yards on the ground. The next year, the Cardinal won 10 games with a top-35 rushing offense that averaged more than 200 yards per game and another 1,600 yards from McCaffrey.

And when McCaffrey left for the NFL after that season, Bryce Love stepped in and topped 2,000 rushing yards himself as Stanford ranked No. 30 nationally in rush offense and No. 98 in pass offense.

Top-30 in rushing and bottom-25 in passing - that’s been the pattern for Stanford under Shaw, and it’s one that has worked to great success: he won 73 games and three conference titles in his first seven years as the Cardinal’s head coach

But Stanford in 2018 is not the same Stanford from those previous years. This year, the Cardinal are led by quarterback KJ Costello and a passing attack that averages 287 yards per game - good for No. 19 nationally. Meanwhile, with Love only playing in 10 games (he won’t play on Monday either) and recording 100 fewer carries than he had in 2017, the run game has suffered; Stanford is only averaging 108.3 yards per game, which ranks below 121 other FBS teams.

Stanford has literally flipped its offensive approach. The Cardinal have more passing attempts (407) than rushing attempts (350); compare that to Pitt, who has 529 rushing attempts and 287 passes this season, and you can see the contrast. Or even compare it to Stanford last year, when the Cardinal ran the ball 480 times and threw it 363.

This isn’t your older brother’s Stanford team. This is a different animal; I mean, it’s still a cardinal, but it’s one that takes flight far more than it walks on the ground. As such, it presents a pretty unique challenge for Pitt in the 2018 finale.

Because while the Panthers’ defense improved over the course of the season and played a few solid games after the win over Duke, there are still some lingering questions about the unit’s effectiveness against teams that pass well.

Stanford doesn’t rely on RPO’s as much as some of the teams that Pitt has faced, but Costello can throw it - 3,435 yards and 29 passing touchdowns - and he’s got one of the nation’s best receiver in JJ Arcega-Whiteside, who had 14 touchdowns and nearly 1,000 yards on 60 catches in just 11 games this season.

So as Pitt looks to finish 2018 on a high note, the defense has an opportunity to put in a strong performance against a good passing offense - something it hasn’t always done this season.

Borbely is the most important coach on the staff
From talking about the next game to talking about the more distant future, I found myself thinking this week about which individuals - players or coaches - can have the most impact on Pat Narduzzi’s future at Pitt.

To me, there’s one coach who stands out head and shoulders above everyone else (even if he might be one of the two shortest coaches on the staff):

Offensive line coach Dave Borbely.

Say what you want about Shawn Watson (and you probably have said a lot), but I think it all comes down to Borbely. After Monday’s game, Pitt will have fully moved on from Paul Chryst’s offensive line recruits; some of them were good and some were less effective, but the point is not about quality of play - it’s about ownership, and Narduzzi’s staff “owns” all of the linemen who will suit up in 2019.

And it’s time for those players to develop. Pitt will likely always be on the lookout for a talented grad transfer offensive tackle like the Panthers got in Stefano Millin this past year, but at a certain point, the talent has to be homegrown. At a certain point, you can’t rely on finding those off-campus options anymore. At a certain point, you have to evaluate, recruit and develop players at all positions if you’re truly going to build a program.

That certain point might be coming for Pitt and the offensive line.

You know how the roster will shake out in 2019: Alex Bookser, Mike Herndon, Connor Dintino and Millin will be done after this trip to El Paso, taking four starters off the line. That’s probably the biggest offensive line turnover in a single offseason that I can remember.

Now Narduzzi has to find a new starting five - or four guys to go with Jimmy Morrissey - and he’ll have to do it largely from the group that’s already on the roster. That’s not an encouraging proposition when only two of the 11 returning linemen on the roster have started a game or played meaningful snaps.

That’s where Borbely comes in.

Ostensibly but not officially, Borbely was hired for development. Narduzzi seemed to feel that former OL coach John Peterson was not getting the job done in that department, so he cut Peterson after the 2017 season and hired Borbely, a veteran coach with nearly 40 years of experience and a bunch of time spent working with Watson (which didn’t hurt his cause).

Narduzzi probably saw the turnover coming. He probably knew that in a year or two, Pitt would need to start relying on linemen the staff had recruited, and if he didn’t think the players were being developed well enough, he needed to find a new position coach.

So he did. And now he needs Borbely to deliver in that regard. There are certainly players available to fill the open starting jobs at right tackle, right guard, left guard and left tackle; the question is, can any of them play?

For the guard spots, Brandon Ford and Bryce Hargrove will be redshirt juniors in 2019, so they should be ready physically. Chase Brown will also be a redshirt senior; the JUCO transfer played in two games for roughly the same number of snaps this season, and he’ll have to be in the mix at guard. And then there are redshirt freshmen-to-be Jake Kradel and Blake Zubovic, two WPIAL standouts who were among the top recruits in Pitt’s 2018 class.

Hargrove has the most experience in that group, having played in all 13 games in 2018 and moving into the starting lineup at left guard for two games after Morrissey got hurt. So he would seem to be penciled in as a starter at one of the guard spots; the other interior spot is a guess.

The same goes for the two tackle positions, where there’s even less experience. The options all come from current redshirt freshmen, like Jerry Drake and Carson Van Lynn and Gabe Houy and Carter Warren (who has bounced between guard and tackle). Van Lynn played quite a bit this season and even started four games - except it was all at tight end. Whether he stays at that spot or moves back to tackle remains to be seen and might depend more on who Pitt adds at tight end than on anything Van Lynn does.

So it’s not hard to see how important Borbely’s job is. If those players don’t develop, it could spell doom for the offense, which could have even bigger and longer-lasting implications. If Pitt is going to do better in 2019 than it did in 2018, then the offense has to improve.

That’s doubly true for the passing game, and these inexperienced linemen need to get light-years better in pass protection because…

Pickett is the most important player
In terms of fan vitriol, there is no target higher than Watson. The offense doesn’t work, so the coordinator gets the blame.

That’s not entirely unfair; it ignores the fact that there are 22 moving pieces on every play and a coordinator is stuck watching it in a booth high above the field, but ultimately, the coordinator gets judged on the performance, so if the offense is lousy or the defense is lousy, it falls all the way to the top.

But target No. 2 behind Watson is probably Kenny Pickett. The source of so much hope and promise in the offseason, Pickett didn’t show much improvement, if any, in his first full season as the starting quarterback. There’s blame to be placed on Watson, of course - he’s chiefly responsible for Pickett’s development - but there were also concerns expressed about Pickett’s actual ability.

Is he accurate enough? Can he make the right pre-snap reads? Does he go through his progressions well enough? Can he feel pressure and react accordingly?

All of those questions were raised this season, and understandably so, since those issues went a long way in the lackluster offensive performance Pitt produced at various points in 2018.

No player is an island, and Pickett certainly suffered from a number of things happening around him, but when it came down to it, he didn’t play well enough at the most important position on the field.

His individual improvement is going to be key to Narduzzi’s stability.

That’s not to say there aren’t other quarterbacks on the roster. There are, of course, with Nick Patti and Davis Beville and Jeff George Jr. But despite the natural inclination to make unseen backup quarterbacks legendary, I think the staff is pretty committed to Pickett.

That’s based on my own assumptions, not super-secret info from “sources.” But as I look at it, I think Narduzzi talked a lot during the season about Pickett’s inexperience, which keeps the door open for growth and development in Year Two as a starter. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, because in and amongst all of the inconsistency and sometimes downright bad play, there were still flashes of the potential Pickett has.

I still think he can be really good, and I think he’s going to get a chance to show it.

That makes him of considerable importance for Narduzzi entering Year Five. Narduzzi has to get better consistent production from the offense in 2019, and that comes back to the quarterback. It comes back to the coordinator, too, but that’s a different topic, and for whatever you want to say about Watson, Pickett still had opportunities to make plays in 2018.

If he makes a few more of them, the narrative on this season might be a little different.

So it’s Pickett and Borbely. If each guy has a really productive offseason that leads to considerable on-field improvement, Pitt has a chance to win a bunch of games next season. If not, then things might head further south than they were this year.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

How will the Paris Ford situation get resolved?
I thought maybe we were about to move past the drama surrounding Paris Ford, at least for 2018. He didn’t play much this season, logging a total of 120 snaps over the course of nine games. He didn’t play against Penn State. He didn’t play against Duke or Virginia. He didn’t play against Miami.

He made five tackles and he was called for two penalties. That was the entirety of his production this season, and to say that was a disappointment would be an understatement. Ford was talked about as much as any single player this offseason, and he was expected to be a contributor to the defense.

Instead, he barely played.

But I thought things were going to turn around a bit. The coaches’ decision to move him to cornerback was finally being undone, as Pat Narduzzi said last week he would be getting work at safety, which is a more natural position for him. That move seemed like a positive, and I expected he would start working his way up the depth chart in the spring.

Then he didn’t show up in El Paso.

I shouldn’t say he “didn’t show up.” He simply didn’t make the trip. By all accounts - on and off the record - that was Ford’s decision. Narduzzi called it “personal reasons,” but added that Ford is still part of the team. From what I’ve heard, that’s where things stand right now: he’s still a Panther. But it sounds tenuous.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that Ford and people close to him were disappointed with how he was used this season. They feel - as do many Pitt fans - that Ford is a special playmaker, the kind of impact player who can change games when he gets on the field.

But he couldn’t get on the field. Or the coaches wouldn’t put him on the field. Whichever it was, the result was disappointment. And it seems that disappointment bubbled over this week - resulting in Ford staying in Pittsburgh while his teammates went to West Texas.

So how does this get resolved? In the short term, it means Paris Ford probably watches the Sun Bowl on TV rather than the sidelines (Narduzzi left the window open for the possibility that he could still join the team, but I think he said something like “anything’s possible,” so I’m not betting on it). The long term is more concerning, though.

As the season went on and Ford didn’t see playing time, rumors of a potential transfer grew - either based on information or speculation. More often than not, I chalked those up to the imagination of a fan base: if a talented player isn’t playing, then fans put him on the transfer watch list. That’s not entirely unreasonable, as we seem to see more players than ever nationally transferring when they slide down the depth chart. But I hadn’t heard anything concrete, so I tried to keep perspective on the situation.

Then this matter of skipping the Sun Bowl trip happened, and if there was an atomic clock on the highest-rated WPIAL prospect Narduzzi has landed at Pitt, it moved one minute closer to midnight.

From where I sit, when Narduzzi returns to Pittsburgh after Monday’s game, he’s going to have to recruit Paris Ford all over again. As it is in recruiting high schoolers, you shouldn’t promise playing time but you can promise an opportunity, which Ford probably feels like he isn’t getting.

Fixing the position problem is a good step. The coaches moved Ford to corner probably because they thought he’d have a quicker path to the field at an “easier” position than safety. That wasn’t the right move. The right move was to keep Ford at safety and let him learn that position.

It’s not all on the coaches, though. Ford and people close to him probably feel like he hasn’t been given an opportunity, but the truth is, this staff hasn’t shied away from using young or inexperienced players. Jordan Whitehead played his way into the starting lineup as a freshman. Jason Pinnock and Damarri Mathis got on the field as freshmen and played extensively this season, with Pinnock making five starts.

If a player can help the team win, the staff will use him - provided they trust him to properly execute his responsibilities. Without sitting in the film room or having the ear of the coaches, I’m guessing that’s probably where the disconnect occurred: Ford has a tremendously high ceiling and make dazzling plays, but I suspect he needs to be more reliably consistent.

That’s my guess.

We’ll see if he sticks it out and tries to find that consistency at Pitt or if he decides to try it elsewhere. I guess we’ll be spending the early part of the offseason on Paris Ford Watch.

What’s the problem at tight end?
I don’t think this is the first time we’ve gone down this path, but hey, let’s do it again. Consider it the annual refresher.

For whatever reason, the tight end position has become a boondoggle for this program. There was a great two-year run when Pitt signed JP Holtz and Scott Orndoff in 2012 and 2013, respectively; those two guys obviously had great careers and really were the mold for what you would want your tight ends to be in the kinds of offenses Pitt has run over the last decade or so.

But since then…

Well, let’s just list the names. Here are the recruits Pitt has signed at tight end since 2012:

2012 - JP Holtz
2013 - Scott Orndoff, Tony Harper, Devon Edwards
2014 - Brian O’Neill
2015 - Nobody
2016 - Nobody
2017 - Grant Carrigan, Charles Reeves, Tyler Sear
2018 - Nobody

Some caveats, of course.

- In 2018, Kaymar Mimes signed as a defensive end but moved to tight end over the summer, so he kind of counts as one for the 2018 class.

- O’Neill counts as a tight end signing for the 2014 class, but we all know that he moved to offensive tackle and has done pretty well with that move.

- Transfers. Pitt has needed a bunch of them and the staff has gone after them. Chris Clark signed in 2016. Matt Flanagan signed in 2017. Will Gragg signed in 2018. The collective production of those three transfers has been…negligible.

So, yeah, it’s been a bit of a black hole at the position, and I’m not sure there’s one good answer that summarizes the situation. Pitt had a tight end committed in the 2015 class, but that was Nick Bowers from Kittanning; you might recall that he was as good as gone when Penn State offered, and even if there hadn’t been a coaching change - he originally committed to Paul Chryst - I think he would have flipped his commitment.

Then there were plenty of targets in the 2016 class, but Pitt missed on all of them. The coaches added Clark that year but didn’t get any high school prospects to develop and build depth.

The staff tried to make up for it in 2017 by signing three high school tight end prospects and bringing in another transfer. Now, all of a sudden, there were five scholarship tight ends on the roster - Clark, Flanagan, Carrigan, Reeves and Sear. The position still didn’t produce much (all of those combined had roughly the same catches but not nearly as many touchdowns as Orndoff had on his own in 2016), but at least there were numbers.

Then last offseason happened and Flanagan graduated, Clark left and Reeves was kicked off the team. Another one fell when Sear parted ways with Pitt through something of a mutual decision at midseason, and all of those numbers evaporated.

Pitt did add one tight end when the coaches put Jim Medure on scholarship over the summer. And they also moved Carson Van Lynn from tackle to tight end, where he saw quite a bit of playing time this season. But if they don’t add anyone in the February signing period, Pitt will go into training camp 2019 with Carrigan, Gragg, Mimes, Medure, possibly Van Lynn and incoming freshman Jason Collier (if Collier stays at tight end and doesn’t move to offensive tackle).

That’s a motley crew that might not kick start your heart.

When we look back on the Narduzzi era, it will always remain a curiosity that tight end was such a challenge for this staff. I can’t really think of another position that so confounded another staff in recent Pitt history (Dave Wannstedt and quarterbacks, maybe?).

ONE PREDICTION

Pickett will end 2018 on a high note
No meandering preamble here. I’ll get right to it:

I think Kenny Pickett flies back from El Paso with some strong numbers in the box score.

Look, I’ll be the first to say that Pickett’s 2018 season was underwhelming, even a disappointment. I said as much earlier in this column. I was all aboard the Pickett hype train this offseason (with Narduzzi and Watson as the engineer and conductor, which is a different discussion about managing offseason hype). I thought Pickett was going to hit the ground running and really have an impressive season. I didn’t expect him to put up numbers to rival Kyler Murray - Pitt’s just not going to play that way - but I thought he would have a really solid season and probably end up with 20-25 touchdowns between passing and rushing.

I was off. By a lot. You probably were, too. I think we all expected a lot out of Kenny Pickett, and I don’t think anyone really got what they expected. That’s a result of a lot of factors, as we’ve discussed all season, but the end result was pretty disappointing:

1,833 yards. 12 touchdowns. 6 interceptions. 3 rushing scores.

Pickett actually had some nice moments in there. He made some nice throws in the Virginia Tech game, for instance. But the crowning achievement, the best performance of his career, was in the penultimate game of the regular season when he took over the Wake Forest game. The Demon Deacons were geared up to stop Pitt’s running game, and that plan worked: a week after they combined to rush for 421 yards and four touchdowns against Virginia Tech, Qadree Ollison and Darrin Hall were held to just 96 yards and one score at Wake Forest.

But what Dave Clawson’s crew didn’t count on was Pickett taking over the game: 23-of-30, 316 yards and three touchdowns in a near-perfect performance. It was Pickett at his best and showed flashes of what many hope is a level of play he can reach on a consistent basis.

Of course, Pickett didn’t maintain that level of play in the next two games. He completed 18-of-38 passes for 138 yards, no touchdowns and one interception in losses to Miami and Clemson after that Wake Forest game.

But here’s why I think Monday will be Pickett’s day: like Wake Forest, Stanford is not good at defending the pass. The Deacons finished the regular season allowing 266.1 passing yards per game; that ranks No. 115 nationally. That’s pretty bad.

But if you look six spots below Wake, you find Stanford: No. 121 in the nation and allowing 274.1 passing yards per game.

The one concern is protection: despite giving up a lot of passing yards, Stanford gets after the quarterback, averaging 2.83 sacks per game, which ranks No. 21 nationally. If Pitt can give Pickett a little time - which hasn’t always been easy - then he should be able to have success against this Cardinal defense.

So I think Pickett rings in the New Year with a nice game and, ideally, gives himself and the offense a little boost heading into 2019.