The Panther-Lair.com 3-2-1 Column on Pitt recruiting

MORE HEADLINES - PODCAST: Hear from new Pitt assistant Archie Collins | Mailbag: Signing Day, rankings and more | PODCAST: Recapping Signing Day | Film review: Mychale Salahuddin | Rundown: Which walk-ons are joining Pitt football this offseason?

As we continue to reflect on the 2018 recruiting class, we’re taking a look at three things we know, two questions we have d one prediction on Pitt recruiting.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Pitt got instant help
Perhaps more than anything, what really stands out about Pitt’s 2018 recruiting class is how the coaches managed to address some very immediate and pressing needs. It’s difficult to recruit for instant help; you’re spending 95% of your time scouting and evaluating and recruiting high school targets, and few of them are truly ready to contribute when they get on campus.

But Pitt had several rather dire needs emerge through the course of this latest recruiting cycle. The coaches knew they needed someone to help on the offensive line right away, and they got one piece for that need over the summer when JUCO Chase Brown committed. At the time, Pitt was recruiting with the thought that Brian O’Neill was probably going to leave for the NFL; when the postseason arrived and O’Neill formally made that decision, the coaches looked for one more option and found it in Stefano Millin, a graduate transfer from Kent State.

Another need emerged in December when Pitt saw Ben DiNucci and Thomas MacVittie both leave the team, creating a major void in the quarterback room. The coaches probably expected to have one quarterback transfer this offseason, but losing both MacVittie and DiNucci made a tricky situation rather dire: no matter how good the coaches feel about Kenny Pickett - and they feel quite good - they were hoping to have an upperclassman or two to back him up in 2018.

So they went hunting again, and after bringing in two grad transfer quarterbacks in three years, the staff opted for the JUCO route this time around. Their find was Ricky Town, the No. 5 pro-style quarterback in the class of 2014 whose college career hadn’t been what most expected. After transferring out of USC before his first season began and then leaving Arkansas after two seasons of not playing, Town found himself at Ventura Community College.

That’s where Pitt found him. Pat Narduzzi and his staff made Town no promises about the starting job, and that fits the reality of the situation: Town was pursued by Pitt primarily because the Panthers need a veteran backup quarterback. They have a starter, but they need someone with a little experience to turn to in case something happens to Pickett.

Getting three players to fill immediate needs in one recruiting class - without placing inordinate expectations on a high schooler - is pretty strong work. Certainly the Pitt coaches would like to get past the point of recruiting for instant help, preferring to build depth organically in the future. But for now, the staff got what it needed to help field a competitive team in 2018.

There are a lot of high floors in this group
One of the oft-repeated themes - some would say running jokes - of Pitt’s recruiting for 2018 was the wire-to-almost-wire consistency of the class being all three-star prospects (four-star Mychale Salahuddin “ruined” that by committing on Signing Day). And within that theme/joke was the fact that most of the three-start prospects - 10 out of 19 - were rated 5.7 on the Rivals rating scale.

And within that sub-theme/joke was the notion that 5.7 sits at the very top of the three-star scale; a 5.8 Rivals rating is in the four-star range, so all of those 5.7 three-stars were really just one-tenth of a ratings point away from being four-star prospects.

Whether you look at Pitt’s 5.7 three-star prospects as a collection of recruits who are close enough to four-star range that they might as well count as four-star recruits or you focus on the emptiness of that spot for a fourth star next to each of their names is a personal preference. But aesthetics aside - and the class would certainly look nicer if half of those guys had a fourth star - there are some things to note on those three-star recruits and Pitt’s class as a whole.

The thing I keep thinking is that this class has a lot of prospects with high floors. It remains to be seen how high the ceiling is, but I think there is a rather low “bust potential” with most of these prospects. Some of that stems from their ratings and rankings but it also comes from their offer sheets.

Offer sheets aren’t the be-all/end-all in evaluating recruiting, but they’re worth considering as a factor alongside rankings and other items. And to that end, Pitt’s 10 three-star prospects who were rated 5.7 had an unofficial total of 105 offers from Power Five schools; that figure is obviously a little flexible, but the underlying fact remains: these recruits were coveted by a good number of programs, regardless of only having three stars.

Beyond stars and offers, though, a lot of the recruits Pitt signed in this class just seem to have the makeup of players who can contribute in college. Devin Danielson, Jake Kradel, Blake Zubovic, Marquis Williams, Shocky Jacques-Louis - those five recruits alone seem to have enough skills, traits and intangibles to create a reasonably high expectation of success when they step on the field at Pitt.

And that’s to say nothing of lower-rated recruits like Habakkuk Baldonado or David Green or Nick Patti or Wendell Davis (my pick as the sleeper of the class) or any of the other defensive backs or defensive linemen Pitt got in this group. There don’t seem to be many, if any, reaches in the 2018 class for Pitt; the coaches honed in on solid prospects and landed the recruits they targeted.

The coaches made 22 scholarships go a long way
Pitt’s 2018 class swelled to a larger size than expected due to rather unprecedented turnover this offseason. 10 players left the team, including three to the NFL, and while the coaches thought some of that attrition was coming, they likely didn’t think they’d get that many open spots.

Still, a 20-man recruiting class that ultimately saw Pitt give out 22 initial scholarships - the 20 prospects plus two transfers - isn’t a huge class by today’s standards. As such, it’s rather remarkable how the Pitt coaches were able to really hit just about every area they needed to hit with those 22 scholarships.

As we said earlier, they addressed the need for some instant help in key areas with scholarships to Stefano Millin, Chase Brown and Ricky Town. And then they continued the efforts toward building depth on defense, signing seven defensive linemen and four defensive backs.

The linemen, in particular, represent an ongoing process. After signing one defensive end and no defensive tackles in the 2015 class, Pitt landed three of each in 2016. The coaches brought in two tackles and one end last year, but the difficulties in signing more ends late in the recruiting cycle have been well-documented, and the staff loaded up this year, getting four ends to fill in some of the depth.

Those four ends include one prospect with as much upside as any in the class (Habakkuk Baldonado), a raw athlete with good bloodlines (Kaymar Mimes), a local standout (Noah Palmer) and a pass-rusher who could play standing up or with his hand on the ground (John Morgan). One of those four - probably one of the first three - could end up playing tight end, but each had a clear appeal for the Pitt coaches.

And beyond the ends, Pitt’s three defensive tackles all look like they have good potential to be future contributors.

Overall, the Pitt coaches managed to use 22 scholarships to address every position save for one (tight end, where they signed three last year) and get more or less what they needed at each of those spots. They got the short-term and long-term help at quarterback and offensive line. They got playmakers at running back and receiver. And they continued to bolster the depth in the front and back of the defense. The staff only took one linebacker, but after signing six in the last two classes - five of which are still on the team - taking one was okay for 2018.

TWO QUESTIONS

How much is too much?
Building off that last point, where we praised the Pitt coaches for stockpiling the defensive linemen and defensive backs, I can’t help but follow up with this question:

Have they taken too many defensive linemen and defensive backs?

Let’s start with the second one. In the last three classes - 2016-18 - Pitt has signed 13 defensive back prospects, from 2016’s huge haul of six DB’s to last year’s trio (Jason Pinnock, Damarri Mathis and Paris Ford) to the quartet in this year’s class. There’s no question that Narduzzi and his staff walked into a situation where depth - quality depth - was in short supply in the secondary, and with the way these coaches want to play defense, that situation was untenable.

So they had to load up in 2016, but was it needed in 2018? The coaches would say yes, obviously, and they’re probably not entirely wrong. If the four defensive backs signed this year - V’Lique Carter, Erick Hallett, Judson Tallandier and Marquis Williams - split with two playing cornerback and two playing safety, the next few years project as such (not including 2019 and 2020 recruits):

2018 - 7 corners, 8 safeties
2019 - 6 corners, 7 safeties
2020 - 5 corners, 6 safeties

All of the defensive backs on the roster will have at least two years of experience heading into the 2020 season, so even if there is attrition - say Pitt loses two of each from the corners and safeties - there will still be a two-deep (or close to it) full of players who are, at the youngest, in their third seasons.

There are depth questions at other positions on the team, to be sure, but I think it’s safe to say that the coaches have fully addressed the secondary and 2019 should be a bit smaller when it comes to defensive backs.

As for the defensive line, seven may seem like overkill in the 2018 class, but those numbers aren’t too tough to justify. Pitt signed three tackles in 2016 and two in 2017, but one of those two in last year’s class is already gone, leaving four tackles from the last two classes; for a position where the coaches would like to have a solid rotation of four with one or two more ready to play in reserve duty, getting four in two years is the bare minimum, and taking Devin Danielson, David Green and Tyler Bentley helps solidify the depth.

At defensive end, the coaches’ decision to load up probably wasn’t unconnected to the misses at the end of the 2017 recruiting cycle. Pitt had six defensive end prospects take official visits in January 2017 and missed on all six of them, ending up with just one end in the class (plus or minus Carson Van Lynn, who has played on the offense and defensive lines over the last year). So it’s probably not a stretch to say they compensated or even overcompensated for those misses by taking four ends in this year’s class.

Assuming one of those ends moves to tight end, which is a distinct possibility, and at least two of the remaining three pan out, which seems like a fair bet, Pitt will be on the road to building workable depth at end for the next few years. But even with four at the position in the 2018 class, the Panthers will probably need another big group next year.

Will the new hires change recruiting?
So far, Pat Narduzzi has made two of the four hires he’ll make this offseason, bringing in Randy Bates to replace Josh Conklin as defensive coordinator and Archie Collins to fill an as-of-yet-undetermined spot on the defensive staff, although it seems like Collins will take over coaching the defensive backs in the wake of Renaldo Hill’s departure for the NFL.

Bates and Collins will be expected to improve the on-field performance, with Collins picking up where Hill left off developing Pitt’s corners and safeties and Bates looking to get a more consistent showing from the Panthers’ defense. But both hires have some interesting recruiting angles.

For Bates, there are a few angles. He comes to Pitt with a reputation for having recruited in Texas, specifically Houston, and while that has never been a recruiting focus for the Pitt program, the right connections could result in getting a recruit or two each year; given the surplus talent in the area - there were 53 four-star and five-star prospects in the state of Texas and nine in the city of Houston (not to mention the surrounding areas) for the class of 2018 alone - there’s a good chance of finding talented players who slipped through the cracks for whatever reason.

With Collins, the areas of focus will be Detroit and Ohio. Pitt has tried to make in-roads in Michigan, offering close to 30 recruits in the state over the last three classes. But the Panthers haven’t signed any of those offered prospects, making Michigan the only state with that many Pitt offers and no Pitt commitments from 2016-18.

Can Collins change that success rate? That remains to be seen. He did well in recruiting Detroit players to Central Michigan, but Pitt is targeting a slightly higher level of prospect than Central did. Still, the talent is strong enough in Detroit that getting one or two recruits each year - without reaching - would make the investment worthwhile. Collins will also get a chunk of Ohio to recruit; as has been discussed many times in the past, Ohio is big enough and deep enough that plenty of good players won’t be able to go to Ohio State or Notre Dame, and schools like Pitt can benefit from that surplus of talent.

Beyond the specific recruiting areas, Bates and Collins both have strong reputations as recruiters. If they live up to their billing, the addition of those two coaches should improve Pitt’s overall recruiting staff.

ONE PREDICTION

We will judge, evaluate and question Pitt’s recruiting class in August - and probably be wrong
At a certain point, we’ll learn, right?

In each of the last three recruiting classes, we’ve seen a similar pattern play out:

Pitt gets a couple spring commitments, a big push in June, maybe one or two in the summer, a quiet fall and then an outburst in December and January, often including recruits we either a) never heard of, or b) wrote off as legitimate possibilities for Pitt a long time ago.

It has happened every year. And yet, every year we sit in August or September or October or November and look at the class and target list that have been assembled and consider it the final word on recruiting.

This year, neither Habakkuk Baldonado, Kaymar Mimes, Erick Hallett, V’Lique Carter nor Ricky Town had a Pitt offer when the Panthers beat Miami in the regular-season finale. A year ago, Michael Smith, Jason Pinnock and Kam Carter didn’t have offers in November (and Damarri Mathis and Deslin Alexandre were committed to other schools).

On top of that, each of those classes has seen Pitt close on recruits that many previously had considered out of reach, whether it was Keyshon Camp in 2016, AJ Davis and Jerry Drake in 2017 or Mychale Salahuddin and Shocky Jacques-Louis this year. In the Augusts of those respective years, all of those recruits seemed to be just names on the offer sheet, but by the end of the cycle, they were signed to Pitt.

It’s a trend, and it speaks to the way this coaching staff operates, maintaining relationships with recruits who were committed elsewhere or, at the very least, hadn’t included Pitt in their top ten’s or top five’s or whatever list they released on Twitter. Then, as December and January rolled around, Pitt ended up being prominent in the recruiting process for those prospects.

One of these years, we’ll have the foresight to see it coming - based on what we’ve seen happen three years in a row.