2015 Pitt Football – Spring Outlook

2015 Pitt Football Spring Edition

Pitt fans are still scratching their heads trying to figure out how the Panthers blew 34-13 4th Quarter lead to Houston in the Armed Forces Bowl back in January. While the previous coaching staff certainly shoulders most of the blame (e.g. playing LBers on the hands-team for on-sides kicks), the bigger elephant in the room is the talent-level of the Pitt defense and in particular at DE.

Going into Spring drills, though, there’s a ton of enthusiasm surrounding the program. This is because there’s a new sheriff in town – Pitt Head Coach Pat Narduzzi. Yet many wonder how Narduzzi, a defensive guru, can somehow take this band of defensive players and mold them into competitors in the ACC Coastal Division.

So for the 2015 Spring Outlook for Pitt Football, DreamBackfield will start with the Pitt defense.

NT/DT
KK Mosley-Smith and Darryl Render return as the two starters on the interior for the Pitt defensive line. Both had moments of brilliance last year (particularly against the run), but struggled mightily against the pass. While Aaron Donald was able to become a one-man wrecking crew against QBs two seasons ago in run or pass situations, neither Smith nor Render possess AD’s abilities. They will clearly need help from the DEs to be effective in the passing game. It would help if new DL coach Tom Simms taught this unit how to jump if they can’t reach the QB. Too many slant passes were surrendered last year that could have been swatted down by the defensive tackles.

Providing depth will be Tyrique Jarrett, Justin Moody, Jeremiah Taleni (who, as of now, has remained with the program despite losing his Hawaiian connection and recruiter at Pitt – former DL coach Inoke Breckterfield). Of those three, Moody has shown the most promise particularly against the small, yet quicker ACC teams. Jarrett and Taleni could develop into excellent short yardage run stoppers in the future.

DE
One word describes this position currently for Pitt – disaster. This what happens when you rank 102 out of roughly 125 teams in sacks (19 total sacks for 133 yards). The DEs for Pitt may have single-handedly cost Pitt a few wins last season. This is because the DEs failed to produce any sort of pass rush at opposing QBs. The problem doesn’t seem to get solved this upcoming season either as there are many question marks heading into Spring drills.

Returning starter Shakir Soto will be joined by oft-injured Juan Price and backed up by Rori Blair and Zach Poker. Soto has speed but lacks size and the technique to get around the tackles in the ACC. Price was effective long ago, but didn’t play last year due to injury (he missed all of 2012 too) and only played in 6 games in 2013. You’d have to go all the way back to 2011 to find when he last played significant snaps (i.e. started in 5 games out of 13 appearances). Thus, he’s basically an unknown quantity this year and far too undersized for the position at 6′ and roughly 250 lbs. Poker is probably another David Durham – meaning he’s slightly bigger but looks more like a LBer than a DE.

Perhaps Pitt can hope that redshirt freshman Hez Trahan or Shane Roy can push Soto or Price for snaps at DE this season. However, they are roughly the same size as Soto and very inexperienced.

Incoming JUCO DE Allen Edwards might also push Soto for snaps once he arrives in the summer.

In sum, unless Pitt moves a TE over to DE this spring, such as Brian O’Neill (which many Pitt fans think would make a lot of sense since O’Neill has big-time athletic ability, 6’6″ size and would be more useful at DE than TE), it’s beginning to reek of much of the same at DE for Pitt this year.

LB
On paper, it looked at though Pitt was half-decent against the run last year (ranked 55th in the country by allowing only 465 carries for 2091 yards with an average of 4.5 yards per carry and 160 total rushing yards per game). Truth is when you give up 45 TDs and 26 of them are through the air, you don’t need to run on Pitt. Part of the blame, most Pitt gurus would agree, was Matt House’s zone schemes were too complicated to follow. The LBers would often over-pursue plays or simply look completely out of position particularly on bubble-screens that most high school teams have figured out how to defend.

Losing both outside LBers, Todd Thomas and Anthony Gonzalez, to graduation doesn’t help matters. Thomas was probably Pitt’s best run defender and Gonzalez was probably the Panthers’ best pass defender of the front 7 last year. If you could have combined them into one player, Pitt would have had the missing piece at LB last year.

Returning at the MIK position, though, will be Matt Galambos and he will probably start again in the middle this year. Galambos is a sound defender and has really nice pad-level when he makes contact but his main weakness is his speed. He’s often far too slow to chase down the ACC backs and receivers. Unfortunately, Mike Caprara isn’t big enough to supplant him and there’s not much in the toolshed to replace Galambos.

So that leaves Bam Bradley to take the reigns from Gonzalez at strong-side linebacker or SAM position. Bradley is a ferocious hitter and reminds the DreamBackfield staff of Ramon Walker, who played strong safety at Pitt in the last 90s. Bradley’s also got the size and speed to play the position and probably should have played more last year over Gonzalez.

On the weakside, though, there will probably be a battle between Nicholas Grigsby and Quintin Wirginis. Grigsby has the unfortunate tag of muffing two on-sides kicks in the Armed Forces Bowl but that’s clearly not his fault as he should have never seen the field in those situations, particularly twice. But as a defender, Grigsby is decent LB with strong pass rushing capabilities. Wirginis played sparingly last year on special teams and saw a few snaps at LB as well. He has the size and speed to be effective at the WIL, but looked lost in coverages last year.

All is not lost at LB, though, as Jamal Davis and James Folston will provide depth. It will be interesting to see where Coach Rob Harley plays Davis this spring because he probably could have played meaningful snaps last season if not for NCAA clearinghouse issues.

The future also looks bright as true frosh LBers Saleem Brightwell and Anthony McKee, two of Pitt’s highly prized recruits from 2015, arrive on campus in June.

CBs
You know the feeling when you’ve beaten you’re little brother in sports and there’s a certain “that wasn’t fair” type of advantage you had in the process, well that pretty much describes the Pitt secondary last year. Not only were they abused and picked on, they looked completely overmatched at times particularly against Ga Tech, North Carolina, Duke and Houston (all losses). The fact is without a pass rush even Mel Blount in his prime would have looked bad at corner last year for Pitt.

That’s not to say the corners were blameless last year. Returning starter and senior Lafayette Pitts will probably keep his job at boundary corner this season. Pitts has athletic talent but the problem has been his ball skills. He continually fails to find the ball in the air and often gets penalized for pass interference when he gets beaten on deep routes. There were times last year when Pitts played so poorly that true freshman Avonte Maddox came in to replace him and he too was victimized (particularly by Duke’s senior and all-ACC WR Jamison Crowder).

Defensive coordinator Josh Conklin might look at returning safety Reggie Mitchell to possibly play opposite Pitts if the Plan A doesn’t pan out.

Plan A would be incoming freshman and 2014 PA Player of the Year, Jordan Whitehead. There aren’t many talent-reels as good as Whitehead’s coming into Pitt and while he’s slightly smaller than Pitt legend Darrelle Revis when he arrived, the athletic comparisons between the two are hard to resist. Whitehead is also an amazing special teams player and some feel he’s so good with the ball in his hands, he should be looked at as a slot receiver on offense as well.

New Defensive Backs Coach Renaldo Hill will have other options including Ryan Lewis, redshirt freshman Phillipie Motley and early-enrollee (true frosh) Malik Henderson to provide depth behind Pitts and Whitehead should both of them win the starting jobs in the summer. Whitehead won’t arrive on the Pitt campus until June.

S
At safety, Coach Conklin has some question marks. Returning from injury is Clairton product Terrish Webb, who started the first 8 games last year. Assuming Mitchell plays opposite of Webb, Pitt will need to find depth with Pat Amara and Jevonte Pitts as the Panthers lost senior Ray Vinopal to graduation.

Amara has a really bright future at Pitt and possibly could win a starting job this summer if the cards fold his way. At 6’2 and roughly 200 lbs, Amara has some very nice ball skills and even picked off a pass last year. His issue has just been inexperience and knowing his assignments. It truly wasn’t fair to him or Maddox last year to play so many snaps as true freshman. Yet both will use that experience to their advantage this season.

Another possibility is redshirt frosh Jalen Williams but he too is a bit of a wildcard as he hasn’t even played a snap yet in a college game.

2015 Pitt Defense Long story short
The bottom line is Coach Narduzzi will need more options at DE if the Pitt defense is going to have any prayer of being better this year. Yes, Matt House had horrible schemes considering the talent-level that’s on the roster so that alone should be much improved, but unless Pitt can muster any sort of a pass rush this year don’t expect the Panthers to compete for the Coastal Division crown any time soon.

Offense
There are certain ironies in life that just can’t be ignored. Pitt, for instance, has 8 NFL Hall of Famers and possibly 4 more that have high odds of getting into Canton (Reuben Brown and current players Darrelle Revis, Larry Fitzgerald and LeSean “Shady” McCoy) in the future.

Yet despite all that impact talent that’s come out of the Pitt football program over the years, the Panthers haven’t been able to piece together a complete team. Not since 1981, anyway, when the likes of Dan Marino played for Pitt and incidentally the last time Pitt won more than 10 regular season games.

The same can be said of the current Pitt Panthers football program. While the defense has a ton of question marks, there may not be a better offense in the ACC than Pitt this coming season.

That’s because Pitt is loaded on offense and it starts with 3 electrifying juniors: QB Chad Voytik, 2014 first-team ACC WR Tyler Boyd and the 2014 ACC Offensive Player of the Year RB James Conner.

QB
The good news is Voytik is only a junior and because of his height, he’s likely not to forgo his Senior season for the NFL draft like Boyd and Conner after this year. Voytik completed 62% of his passes last year on 158 completions on 252 attempts. It seemed like 95% of those passes went to Boyd (it was actually 48%) but despite locking in on basically one receiver, Voytik tossed 15 TDs with only 7 INTs with a QB rating of 143.8 in 2014. He even improved as the year went on by connecting on 6 TDs with only 1 pick in the last two months of the season.

Voytik will certainly be the starter for new OC Jim Chaney. Providing depth, however, will be Tennessee transfer Nathan Peterman. After redshirting in 2012, Peterman (6’2, 220 lbs) played in 11 games during the ’13 and ’14 seasons for the Vols, including 2 starts. He completed 20 passes out of 43 attempts for 94 yards and 2 INTs.
He even started against Florida in 2013 before breaking a hand and missing five games.

Rounding out the QB depth will be redshirt frosh Adam Bertke and true frosh Ben DiNucci (when he arrives in June). Bertke will probably only see mop-up duty this year and DiNucci will almost certainly redshirt.

RB
James Conner. Need we say more? Ok, he’s not quite the household name that say current NFL star Marshawn Lynch is nor anywhere near as arrogant either of his boyhood hero, but Conner (at least on the college level) is a bonafide superstar.

Conner tote the rock 298 times last season for 1765 yards, despite missing most of the Syracuse game with a hip-injury, en route to the 2014 ACC Offensive Player of the Year Award. Conner ranked 4th nationally in rushing, and even broke former Heisman Trophy winner and Pitt legend Tony Dorsett’s single-season Pitt record by scoring 24 touchdowns in a single season.

Conner was simply a man amongst boys last year and truthfully, none of the smaller ACC defenses could stop him. He not only runs over people but he’s an effective blocker and has very soft hands out of the backfield. He even has the talent to play DE if need be, but Coach Narduzzi has made it clear this spring there are no such plans in 2015 for that.

Conner is not alone in the backfield either. If he is the thunder, then RB Chris James is the lightning. James rushed 82 times for 404 yards and 4 scores last year as a true freshman. He has the break-away speed and elusiveness to be the starter at Pitt as well as most other college teams for that matter. He probably will assume control of the job after Conner jets for the NFL after this season.

Perhaps the most under-appreciated tailback on the Pitt roster is returning junior Rachid Ibrahim. He not only can beat you with his speed but he also has really nice hands (rather useful on 3rd down or in short yardage situations) to boot. Ibrahim will more than likely assume Issac Bennett’s role in the Panthers offense this upcoming season.

Assuming he’s patient with the process, redshirt frosh Qadree Ollison will finally see the field this season. He too has some very interesting skills and is probably more like Conner as a power rusher than like the finesse of James.

Redshirt frosh Dennis Briggs and redshirt senior Jameel Poteat will probably provide depth or move to a new position (especially Briggs) this year. Incoming true frosh Darrin Hall, Jr will most likely redshirt in this crowded backfield.

H-Back
Pitt didn’t really use a fullback last year as Monroeville product Jaymar Parrish was truly an H-Back by definition. Yet, for all intents and purposes, Parrish was the perfect blocking back for Conner. He’s a ton of beef to deal with and opens massive holes for Conner. If fullback was used more in the NFL these days, Parrish would be a slamdunk to be drafted (that’s how good he is). Regardless of whether Coach Chaney calls him a fullback or an H-back, Parrish will start this year and assume his role of bone-crusher in the Panther backfield.

WR
It’s rare for anyone in the Pitt Panther Nation to make comparisons to Larry Fitzgerald. He was about as good of a player (not to mention WR) as there ever was to wear the Pitt uniform. Yet, as astounding as it is to say, Tyler Boyd is about as close as you can get to Fitz.

Boyd is a downright stud. He caught 78 passes, 8 of which reached the end-zone, for 1261 yards en route to the first-team all ACC WR selection in 2014. His second consecutive season with over 1000 yards receiving, just like Fitz at Pitt. Boyd even topped that off by returning kickoffs and punts and provided Pitt with unbelievable field position at times with his incredible athleticism. Ok yes, he dropped one crucial pass late in the game against Houston in the Armed Forces Bowl back in January, but that’s probably one of only a handful of drops he’s ever had at Pitt. Not bad for a Flanker who gets the rock 48% of the time when Pitt passes.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the off-season was losing Adonis Jennings (who decided to transfer) to start opposite of Boyd. With Jennings gone, new Pitt WR Coach Kevin Sherman will need to find options among a bevy of returning role players.

The options include Chris Wuestner, Zach Challingsworth, Dontez Ford, Jester Weah and redshirt frosh Jaquaun Davidson and Elijah Zeise.

Ford is probably the most likely to win the job over the others. He has solid hands but isn’t quite the deep threat split-end that Weah is (unfortunately Weah’s issue is holding onto the rock) and thus, you are left with wishing you could combine both players into one. Ford did make a crucial 3rd conversion against Duke last year that would have won the game had PK Chris Blewitt not missed a 26 yard chip shot. He also snatched a TD against his former team, Syracuse, later in the season.

Challingsworth is probably much better suited playing Boyd’s position and probably will when spelling Boyd this year. He has strong ball skills and probably should have seen the field last year.

Davidson is interesting because he played QB in high school and could be used in Wildcat formations this year or on trick plays. It will be interesting to see what happens with Zeise because many feel he could be used in the secondary rather than WR this year.

The incoming true frosh WR foursome of Quadree Henderson, Dane Jackson, Tre Tipton and Gentry Ivery will probably redshirt this year but Henderson may see playing time immediately in the slot now that Ronald Jones has been dismissed from the team in the off-season.

TE
This is a grizzled group for new Pitt TE Coach Tim Salem to work with this season. The tandem of JP Holtz and Scott Orndoff is very strong and was far too underutilized by Paul Chryst last season. Holtz is a senior while Orndoff is a junior but it seems like the two of them have been here forever.

Holtz was turned into a blocking TE and that’s unfortunate because he’s a very strong receiver. Orndoff is not quite the blocker Holtz is but he’s quite adept as a receiver as well.

With TEs Tony Harper, Devon Edwards and redshirt frosh Brian O’Neill (assuming he doesn’t switch to defense – he’s too talented to sit the bench), Pitt is fairly loaded at TE.

OL
It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. Ok, maybe it hasn’t been 20 years, but it seems like for the first time in god knows how long that the Pitt Offensive Line might be stout. And for that, Paul Chryst deserves a lot of credit.

There are numerous talented bodies for new OL Coach John Peterson to work with up front for Pitt this year.

At left tackle, expect to see Adam “Biz” Bisnowaty reclaim his starting job on Voytik’s blind-side. Biz is a heck of a run blocker but needs to work on his foot speed in passing downs.

At left guard, junior Dorian Johnson will start and naturally, he should. He has NFL level skills and by the end of next season, he should be drafted high in 2017. He too, though, struggles at times in passing situations but he has really adapted well to guard since moving over from tackle.

At center, redshirt soph Alex Officer is most likely to retain the starting job this season. Officer was decent last year for playing his first full season but isn’t quite the OL captain that Artie Rowell was before he went down with the season-ending injury against BC. Rowell returns this season, but its hard to expect him to be fully recovered from the torn ACL to supplant Officer.

Gabe Roberts will most likely move over to right guard where there’s a onslaught of reserves available for Coach Peterson to audition. If he fails to win that job, expect to see Roberts providing depth for Johnson at left guard.

Among the favorites to the win the right guard job will be Mike Grimm, a massive 6’6″ 325 lb bone crusher. Other options include Carson Baker, Mike Herndon and Alex Galiyas.

At right tackle, at least on paper, the starter will most likely be Jaryd Jones-Smith. Moving Smith over from left tackle was an interesting move in the off-season because most Panther fans figured prized 2014 recruit Alex Bookser would simply inherit the right tackle job from TJ Clemmings (who graduated and is now preparing for the NFL Draft).

So for now, Smith will battle Bookser for the right tackle job. Smith started off slowly but really came along quite nicely by the end of last season. Many Panther fans thought he was better than Biz at left tackle last year and probably rightfully so.

Aaron Reese and John Guy will provide depth at the tackle positions.

In sum, coach Peterson has quality depth on the OL this season for Pitt. He should have almost no problem finding the 5 best players to start and open big holes for Conner. The main area where Coach Pederson needs to focus his time on is pass blocking after surrendering 21 sacks as a unit last year.

Special Teams
Tyler Boyd and Jordan Whitehead should be your kickoff receiving tandem with Boyd fielding punts as well.

PK Chris Blewitt returns as the incumbent but as many Pitt fans know, he was somewhat inconsistent last season after missing 5 field goals (one was a game-winner against Duke) on 21 attempts.

His kickoffs weren’t bad though and generally pinned opponents deep.

Punter Ryan Winslow also returns for Pitt but he needs to work on improving his distance. He only averaged roughly 40 yards per kick last season and had trouble pinning opponents deep.

The good news for new Special Teams coach Andre Powell is Pitt didn’t surrender as many kickoff and punt returns for TDs last season. Duke’s Devon Edwards took a kickoff back to the house against the Panthers but otherwise the damage was far less severe than the year before when UNC’s Ryan Switzer took two punts back himself to the house against Pitt.

Long-snapper David Murphy also returns in the same role this year for Pitt.

Outlook:
Pitt should win at least 7 games this season. The offense is potent enough alone to win that many. In order though to take the next step, Head Coach Pat Narduzzi needs to find some answers on defense, especially at DE, otherwise the season will once again be met with mediocre results.