First off to assuage the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by PITT fans regarding our ‘late’ recruiting start we need to revisit this issue just like we do every year at this time of the offseason.  Because of that repetition I am going to be stealing some info from earlier Blather articles.

Here is a bit of info that will help to quell your fears. This table shows how PITT has ‘late’ starts every year since Wannstedt was hired back in 2005:

So here we see that in all but two years PITT has had only one or two recruits committed before today’s date. Actually, if we give Narduzzi credit for all three of these 2016 recruits actually committed then he’s actually ahead of the curve comparatively.

Now, compared to the “Top 25” type teams we are way behind; those good football schools usually have kids dying to commit to them vice PITT’s having to give the hard sell to get recruits on board. Nationally we are pretty far down the pack also, but again, we’ve seen it before.

The hidden issue is that are these late starts in commitments impacting the quality of the PITT recruiting classes” I’ll have to say “maybe” because I really just don’t know. It makes sense that some of the better prospects commit early to a school they really want to attend, but in this neck of the woods it seems like the top shelf blue chippers wait until December or January to give their verbal agreement.

We like to hope that Narduzzi’s generated excitement about the program would be a real draw for recruits but that is because we are looking at PITT and the football program in a very romantic and totally different way than recruits and their parents do.  For them it is an investment of four or five years of the recruit’s life and they need to know they will get the best return on that investment they can. That holds true whether that ROI is an undergrad degree, grad school or the NFL.

This is great for PITT if these student-athletes are students first because our academic reputation is impressive.  If they are football players foremost then PITT isn’t that attractive at this point or any other point in the last ten years.

Now let’s look at some other aspects of recruiting in these new Narduzzi and Co. recruiting efforts. We have heard fans complain that Chryst didn’t recruit defensive players very well, as a matter of fact I joked about that in the last article.  Here is a very quick and dirty look at the two school’s recruiting over somewhat similar four year spans.

I tried to capture the four year stretch in which Narduzzi had already been at MSU for three years and thus people knew of him and his defenses.  The PITT four years are when Chryst was the HC and recruited that last ’15 class.

Again, a reminder that this is an overview of what the schools did in defensive recruiting and not the coaches themselves. I did it that way because Narduzzi wasn’t a HC and who knows what impact he had on recruiting anyway.

Another point is that in their respective four year period the team’s final ranking of the season before is as follows (soonest to latest):

MSU: #2, #52, #16 and #22.  That is a great record overall.

PITT: #68, #66, #72 and #70.  That is Same Old Pitt overall.

That greatly impacts how the overall quality of a school’s recruiting class will shake out also. You’d think that a recruit would be more attracted to a winning, Top 25 program (MSU) than a school that was continually ranked between 60s and 70s. 

 Yes, we can break it down according to who actually recruited that ’15 defense recruits but like I said, there is no way to tell what actual influence Narduzzi had in those four MSU years so I kept this pretty generic.

Now, does that info address fan’s beliefs that our defense recruiting will be much better under Narduzzi?  One would think so given his defensive reputation but I am very hesitant to acknowledge that unless we see the type of success that MSU had when he was there.

What those tables above really show is that it isn’t so much the recruit ratings that mattered in these cases but who was coaching them at the time.  Four years of Narduzzi elevated those 3.0* players into very good college defensive players; not so much with the DCs that PITT had at the time those 2.9* recruits were on the team.

That is where the rubber meets the road in college ball I think.  There are so many factors for success at that level but the main one is that direct coaching and game planning so the players can thrive as a defensive unit. That is what we are hoping will happen at PITT.

 One last thing to think about with these recruiting issues.  First off, if you didn’t already know, Chryst’s staff didn’t formally offer and/or accept a commitment unless;

1) They had seen the recruit in person in a game or in a PITT camp (preferably both) and visited with him personally;

2) They had visited the recruit’s HS and talked with his family, teachers and football staff there and;

3) They had done a detailed and complete academic and personal background review on the recruit by coaches and members of the PITT Athletic Support Staff.

I don’t have the inside info on Narduzzi and staff’s approach to recruiting HS players yet.  I hope it is similar to Chryst’s in that he wants the most academically and personally prepared students/athletes to come play for him at PITT.

Do those standards keep a school from getting quality recruits?  I don’t think that has to be the case and I lean toward the key being the staff’s ability to find players who fit that criteria and are good solid, hopefully super talented, recruits.  We’ll see as the year rolls on.

The whole deal about recruiting is time progression anyway. It is true that for the most part we don’t see on-field results for a couple of years so this issue at this time is very speculative.  But every team wants and needs those 4* and 5* players to build the offenses and defenses around so every fans should want to see a lot of those also.

For more solid and detailed recruiting info I read both Chris Dokish at Pantherlair.com and Chris Peak at Rivals.com.  Here are two great articles from an optimistic Chris Dokish regarding PITT’s near future recruiting:

Dokish on Offensive Recruiting and Dokish on Defensive Recruiting:

It is interesting that Dokish states right off the bat that he thinks the defensive recruiting will leap forward:

“It’s on defense where the Panthers should get better in a very dramatic way. Pat Narduzzi and his defensive staff can really recruit and players will love to play for Narduzzi and his charismatic defensive staff. But also, there’s a lot to upgrade.”

I’ll agree with him on the ‘upgrade’ thought but the rest, as with all the above article rests on the “Chicken or the Egg” riddle… is it the quality of players that failed PITT on defense or was it the poor coaching and game planning they were subject to?

Another question we’ll see addressed in the near future with this new staff…