As Chas wrote earlier Chad Voytik has made up his mind and left Pitt’s football program. He came aboard in 2012 and is leaving almost four years later to seek greener fields… or to get out of an increasingly uncomfortable atmosphere here at Pitt.  It isn’t surprising to me, but it is a bit disappointing, that Chad didn’t stay to try and rise to the occasion to regain his starting position. I thought he had more fight in him, especially after Chaney left.

It was obvious by the quotes he has issued lately that he thought he was behind the eight ball during 2015 but unless he felt Narduzzi didn’t want him as a starter he would have had the opportunity to regain that starting job.  It became apparent that he thought Peterman won the job and played well enough to keep the position,  but it is ironic if he did think so because the exact thing happened with him after his starting year.

“Voytik said he felt like he was given a fair chance this season by offensive coordinator Jim Chaney, who had a prior connection with Peterman after recruiting him to Tennessee in 2012. “I feel like I was given a fair shot, but at times, things might’ve been a little unfair,” said Voytik, who declined to elaborate. “I just think it was the perfect storm of events that worked against me a little bit. That’s life, though.”

If that was indeed a ‘perfect storm’ it is one he had a major hand in brewing.  If Peterman could unseat the incumbent in ’15 why couldn’t Chad do the same for his senior year?  He must not have thought he could do so.  Now he’s apparently looking to move closer to home but the lingering and unspoken feeling is that he didn’t complete what he started out to do at Pitt.

In a more selfish view as a Pitt fan I wanted him to be our competent and experienced relief QB if he didn’t win the back starting job outright and I did believe that could happen. Peterman played like gangbusters in the first seven games of the season but when all the dust settled I truly don’t believe he played so well as to make him untouchable, especially with a new HC coming onboard.

Well, from the time Peterman came to Pitt until Voytik left there has been hours of strong discussions about what happened so to address those issues recall that Chas listed two items of his beliefs:

a) That Nate Peterman was the better option at QB in the offense Pitt ran last season and b) that Chad Voytik was not given a fair chance to keep the starting job.

 I’ll agree with the first… and will explain below why I dispute the second.

It is one thing to say that Jim Chaney had his likes or dislikes when it came to someone playing the QB position as that is obviously true and the same could be said for any college OC.  But it is a whole other issue to say that Chaney stacked the deck against Voytik – which saying “was not given a fair chance” is implying.  Of course it is not just Chas saying that – many Pitt fans feel the same way.

As this Voytik/Peterman/transferring saga has gotten more attention and elicited more discussion I have read and listened to what some people are saying and I scratch my head… or shake it in disbelief. We have surely passed the boundary of  what might have been a lopsided competition and tumbled into a vast conspiracy theory that benefitted… just who exactly?  From what I can tell it benefitted Peterman, Chaney and the football team and that is what decision making is supposed to accomplish.

Chad’s time as a Pitt recruit and then as a football player is certainly an interesting story and has led to a pretty divisive split between his supporters and those who feel that “what we saw was what we got “ with him under center.

Before we go in detail with how his situation of the 2015-16 seasons unfolded let’s recap who, what, where, when and how things progressed for him since his commitment to Pitt’s 2012 class.

Voytik played good HS ball for Cleveland High School in Tennessee. He used his legs almost as much as his arm in executing his responsibilities as their QB and was talented enough to garner 4* ratings across the recruiting sites. Ranked as the 4th, 5th and 9th QB nationally it looked like we had ourselves a star QB for the future.

Todd Graham heavily recruits him as his QB to lead the ‘High Octane” offense; Graham then leaves and Voytik decides to stick with Paul Chryst as the new Pitt HC. Good for him and his giving his word then sticking to it through the coaching change was refreshing to see.

In Voytik’s true FR year JR Tino Sunseri took all but two snaps during the season with perennial back-up Trey Anderson getting the other two. The staff wanted Voytik to redshirt as they envisioned him to be a multi-year starter for future teams.

Over the off-season rsFR Voytik appeared to be the heir apparent due to Sunseri’s graduation. I say appeared to be because Chryst could well have started Anderson but the odds were against it happening. However, Chryst felt Voytik wasn’t ready to be thrown into the fire yet and reached out for more experience, recruiting journeyman transfer Tom Savage onto the team over that summer.

That was an understandable and smart move because even though rsFR QBs do have some success as starters had Chad not done well we’d have a rsFR as a starter with Trey Anderson as his backup… not an ideal situation to have as both players were untested and had almost no game experience to fall back on.

After joining the team Savage takes all the QB1 snaps in the ‘13 fall camp then plays well as the starter with Voytik as 2^nd string. Voytik got his feet wet playing in four games and went 6/11 for 116 yards with no TDs or INTs. The team finished 7-6 on the season and things are looking up for Voytik to get the starting QB’s mantle draped over his shoulders for upcoming 2015 season.

That mantle fit and as a starting QB Voytik started off poorly and it took a full six games for him, Chryst and OC Joe Rudolph to find a successful balance of play calling and confidence to maximize his talents. Those adjustments showed well in the latter half of the season when Voytik settled down and played better football on the way to a 6-7 final record.

On the year he completed 61.3% of his passes, throwing for 2233 yards with 16 TDs and 5 INTs for a 140.2 rating – good for 40th in the nation in passing efficiency.  Throw in he was the team’s second leading rusher with 466 yards on 49 carries (4.3 ypc) and that is a pretty good rookie year showing overall. But it was also not what most fans expected of him.

We can argue forever whether or not Voytik lived up to the recruiting sites rankings and the fan and media hype. We’ve discussed what transpired between his recruitment in 2012 until he played his last full game at the end of 2014 many times and have differing opinions on his scorecard.  Some of those opinions differed markedly between what we wanted to see from a nice guy Pitt player and what we actually saw him do out on the field of play.

Personally I believe he didn’t meet expectations and played as an average D1 QB would do. I could understand fans’ high hopes for him after his recruitment but it was evident to me as far back as 2012-13 when I watched him in practices and scrimmages that he wasn’t the passer the media and recruiting sites had made him out to be.

He didn’t lose games for us based on his individual play but also didn’t win any games on it either. He did alright for a first year starter; doing well in some spots and badly in others, and that’s about it.  I don’t think that any Pitt fan who is honest is going to say Voytik played up to the high outlook set for him.

But we fans had hoped the progression we saw take place over the latter part of the season would resume as he began working during the offseason and into fall camp toward his second year as the starting Pitt QB.

That didn’t happen either and his progression came to a screeching halt.  Why was that? It was because Nate Peterman transferred in from Tennessee. Peterman, who was also a 4* recruit back in 2012 and who had been recruited to UT by Jim Chaney, competed for the starting position along with and against Voytik.

That transfer gave the fans and the media, who surprisingly downplayed and severely underestimated the possibility of Voytik losing his job, something to watch that we hadn’t had in over 15 years going back to Thurman and Priestly vying for the starting job in 2000. Ever since then there was a heir apparent at QB and we just seemed to stumble along at that position.

We Pitt fans jumped on the QB debate like a pack of hungry wolves because we love to argue about the relative merits of players and the facts of their circumstances, and we love to criticize the coaching staff when things go sideways for one of our players. I have been reading those discussions on here from the end of the second game of this season straight through and, I’m sure, past Voytik’s announcement of his transfer.

We have read and heard everything from the “fix was in” for Peterman, which is interesting given Peterman made the overture to play at Pitt and not the other way around, to the belief Chaney called plays to force Voytik to play poorly in camp and in the beginning of the season on purpose.

This is a load of rationalization and is a true misdirection of blame away from a favorite son… and that is what Voytik had been for our fans.

But let’s not point our fingers at Jim Chaney only for Chad Voytik’s predicament.  We need to level some real and deserved blame at Voytik himself because did his own part in losing his starting position. He didn’t play well in camp and, lukewarm media reports aside (remember they didn’t see the actual practices), he badly handled the pressure of another QB competing for his job.

One thing every Pitt fan doesn’t get, or refuses to acknowledge, is once he got any competition at all from another equally, or more talented, QB Chad’s less than stellar work in camp paved his way out of the starting job.

You can look back at when the arc of Voytik’s progression at QB halted. It was when Peterman declared his intent to transfer in early February. During the spring game in April we saw Voytik go 12/26 for 167 yards and no TDs while rsFR QB Adam Bertke put up monster numbers.

Peterman then joins the team for fall camp. During the latter half of that camp Chad and Nate begin rotating taking QB1 snaps, which loosens Chad’s hold on the job.  Voytik’s, and his competitor, Peterman’s camp scrimmage results show this… (better numbers in bold):

The  play by Voytik did not put forward a strong case in battling to keep his job and so those head to head scrimmages effectively leveled out the race, if not tilt it into Peterman’s favor.  But Voytik was still the incumbent starter, Chaney stated that publicly toward the end of camp and he put Voytik in as that for the first two games. That lasted five quarters of play as Voytik faltered badly and Peterman took over the reins permanently.

To help understand Chaney’s decision, and it was a pretty dramatic one, just look at how Voytik did in those first two games against YSU and Akron, and how that made Chaney’s job easier.

Starting and playing almost the whole YSU game Voytik did this:  Passing 9-14 for 72 yards, 64%, 5.1 YPA & 8.0 YPC with 1 TD and 1 INT for a 116.1 QB rating… a rather meager showing.  Rushing he had 8 carries for 6 yards (0.8) and 1 TD.

His next outing, against Akron in a truncated appearance, he had: Passing 6-7 for 32 yards, 86%, 4.6 YPA & 5.3 YPC with no TDs or INTs.   Rushing he carried the ball 4 times for -10 yards (-2.5).

His rushing in those matches, normally a strong part of his game, failed him as he was also sacked four times and didn’t get much yardage when he ran the ball forward.  Again, all tallied up it was not a productive or good enough body of work from someone fighting to keep his job.

The bottom line is this; even with his talent, his supposed drive and desire, and a full year’s experience as a D1 starting QB, Chad Voytik choked when he should have excelled. As stated above, he did nothing to make it clear he would be the better choice at QB.  In essence he never ‘took ownership’ of the starting job.

Pitt fans tend to look at only the first two games of the season and use them as their basis for saying ‘Chaney called bad plays for Voytik’s skill set” or “Voytik was set up to fail” when the reality was he started faltering even before the season started.  His tepid at best regular season play against YSU and Akron were just end of an average showing through fall camp.

Do we fans really expect or want an OC who disregards his own offensive philosophy and offensive personnel plans just to ensure that a camp QB competition is “fair” (whatever that means)?  Of course we don’t. However Pitt fans feel that because Chaney didn’t put forward a completely generic competition he somehow put the screw job on Voytik.

No, Chaney had known the bones of what he wanted to do offensively soon after he was hired by Narduzzi and arrived at Pitt.  Offensive Coordinators, the good ones at least, look at the personnel they have and build an offense which can be successful with those tools. Remember when Graham tried to force Sunseri into the running QB that he wasn’t?  Every single Pitt fan complained about that then because it hurt the offense and we lost games because of it… and that was after Sunseri had just been the QB on the 2010 eight win team and had about the same production at QB as Voytik had in 2014.

But now with a new HC and OC we wanted the same thing to happen to Voytik?  Being put into an offense that didn’t really meet his skill set?

Chaney may well have had a different idea of what type of offense he could run when Voytik was the only QB with starting experience on the roster.  But once Peterman arrived, with his different passing skill set and his lower talent running the ball, Chaney reviewed his outlook because of the better options he now had. With that he used the fall camp to see which QB would best fit what he wanted his offense to do.

That is exactly what happened before this season started and what carried over into the first two games. Peterman enhanced the overall scheme of what Chaney wanted and so won the starting job.

Voytik most surely helped us back in 2014. He threw more TDs than INTs, had a good completion percentage and his legs helped us win games too. He presented 100% of his efforts to the opponents and played to his abilities and helped us win games.  Not the most shining of endorsements but all true.

What Voytik mostly is though is a good and solid student/athlete who will graduate with a Pitt degree, something that a lot of college players can’t do. He’s a fine young man whose many charitable works while at Pitt are to be admired and a helpful teammate who assisted others around him to be better players. He also held the ’12 recruiting class together mainly, and in no small measure, through the force of his personality.  We thank him for all that and for his contributions to Pitt football.

Chad will land on his feet and have success playing somewhere else, at least I hope so. Perhaps he’ll land a starting job in D1. One thing is that he may not be able to join a new team earlier than the summer due to his having to take spring semester classes to finish his degree requirements.  He only needs six credits but the finals are the last week in April.  It would really help if he could finagle something to get to his new school’s spring drills and so start competing there as soon as possible.

But then again maybe a move toward the fun side of college ball would fit him better, much like the decision Mark Myers made to go to lower division John Carroll and just be a kid who wants to play football games, win as many as possible… and be happy doing it.

Either way it’s his last season – he might as well enjoy it.