(This is a long look at the current QB situation so far this season)

Pitt is in the midst of something we haven’t had in a very long time and that is a genuine quarterback competition being played out in real time and for the world to see.  We have been told there were competitions in the past but those were lip service to the media. This season however we are being treated to something this new staff feels is of uppermost priority, finding the QB which is the best overall for the team.  Here is background on the issue and some Q & As that may help to enlighten our fans as to what is and has been transpiring in this interesting development.

How did Pitt get the two principal QBs, Chad Voytik and Nate Peterman, on the roster?

For that we have to go back to 2011 when both Voytik and Peterman were in their senior years in high school.  Both players were star high school QBs and one left his hometown state of Tennessee to go to Pitt and the other kid left Florida to go to play his college ball in Tennessee.

In high school Chad Voytik was a 6’0” 192 lb running QB and played for the Cleveland Blue Raiders, located in Cleveland, TN, a small town of 42,000 located 30 miles northeast of Chattanooga and in the western foothill of the southern Great Smokey Mountains.

Voytik had a very good career there being named both an All-State player and a high school All-American.  He was a dual threat QB at Cleveland, passing for over 5,000 yards in his three years starting and was also a prolific runner.

Voytik was a Rivals.com four star (4*) player who was also ranked 4^th nationally among senior QBs and the #1 player at any position in TN. Twelve other D1 schools wanted Voytik as a recruit including PSU, Clemson, Virginia, Syracuse and Louisville.  Those are all good football schools and play in competitive Power Five conferences.

Here is a taste of what Voytik was like in HS:

(Note that on the Rivals.com page linked above the first QB listed as “Similar Quarterbacks” is, ironically, Nathan Peterman)

So Voytik was highly regarded coming out of HS and chose Pitt over his other offers for a couple of very specific reasons; the hiring of Todd Graham as Pitt’s head coach after the 2010 season and Graham’s instituting his “High Octane” offense here.  The other reason was the possibility being the starter as early as his rsFR season based on his specific abilities even though incumbent QB Tino Sunseri would still be eligible.

To be successful that offense revolved around a QB who could run the ‘read-option’ plays first and pass the ball second. Voytik’s running ability and his experience playing that similar role in HS was what attracted Todd Graham to Voytik who seemed perfectly built for the role.

The best laid plans often fall through in college football though and Graham’s tenure at Pitt was cut short by his crawling on his knees carrying Penny on his back to Arizona State where he took the HC job.  That left Voytik in the wind as he had already verbally committed to Pitt and was planning to attend specifically to play in that offense.

After Paul Chryst was hired as the new Head Coach he immediately dispatched Joe Rudolph to re-recruit Voytik to stay the course with his Pitt verbal and Voytik did just that. That didn’t surprise Pitt fans as it was evident that Voytik was a straight shooter and wanted to honor his commitment to the school itself.

Nate Peterman relocated from Florida and attended the South Eastern Conference’s University of Tennessee (UT) as  Rivals.com 4* QB after being recruited by UT’s Offensive Coordinator Jim Chaney who, ironically, is now Pitt’s OC.  We’ll have more on that relationship later.

Peterman, at 6’2” and 220 lbs, also had a sterling HS career when he played for the Class 8 (one of the highest)  Bartram Trail High School Bears in St. Johns, FL.  His HS highlights are here:

Completed 63% of his passes (199 of 315) for 2,932 yards and 36 touchdowns as a senior at Bartram Trail in 2011…36 TD passes ranked second all-time in St. Johns County history, trailing only Tim Tebow’s 46 in 2004…Peterman also rushed for 319 yards and five TDs…selected first team All-Florida Class 6A…St. Johns County Player of the Year…The Florida Times-Union All-First Coast…led Bartram Trail to a 12-2 record and the Florida 6A semifinals as a senior…played in the Offense-Defense All-American Bowl…rated the nation’s No. 10 quarterback prospect by Rivals…

Here is a highlights video from Peterman’s senior season in HS:

That brings both Peterman and Voytik through their HS careers, their recruitment and up to entering college. One became a D1 starting QB (Voytik) and the other one a QB left out of the lineup and looking at a transfer to somewhere he could finish his career with a shot at real and meaningful playing time (Peterman).

How did the QBs do early in their college careers?

Peterman took a redshirt as a true freshman over the 2012 season in his first year at UT.  Then Jim Chaney left there for a similar job at the University of Arkansas prior to the 2013 season and Peterman saw limited playing time over the next two seasons starting only two games, one against Alabama and the other against Florida.  In both games he did nothing to stand out on the field of play.

However, when Chaney was subsequently hired as the Pitt OC he didn’t forget about Peterman and his talents so he jumped at the chance to have him on the roster here. This was reiterated as quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 

“Peterman declined to say what schools other than Pitt he was considering, but surely there were some that had a clearer path to a starting job. Chad Voytik started all 13 games for the Panthers in 2014 and, particularly with his late-season improvement, seemed poised for a step forward in 2015.

But those other school’s didn’t have Pitt’s secret weapon: incoming offensive coordinator Jim Chaney, who two years earlier, as Tennessee’s offensive coordinator, helped recruit Peterman.

Voytik has had the more successful career by far in ascending to the starting QB for Pitt during the 2014 season under Paul Chryst and OC Joe Rudolph.  Voytik redshirted in 2012 as Chryst wasn’t didn’t feel comfortable playing a true FR QB who wasn’t experienced at the college level with his pro-style drop back passing offense.

Then in 2012 Paul Chryst was hired and he didn’t feel Voytik was ready to be a starter as rsFR and trying to adapt not only to a new HC and OC but a whole new and dramatically different offensive system than what Voytik played in HS and during his first year at Pitt with Graham.  Because of that decision to skip the underclassman Voytik he went out and recruited Rutgers’s transferring strong-armed SR Tom Savage to be the starter and run his pro-style offense.

Last year in 2014 Voytik ascended to the starting position without any real QB competition from JR Trey Anderson, who was a specific read-option QB brought in by Graham back in ’11 solely to run that offense if needed. There was no real competition from our two new QB recruits Adam Bertke and Joe Repischak either so Voytik had a clear shot at the starting job and a season full of playing time.

During Voytik’s season last year he showed signs of learning the passing game on the job especially since Chryst and Rudolph held his running in check to get him acclimated to being a pocket passer first before taking off and running with the ball.  After a shaky first half of the season Voytik found a groove and improved his play when he began to better understand the offense through experience under center and got comfortable in the role Pitt’s offense needed.

As you can see from his official statistics through the first six games he had 84 completions in 143 attempts for a 58% completion rate, 949 yards with 8 TDs and 5 interceptions.  That’s not great passing production but it isn’t a bad one either especially for a new starter.  The “he must learn pocket passing as he goes” play calling by Chryst/Rudolph didn’t allow Voytik to leverage his strong talent of running the football during those six games either and, unlike later in the season, he had only 169 yards rushing on 61 carries and one TD for a poor 2.8 yards per carry (YPC) average.

His ability to tuck and run the ball effectively proved to be the silver lining in latter half of the season however as Voytik used his legs to complement the better passing game he developed.  He had the ability to salvage his too-early bail outs of the pocket and convert them to yards on the ground.  The last half of the season saw him progress well with his 74 of 109 (68%) passing for 1062 yards and 7 TDs to 1 INT.

Maybe as impressive as those passing statistics was his getting better yardage per run with some newly called QB keeper rushing plays as he carried 60 times for 257 yards at a 4.3 yard clip, increased from 2.8 before, and scored one TD. His bowl game was much the same good running as the other later games and that is an impressive production from a mobile QB.

However, what those good passing stats don’t show was his tentativeness in decision making when back to pass out of the shotgun or a three-step drop. He’s never seemed to fully trust his offensive line to create and keep a passing pocket for his protection and giving him enough time to throw to other than his primary receivers and he scrambled out too soon often.

So in a sense it was a tale of two seasons for Chad Voytik.  He played well in spurts though out the year but never really showed the passing proficiency Pitt needed the QB to have to be able to control a game, especially if our running game faltered.  He had impressive first year stats, especially considering his was playing with All-American running back James Conner behind him who was taking a big share of the offensive plays.  But that good rushing game by our running backs helped to mask some passing deficiencies Voytik had also.

One of those problems was the lack of a consistent deep passing game on his part.  His problem isn’t that he can’t throw the ball deep downfield, he can get length in deep attempts when he winds up and throws as hard as he can, but his accuracy and timing is off so often that most of those passes fall incomplete. He has never been a QB who is comfortably patient in the pocket, steps up from pressure and throws an accurate long ball. Because of that Voytik keeps his passing to the short and safer completions, mostly to the outer thirds of the  field, because he is more at ease with that.

In almost always taking the shorter throws Voytik has put a limit on one of the best receivers in the nation in Tyler Boyd and thus we didn’t get the most we could out of Boyd’s speed and talents.  Time and again we have seen Boyd open on a deeper route and Voytik either doesn’t see him or chooses to go to a closer receiver.

That brings us up to the 2015 season.

How did the competition situation play out in fall camp?

One thing that Pat Narduzzi made clear when he was hired was that he and his staff would go into the Spring Practices and Fall Camp with a completely ‘clean slate” in regards to the two-deep.  That meant every player on the roster had an opportunity to practice and play his way into playing time and possibly a starting position.  We saw him do just this across the board and this season’s two-deep lineup has some names on it that we may not have expected to see getting into the scrimmages and games as much as they have.

For instance, Tyrique Jarrett and Jeremiah Taleni at Nose Tackle, true FR James Folston as a 2^nd string Defensive End, true FR Jordan Whitehead at Strong Safety and converted TE Brian O’Neill as a starter at Right Tackle are a few instances of Narduzzi doing what he said he’d do.

The 1^st string rotation of the two players to find a starting QB is also exactly what Narduzzi claimed he and Chaney would do from the first day of fall camp in August.  So it should come as no surprise to any fan that what is happening with the QBs over the first two games of the season is taking place.

But the fact is that since the beginning of fall camp a lot of Pitt fans have not believed the competition would happen as much as it has been.  It is as if they truly thought it was impossible for a new HC to come in and talk seriously and honestly about benching the incumbent QB in favor of a transfer.

One of the reason some fans are skeptical of Narduzzi’s sitting Voytik down on a rotating basis is that Narduzzi himself, back in early July and just after Peterman enrolled at Pitt, talked in glowing terms about how Voytik could be the guy to lead the 2015 offense.

But what are overlooked in that interview are the words and phrases he used to describe how the staff viewed Voytik up to that point.  Starting at the 0:19s mark of the video Narduzzi says this:

“I knew he (Voytik) could run and I knew he was a leader and was tough but he needs to be a guy who can sit in the pocket and make throws…  He needs to build upon what we saw in winter ball and spring practices.”

This is an important interview to remember when discussing how we came to have a QB competition starting in fall camp because that is why Narduzzi and Chaney are looking at Nate Peterman’s pocket passing as a strong reason he’s in the running as a possible starter.

The offensive staff rotated Peterman and Voytik through the 1^st team on an equal basis during the practices and then in the scrimmages. That gave the HC and the OC and chance to put both young men in to run the same multiple plays to gauge the QB’s ability to handle a full spectrum of play calling. It was a distinct one-on-one comparison if you will.  Here are the numbers from the two scrimmages:

You can see that as the camp went on the staff gave Peterman a little more work so they could get a handle of his progress and ability prior to the season opening.

What has happened in the season and what do we think will take place?

With two games against Youngstown State (W 45-37) and Akron (W 24-7) under our belt Pat Narduzzi has stuck to his earlier statements in that he and Chaney would play both QBs for at least a couple series and then stick with the QB who had the ‘hot hand’ in the game.  In the YSU game Voytik started and played the first two series, Peterman was then put in for the next two and then Voytik finished out the game.

Against Akron the pattern differed as Voytik again started the first two series, Peterman had two then Voytik was in for a series.  But something interesting happened on the fifth series.  With the first half coming to a close and Pitt holding a slim 10-7 lead Voytik got the ball at the Pitt 27 and, after one incompletion, was benched for Peterman who finished the two-minute drill with a TD pass to Holtz and 44 seconds on the clock.

During that series Peterman was 4/5 passing for 52 yards and a TD… and also had a 17 yard run and was directly responsible for three 1^st downs, all in about a 1:30 minutes.  Here are the current season totals for both players.

Does all that mean Peterman has ascended to the starting QB job?  No, that is not the case at all. That switch might happen later on but as of now Voytik has been the starting QB in both games. What it does mean is that the staff put Peterman in a pressure situation to see what he would do and he executed the series perfectly.  Then again Voytik has done that same thing, drove the team down and scored points under pressure, before in his career so far.  It can’t, or shouldn’t be, lost on the staff that Voytik did that before they arrived on the scene.

After the Akron game Narduzzi and Chaney have clearly stated that this rotating playing time experiment (or QB auditions as I call it) will continue on for at least through the Iowa game this weekend based on past performance and how well the kids do with the new Iowa offensive game plan during the game-week practices.  Iowa is a Big Ten school that has better talent and a stronger team that our other two opponents so this should be a better test to see which QB has the ‘right(er) stuff’ to be the starter through the ACC schedule.

On the staff deciding who will be the starting quarterback:

On that issue Narduzzi said this just two days ago:

“We don’t decide; the kids decide. We play the guys who have practiced the best. Chad [Voytik] comes prepared every week and I don’t expect him to come any less prepared this week. We have to go with whoever has the hot hand. We have two very capable quarterbacks and you become a good football team when there is competition. I feel comfortable with both of those guys.

When you have a team like this, Nathan [Peterman] and Chad spend at least one night out of the week together. They’re close. We have a tight-knit football team. We’ll find out who has a better week at practice and we’ll try to make a decision. Everyone has good and bad days and this happens with quarterbacks, too. Neither one of them had that in the past two weeks but it’s just whoever has the hot hand.”

I really like what Narduzzi is doing as of this upcoming game.  Chad Voytik turned into a pretty decent QB for us over the course of the last season and showed some solid strong points; his running ability, his energy and desire to succeed shined through last season. But as with any college football player he had his share of weaker traits also.

Even though this staff didn’t see Voytik in action for the 2014 season, save for the bowl game against Houston, there was a library of game film, and of course team players and the prior staff to talk with and get answers to the questions they had about how successful Voytik actually was.  As we fans know statistics don’t tell the whole story, and truth be told Voytik’s overall play wasn’t much more than average for college QBs.

He was like Ying and Yang out there in some aspects.  As far as the national statistical rankings went he ended up like this (best to worst);

Yards Per Completion             36^th          12.69

Passing Efficiency                   40^th          140.2

Passing TDs                           64^th          16

Passing Yards                        77^th          2233

Passing Yards Per Game        85^th          171.8

Points Responsible For           95^th          114

Points Per Game                    96^th          8.9

It has to be pointed out that some of these statistics are low as a result of the Chryst staff relying on the running game as that was 66% of our offensive plays and also James Conner getting 298 carries along with 26 TDs.  Had we a balanced offense his statistics would have been higher

On the other hand Nate Peterman had such a small sample size at UT last season it can’t really be measured how good he was.  He played sparingly over six games and his box score was this: 10 of 20 passing for a 50% rate, 49 yards and a yards per completion of 4.9 yards, no TDs or INTs and a rating of 70.6.

All the stats and fan’s emotions aside, how good are both QBs?

Aside from statistics whenever one is evaluating how well a QB actually played the position you have to take into account his behavior and intangibles to go along with his numbers. Again, this staff hadn’t watched Peterman play football in 2014 so he was behind the eight ball in that respect. However, the fact that Chaney was, as stated earlier in this article, Peterman’s recruiter and OC at UT a few years back has had a huge impact on how this competition came about.

Voytik’s play is a bit easier to dissect as we watched every minute of him being the starter through 13 games last season. Opinions vary of how effective he was as a QB and here’s my take.  He did well as far as pure numbers go but I never had the feeling that he was in complete command of the huddle and control of the offense. He never imbued us with the sense that every time he dropped back to pass something successful and exciting was going to happen.  That said, when he tucked the ball in and started to run that was the time he was most consistently successful… and exciting.

It wasn’t as if we looked at Voytik and felt that he could engineer a late game come from behind win either. The few times he was put into that position the comeback didn’t happen except for a good 2^nd half of play in the 2013 bowl game when Tome savage was injured.  By that game was really the last time we saw anything dramatic in Voytik’s passing game as it influenced the latter stages of a ball game.

Then of course there is his won & loss record as a QB which panned out as 6-7 on the season.  Everyone knows that no game is won or lost on one team member’s play alone, at least most of the time.  Conner did that a few times last season for us but Voytik was heavily dependent on the defense keeping the score low enough so that he would be able to influence the outcome on his play alone.

We know that didn’t happen as our defense folded in some of the worse times possible making Voytik’s job that much harder.  Very few times did our defense do anything to help put Voytik in the position to influence the outcome of the game on his own play. So you certainly can’t say that those seven losses were on him, that isn’t true.  Just as you can’t really point to any of our wins and say he made that happen on his play either.

Peterman is a puzzle as far as intangibles go. We fans just literally don’t know enough about how talented he is or how good he is in pressure situations to be able to accurately put his talents in that area up against Voytik’s.

Which is exactly why the coaching staff is creating the competition now.

Who is ‘ahead’ now and who will be the starter when it matters?

As of this writing I think you’d have to say that Nate Peterman has not only surprised the Pitt nation with his good play but has firmly outplayed Chad Voytik to this point. That is the majority opinion that I’m reading and hearing so far.  Peterman has shown better cool under pressure and has stayed in the pocket and gone through his progressions much better than Voytik has done now and in the past.

One gets a stronger sense of security in the passing game when Peterman is in there even though we’ve only seen him in two games and attempting just 21 passes.  But Voytik hasn’t played as poorly as it seems either.  I think we look at his limited time under center this season, and because there is competition ongoing some automatically think that he’s regressed from last season.  Well, the truth is that his play so far is not on par with his 2014 success but that also doesn’t mean that he couldn’t re-grab the starting job and end up playing better than he did last year.  You just never know.

I am a bit surprised that when faced with real competition for the first time in college ball Voytik has faltered and not risen to the occasion as he should given what we know of his personality.  That is worry making to me.

What has played out so far is that the coaching staff has felt better about having Peterman in there rather than Voytik so far.  They are looking at specific aspects of QB play and determining which QB gives them the best chance to do well in them and lead the team to wins.  I think poise under center, reading progressions, looking off defenders and the ability to go deep while being consistent  is what the staff will use in making their final decision.

That makes the Iowa game all the more fun to watch this weekend.  Not only will we see if the team as a whole can play well enough to win against better competition but the great possibility exists that whichever QB plays better in that game may cinch the starting job against our ACC opponent Virginia Tech on Oct 3rd.  We’ll have a bye week after the Iowa game which should help the staff solidify their decision as to who will get the lion’s share of playing time.