Seeing the potential in, and landing, those "diamonds in the rough" is a skill.
Polishing those diamonds to reach their potential is another one.
Pickett is such a diamond.
And Narduzzi and Whipple deserve a great deal of credit.
For all of you Narduzzi fans
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Polishing those diamonds to reach their potential is another one.
Pickett is such a diamond.
And Narduzzi and Whipple deserve a great deal of credit.
The QB position is a totally different thing than a basketball lottery pick. You can be an NBA lottery pick right out of high school (if that were still allowed) based mostly on potential.
QB, probably more than any other position in team sports have to be coached up and developed. There is a lot more to it than "normal human development" Pitt certainly isn't the only place Kenny would have developed into a legit high round choice, but I don't think he could have played just anywhere and developed like he did under Whipple.
Do you think Pete Gonzalez or Rod Rutherford would have gotten a cup of coffee in the NFL under Ken Karcher or Matt Cavanaugh?
Right. You can bring Nick Saban himself here, and we aren't going to be piling up 4/5 star recruits. They go to the blue bloods.
So schools like Pitt and other like them have to land the high 3s and a few 4s, develop them, and now work out the transfer portal to fill the holes.
Narduzzi needs to get credit for developing those guys, but should face heat for being so stubborn as to not change up his schemes. He should not be on the hot seat, but I expect him to get us over the hump in the next few years. I think we will be loaded next season.
Hail to Pitt!
dave
I’m worried about the next few years. The schedule likely gets much harder, and you lose Pickett. Not a great combo.
So hire the Stallings of Football 🏈 next?
Basketball hasn’t recovered from that mess of getting rid of Dixon
all that was needed was better/more assistants who knew how to recruit like Slice did. The staff kept losing those types without replacing them with people of equal caliber.
Alabama is picked to win every game every year and yet they dropped one already this season.
You’re the textbook definition of a trolls ass…
No, an epic disaster is being ranked no. 3 preseason and finishing 3-7-1.
Pitt circa 1984.
Once again showing that math is not your strong suit.
If we assume 85% for all of your >75% games that team's most likely record isn't 10-2, it's 9-3.
The notion that the minimum expectation for a team that is most likely to go 9-3 is 10-2 is one of those stupid things that people who don't understand math think.
You’re ok with mediocrity. I’m not, although I’m ok with it if there’s a chance at something special every once in a while. Obviously Pitt didn’t stick the dismount and mangled the basketball situation. It’s why there is something to be said for stability. And that’s why I supported Pitt extending our high school football coach. But when all hope is lost, what’s the point of having someone around who has no hope to sell the fan base? That’s what we had become with Dixon and that is what Narduzzi showed this year. Both had become mediocre (Narduzzi always was) with no ability to capitalize on the lightening in the bottle.
I don't follow. Pitt us 6-2 and they control their own destiny in the ACC going into November.
Where is this bottle of lightening? What does that even mean?
It means that things are capable of lining up for you every once in a while and when they do, you do something with it. If Pitt can go on to make the title game, or win it, then that’s acceptable I think.
But when you have a heisman type QB and a schedule that opened up for you, but then you lose to a MAC team and Miami, and likely another loss on a way to a garbage bowl, that’s not. That’s when a fan base says it’s never ever going to happen for us. That’s when you no longer have any hope to sell.
UNC, UVA, & WF have a Heisman type QB and play in the same conference. So 3 of these 4 coaches no longer have any hope to sell?
He's paid over $5 million and he sucks as a defensive coach. I'm not glad he's at Pitt and everyone I know feels the same
Stop the personal criticism. When you have nothing to say, you attack the person. Good job.
I don't think anyone is happy with mediocrity, but I think some live in reality. We are in the lower part of the revenue for P5 schools. And while the school is paying now decent money for coaches, a lot of that is to create stability and a culture for the coaches/team, both present and future.
If we are a school that continually goes through a rotation due to unrealistic expectations, and do stupid shit like move on from Dixon, even though he was still fielding tourney teams during down periods, or firing Wanny after a 10 and 9 win seasons when you team hadn't done that in 30 years at the time, then chances are much, much higher you are going to continue that cycle than hit the right coach, and that can be said for almost any school outside of a handful, and it's mainly because those schools have built in advantages that Pitt does not have.
I mean, look at Texas, Nebraska, FSU, Michigan, among others.
Did you expect Pitt to go undefeated this year? It sounds like it based on your post. I think that was HIGHLY unlikely. Unless you are a Bama, Georgia, or Clemson (most years) and have a roster stacked with 4 and 5 star talent, that is extremely hard to do. WMU loss, that was garbage and I'll give you that. But the Miami loss? It sucks, but I don't think it is some unacceptable loss some of you are making it. ANd yes, I agree, we will most likely lose one more. If we go 8-4 (or worse) and lose 3 out of our last 5 games, then I think Narduzzi should be on a short leash for next season. If we go 10-2 or 9-3 (and win the Coastal) and have a legit shot at the ACC Championship, I'd call the season a major success. If we go 9-3 and don't win the coastal (which is a possibility) it be disappointing to not play for the championship, but I'd still say it was a decent season overall. I think all of that is realistic thinking IMO.
I’m not really interested in discussing those situations. They are all different from ours. And I’m not saying that I endorse a decision either way in our situation. All I’m saying is that this is year 7 and if we collapse and have another mediocre year, then I’m not sure we will ever accomplish anything under Narduzzi. What would indicate we will?
I agree with your last several sentences. That’s where I pretty much am. I think this conversation is a bit premature because the rest of the year has to play out.
as far as moving on from Dixon, it had to be done. It wasn’t a mistake. The succession plan was the mistake. Too many people have an opinion that is biased because of the wonderful things he did here. We loved him. But that was ancient history and was never coming back. Season ticket sales were drying up. His tenure at TCU speaks for itself. After some moderate early success, his teams there have been league doormats. It was right to move on. We hit an expiration date with Jamie and that often happens in sports. The move was right for him and it was right for Pitt.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
It's sort of wild that some of you are talking about winning 75% of your games as being mediocre but that's what 8-4 actually means. I get it. Everyone wants to win 9-10 games a season but if you look backwards a little bit, Pitt is crawling out of a pretty deep hole. That doesn't happen quickly.
Yep, agree with your first. Let's see how the season plays out. While the Miami loss sucks, and it makes our margin of error thin now going forward (I think Miami wins out and has a legit shot winning the division), it was a "reasonable" loss for a lack of a better term.
I don't know if there was a complete loss of hope for Dixon. Things were definitely trending down, and maybe it was right to move on, but I definitely know people wanted him gone at the first sign of struggle or because he didn't make a final 4 in the tourney. And to me, that's the unrealistic part and where fans typically let their emotions get in the way of reality.
Honestly, I still have some hope in Capel. I mean, the dude took over a complete dumspter fire, and then immediately went into a COVID season. It definitely has not been simple. I know there are some out there that believe that building a successful BB program should only take a year or two, but again, that is very few and far between coaches that can do that, especially taking it from where Pitt had gone under Stallings.
I think the 8-4 is a disappointment specifically for this year. After starting 6-1 and not having a murderers row of a schedule and a top tier QB, if you go 2-3 down the stretch, that is disappointing.
Now, other seasons where we finished with 8 wins (2015, 2016, 2019), I was fine with those, especially with some of the schedules we had. I don't see that as mediocre or disappointing. I think it all depends on the situation.
Not having a succession plan by definition illustrates it wasn’t the right move and in fact was a jackass move. Barnes was horrible had no plans caved to pressure then ran away before facing the music. It’s entirely irrelevant to try to put the coaching change in one vaccum and succession plan in another… it was entirely the biggest dipshit move I’ve seen since allowing Sherrill to leave. Basketball knowledgeable writers Nationally rightfully ripped Pitt over it.
100% with you.
edit: I do 100% think the hope was gone with Jamie with any rationale thinker. At his best, over a ten year period, we never met expectations in the NCAA, falling short of our seed line each and every time. So when we became an every other year bubble team in the ACC, and the cupboard was bare moving forward, there was no hope in sight. If the parting of ways didn’t happen when it did, it was still inevitable and what would season ticket sales have been then? The problem was we were a few years removed from good when the decision was made and the right hire could have been made. Instead we didn’t get the right hire, we got the worst possible hire. Execution was the problem. Not the decision itself.
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Going 9-3 and failing to win the ACC shouldn't be defined as a collapse, imo.
I'm not sure there is anything to indicate any coach can accomplish a whole lot more at Pitt. Pitt lags behind so many other P5 programs in so many areas like support, booster involvement, revenue. Geographically, they don't have a lot of great talent in their back yard. It's just a really tough place to recruit to and very hard to win at a real high level.
You should have said this first, instead of at the end of your post. Then I could have been spared from reading the rest. National writers who loosely cover 360 teams couldn’t possibly know what people locally know about a team and program. Jamie was universally loved and respected but that doesn’t mean it was wrong to move on. How it was done it what was wrong. Fatally wrong.
I disagree a million percent. Its 90% luck, 10% skill. Remember Jamie Dixon finding all those diamonds in the rough? He never really elevated his "on paper" recruiting then all of a sudden, all of those diamonds in the rough didn't turn out so good. No more Gary McGhee and Aaron Grays. Its luck.
Simply put, you don't let Dixon walk away without collecting the full buyout unless you are sure you are going to hire a better coach. Dixon still is a "good coach." He isnt the elite coach/HOF coach that he was trending towards but he was never so bad that they should have let him walk away to hire a retread P5 coach or a mid-major lottery ticket.
If KP had graduated and moved on after last season as he would have been required to do absent the one-time only extra year, how would that change the narrative?
I mean, how many coaches get to keep a QB for 5 full seasons, and start him for 4 of them?
I'm not agreeing/disagreeing with with either you or '89--I'm only commenting on the idea that Narduzzi and/or his staff have some special ability to identify diamond in the rough talent that the rest of the college coaching world doesn't have is a complete fallacy. Every program and staff have similar stories, even the Clemsons of the world with guys like Hunter Renfrow or Skalski, or the Bamas with a Levi Wallace or a Josh Jacobs. Every Pitt coach before Narduzzi has had similar success stories with underrated players. So, as to the belief that Dooz and his staff are somehow exceptional in their abilitiies to identify and develop diamonds in the rough, that dog don't hunt.
Mark Whipple has a 30-year history of improving QBs and getting them to reach their potential.
Yes, his play calling is maddening sometimes. But the guy develops QBs, and that isn't "luck".
Every QB, every athlete, has a "ceiling" - Whipple has a knack for helping QBs get close to that ceiling.
And Narduzzi hired Whipple SPECIFICALLY to turn Pickett into the QB he was capable of being. And they both deserve credit for it.
I kind of agree, and Taylor was a 5 star who was never as solid and McGhee and Gray.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
pittdan77
Athletic Director
8-4 this season would feel like a disaster in that context. Means the team collapsed. Or was overrated. Either way, it won't be okay. Generally, if that's your average, your program isn't doing too badly.
