This is shaping up to be a big weekend, with a not-small portion of Pitt’s 2024 roster potentially coming from players who will be on campus over the next 48 hours. Let’s look at who we’ve confirmed as visiting and who we think Pitt will land.
- We’ve confirmed two high school prospects visiting this weekend:
Dugger is Pitt’s quarterback commit in the 2024 recruiting class, and he has been committed to the Panthers since the summer. There’s no drama there, which I think we can all appreciate these days.
Boyd is a safety prospect in the 2024 class from Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia. He decommitted from James Madison in late November and Indiana offered him not long after that - which makes sense, since JMU head coach Curt Cignetti was hired the take over the Hoosiers, and Boyd visited Indiana last weekend. Pitt’s offer is significant enough to get Boyd on campus for a visit, and I think the Panthers have a good chance of landing him (although his connections to the Indiana staff are strong).
Then there are the transfers. Here are the guys we’ve confirmed so far:
Let’s start from the top of that list and work down.
- Reid and Lee are skill guys from Western Carolina. Clearly, the key influence there is new Pitt offensive coordinator Kade Bell, who came to the Panthers after a season that saw Reid and Lee as the driving forces behind the Catamounts’ top-ranked offense.
Likewise, Reid and Lee are visiting Pitt because of Bell (Reid even said he decided to go to the portal because Bell left WCU). Those guys want to be in Bell’s offense - and play at the Power Five level - and I think they’ll get an opportunity to do so.
- In terms of rankings as a high school prospect, Ojiegbe is one of the top guys coming to campus this weekend. He was a four-star defensive end prospect in the class of 2023 - the No. 2 recruit in the state of Maryland and a top-20 defensive end in the country.
He signed with Clemson out of high school but didn’t see much playing time as a freshman this fall, logging just 11 snaps over the course of two games. That allowed him to keep his redshirt, so he entered the transfer portal with four years of eligibility remaining.
From what we can gather, Ojiegbe - pronounced ‘Oh-JEB-way’ - is Pitt’s to lose. It sounds like Ojiegbe focused on Pitt from the start and should end up as a Panther.
- James is a new name we’re bringing to the table, and like Ojiegbe, he was a four-star prospect coming out of high school, too. The No. 34 recruit in the state of Florida and the No. 16 defensive tackle prospect in the nation for the class of 2022, James had a lot of offers after playing at IMG Academy. He played in four games as a true freshman and preserved his redshirt and then got on the field for all 12 games this past season, recording 140 defensive snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, and he went into the transfer portal after the season ended.
James has been relatively quiet on social media about his transfer recruitment, but we’ve confirmed that he will be at Pitt for an official visit this weekend and, like Ojiegbe, looks like a solid bet to end up as a Panther.
- Cooper is a redshirt sophomore interior offensive lineman at N.C. State. It looks like Louisville is involved there, but Cooper told Jim he might visit the Cardinals in January, which feels to me like an opening for Pitt to close the deal this weekend. We’ll see what happens.
- Brumfield is a middle linebacker who played one season at Middle Tennessee after arriving there from Northwest Mississippi Community College last January. He didn’t open the season as MTSU’s starting middle linebacker, but he moved into that role in Week Three and started the final 10 games, finishing as the Blue Raiders’ leading tackler with 81 tackles, and he also recorded 6.5 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks, two forced fumbles and a team-high 24 pressures, according to PFF.
Brumfield has taken a visit to Virginia Tech and Pitt will be his final visit, so it looks like it will come down to the Panthers and the Hokies. I’m not sure which way this one is leaning, but it’s always good to have the final visit.
- Speaking of the final visit, I can’t finish this update without mentioning Francis Brewu and Jeremiah Marcelin. Both guys seem to be up in the air right now; despite each telling me he plans to sign with Pitt at various points in the last week or two, Brewu is taking an official visit to Michigan State this weekend and Marcelin has continued to have contact with the coaching staffs at Louisville and Maryland (where he took official visits over the summer).
To some extent, there has always been an element of late-cycle drama in recruiting, and it only got more dramatic with the advent of June official visits, which generated a lot of summer commitments but also left the door open for other schools to get recruits on campus for December official visits, which often lead to flips.
And now, the situation is even more altered, as schools in need of a few late additions to the recruiting class can find NIL enticements to pull in coveted prospects from other schools’ classes.
Late-cycle drama is nothing new, but the changes of the last five years or so have only exacerbated the situation. And Pitt is experiencing it; how things play out in similar fashion to just about everything else right now, whether it’s transfers or high school recruiting.
Relationships, development, environment - all of those factors that used to loom so large in recruiting just don’t carry the same weight anymore.
- Back to the guys we’ve confirmed for this weekend. I think Pitt will get Reid, Lee, Ojiegbe and James, with a pretty good shot at Cooper and Brumfield. I also am fairly confident there will be more transfers on campus than just those six; I know for a fact there will be, and we’ll be working throughout the weekend to confirm more names.
And I’ll add this: it’s entirely possible and even probable that Pitt will sign one or even more transfers without those players visiting. So the players from this week’s visits and last week’s visits will not represent the entirety of the Panthers’ transfer class this offseason.
- We’ve confirmed two high school prospects visiting this weekend:
Dugger is Pitt’s quarterback commit in the 2024 recruiting class, and he has been committed to the Panthers since the summer. There’s no drama there, which I think we can all appreciate these days.
Boyd is a safety prospect in the 2024 class from Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia. He decommitted from James Madison in late November and Indiana offered him not long after that - which makes sense, since JMU head coach Curt Cignetti was hired the take over the Hoosiers, and Boyd visited Indiana last weekend. Pitt’s offer is significant enough to get Boyd on campus for a visit, and I think the Panthers have a good chance of landing him (although his connections to the Indiana staff are strong).
Then there are the transfers. Here are the guys we’ve confirmed so far:
Let’s start from the top of that list and work down.
- Reid and Lee are skill guys from Western Carolina. Clearly, the key influence there is new Pitt offensive coordinator Kade Bell, who came to the Panthers after a season that saw Reid and Lee as the driving forces behind the Catamounts’ top-ranked offense.
Likewise, Reid and Lee are visiting Pitt because of Bell (Reid even said he decided to go to the portal because Bell left WCU). Those guys want to be in Bell’s offense - and play at the Power Five level - and I think they’ll get an opportunity to do so.
- In terms of rankings as a high school prospect, Ojiegbe is one of the top guys coming to campus this weekend. He was a four-star defensive end prospect in the class of 2023 - the No. 2 recruit in the state of Maryland and a top-20 defensive end in the country.
He signed with Clemson out of high school but didn’t see much playing time as a freshman this fall, logging just 11 snaps over the course of two games. That allowed him to keep his redshirt, so he entered the transfer portal with four years of eligibility remaining.
From what we can gather, Ojiegbe - pronounced ‘Oh-JEB-way’ - is Pitt’s to lose. It sounds like Ojiegbe focused on Pitt from the start and should end up as a Panther.
- James is a new name we’re bringing to the table, and like Ojiegbe, he was a four-star prospect coming out of high school, too. The No. 34 recruit in the state of Florida and the No. 16 defensive tackle prospect in the nation for the class of 2022, James had a lot of offers after playing at IMG Academy. He played in four games as a true freshman and preserved his redshirt and then got on the field for all 12 games this past season, recording 140 defensive snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, and he went into the transfer portal after the season ended.
James has been relatively quiet on social media about his transfer recruitment, but we’ve confirmed that he will be at Pitt for an official visit this weekend and, like Ojiegbe, looks like a solid bet to end up as a Panther.
- Cooper is a redshirt sophomore interior offensive lineman at N.C. State. It looks like Louisville is involved there, but Cooper told Jim he might visit the Cardinals in January, which feels to me like an opening for Pitt to close the deal this weekend. We’ll see what happens.
- Brumfield is a middle linebacker who played one season at Middle Tennessee after arriving there from Northwest Mississippi Community College last January. He didn’t open the season as MTSU’s starting middle linebacker, but he moved into that role in Week Three and started the final 10 games, finishing as the Blue Raiders’ leading tackler with 81 tackles, and he also recorded 6.5 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks, two forced fumbles and a team-high 24 pressures, according to PFF.
Brumfield has taken a visit to Virginia Tech and Pitt will be his final visit, so it looks like it will come down to the Panthers and the Hokies. I’m not sure which way this one is leaning, but it’s always good to have the final visit.
- Speaking of the final visit, I can’t finish this update without mentioning Francis Brewu and Jeremiah Marcelin. Both guys seem to be up in the air right now; despite each telling me he plans to sign with Pitt at various points in the last week or two, Brewu is taking an official visit to Michigan State this weekend and Marcelin has continued to have contact with the coaching staffs at Louisville and Maryland (where he took official visits over the summer).
To some extent, there has always been an element of late-cycle drama in recruiting, and it only got more dramatic with the advent of June official visits, which generated a lot of summer commitments but also left the door open for other schools to get recruits on campus for December official visits, which often lead to flips.
And now, the situation is even more altered, as schools in need of a few late additions to the recruiting class can find NIL enticements to pull in coveted prospects from other schools’ classes.
Late-cycle drama is nothing new, but the changes of the last five years or so have only exacerbated the situation. And Pitt is experiencing it; how things play out in similar fashion to just about everything else right now, whether it’s transfers or high school recruiting.
Relationships, development, environment - all of those factors that used to loom so large in recruiting just don’t carry the same weight anymore.
- Back to the guys we’ve confirmed for this weekend. I think Pitt will get Reid, Lee, Ojiegbe and James, with a pretty good shot at Cooper and Brumfield. I also am fairly confident there will be more transfers on campus than just those six; I know for a fact there will be, and we’ll be working throughout the weekend to confirm more names.
And I’ll add this: it’s entirely possible and even probable that Pitt will sign one or even more transfers without those players visiting. So the players from this week’s visits and last week’s visits will not represent the entirety of the Panthers’ transfer class this offseason.
