If there was any doubt left about how weird bowl game participation decisions have become, Bricen Garner has opted out to prepare for the NFL.

Edit: WMU is not bowl eligible, so he’s not really opting out of anything.
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He, without question is one of the top 2 QBs in the portal, along with Spencer Sanders. I imagine he will have his choice of a large number of schools if he is healthy. I’m pretty sure that serious NIL money will be involved.

I raise this because I think he stands head and shoulders above Jurkovic as a plug and play starter, and the fact we won’t be pursuing him illustrates how far the program still is from where it needs to be.

Oh Paul…tell us you’re watching soccer for the first time ever without telling us you’re watching for the 1st time.

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Front coming through Thursday/Friday. Could be upwards of 5-6 inches of snow and then bitterly cold. The cold is definite; the snow totals will depend but we should at least get something.

FWIW - temps regulate in January.

I think last year one of the commitment signings was delayed because they had to find a fax machine! LOL

Thinking about making a quick trip down for the game. For those who've been to Sun Bowl games in the past, can you share a little about what the fan experience might be like? And are hotels, stadium and fan events all centralized in the same area?

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Wtf how?

It’s been some kind of week.

This is how December has always gone. The season ends and coaches go on the road. New targets emerge, new offers go out, commits are reinforced and young prospects get seen by the coaches.

Add in the transfer portal, and things are positively crazy. Lots of activity and lots to track down, so let’s recap everything we learned this week.

By my count, there were more than a dozen offers to players in the transfer portal this week. Let’s look at them.

Quarterback
At the top of the list was Phil Jurkovec, the Pine-Richland standout who went to Notre Dame and transferred to Boston College for the last three years before re-entering the portal to find a new home for his final year of college football.

Pitt will be that home. The key here is the familiarity with Pitt offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti and his offense. Jurkovec feels like the offense is a good fit for him, and Cignetti knows Jurkovec is a good fit for the offense, based on the time they worked together at Boston College.

So if nothing else, there should be a higher likelihood of success with Jurkovec than there was with Kedon Slovis, simply based on that prior experience. We’ll see what happens.

The other name we have talked about a lot is Penn State underclassman Christian Veilleux. We’ve talked a lot about the coaches looking to get a veteran transfer to be the starter in 2023 and a younger transfer to compete for the job in 2024.

Jurkvoec is obviously the veteran transfer, and it seems like the coaches want Veilleux to be the younger transfer. I initially heard he was expected to visit Pitt this weekend, but it sounds like that will happen next weekend instead.

I think Pitt’s in good shape here, but we’ll see how things develop over the next week.

Wide receiver
The next priority, from where I’m sitting, has been receiver. I count five transfer receivers who have been identified as targets for the staff, and that’s more than any other position, as far as I can tell. Here are the five:

Jack Bech (LSU)
Dante Cephas (Kent State)
Daejon Reynolds (Florida)
Decoldest Crawford (Nebraska)
Ali Jennings (Old Dominion)

Cephas is obviously the most relevant name. He’s a local, having graduated from Penn Hills in the class of 2019. He picked Kent State over a handful of MAC offers, mostly due to grades, and now he’s got his choice of top schools nationally. Pitt, Penn State, West Virginia, Notre Dame, Georgia, Maryland, Colorado, Virginia Tech, Miami, Oklahoma and Kansas have all offered him so far, but right now, two schools seem to be most prominent:

Pitt and Penn State

Cephas will be at Penn State for an official visit this weekend, but that won’t be his first visit as a transfer portal prospect. He was at Pitt multiple times this week already. I’ve confirmed two unofficial visits to the South Side, with the most recent coming on Thursday, and I’ve heard he could be back again today before he heads to State College.

Does this mean his decision will come down to the in-state schools? Probably. But there are some appealing options among those other schools that have offered, and I have to imagine he’ll be tempted to take a look.

At the same time, Cephas is working on a short schedule. He wants to enroll at his new school in January, which means he has from now until next Sunday to visit anywhere he wants to consider (at least, that’s the window for taking hosted visits; he could always drive to South Bend and walk around and see what he thinks, but he couldn’t interact with the coaches there after next Sunday).

So the timeline might end up forcing his hand to pick one of the schools he knows the best, has seen the most and feels comfortable at - and that would seem to point to Pitt or Penn State.

I’ve said all week that Cephas has an opportunity now that he didn’t have four years ago: he can fully experience the recruiting process, albeit on a shorter timeline, and I’ve heard that he wants to do just that. We’ll see what that means over the next 10 days.

Bech is a name I brought to the conversation yesterday, and I think he’s quickly becoming a priority target for Cignetti and the Pitt offensive staff. He hasn’t posted much in the way of offers, but Pitt is working on him and I’ve heard he is expected to visit TCU this weekend.

The Horned Frogs obviously have a lot going for them, but I expect Pitt to make a push to get Bech on campus next weekend. I don’t know if those efforts will produce a visit, but the efforts will be made.

Similarly, I think efforts will be made with Reynolds, an explosive receiver whose standout performance came last month in Florida’s loss at Vanderbilt. The Gators didn’t win, but Reynolds caught eight passes for 165 yards and two touchdowns. So far, he has tweeted offers from Pitt, Mississippi State and Appalachian State, and I’ve been told that Pitt receivers coach Tiquan Underwood visited with him on Thursday.

We’re still working to see what we can uncover on how that visit went and what it means for Reynolds’ interest in the Panthers.

I don’t have much info on Crawford at this point; we’ll work on that over the weekend. Jennings, on the other hand, is planning to visit Mississippi State and Duke in December before taking two more visits in January, so he’s on a bit of a longer timeline.

I think the priorities right now are Bech and Cephas, with Reynolds not far behind.

Tight end
At tight end, the name I’ve mentioned throughout the week is Indiana junior AJ Barner. He continues to be the top target from what we’ve gathered, and while we haven’t been able to confirm a visit yet, everything I hear points toward him leaning to Pitt.

We’ve also talked about Maryland transfer CJ Dippre, but with an official visit to Alabama in the works, it seems like that won’t happen. Truthfully, it does seem like Barner is the priority regardless, but there was at least contact with Dippre.

Running back
Running back is an interesting position to me. Israel Abanikanda is a TBD at this point, but all indications - understandably so - are that he’s likely to leave for the NFL, probably opting out of the Sun Bowl in the process.

An official decision from Abanikanda could influence Pitt’s efforts with running backs in the portal. Obviously if he comes back, which is unlikely, they wouldn’t need a portal back (or maybe they would, since his return might lead to one of the other backs leaving). But if he leaves, as is expected, I think the staff will push to get someone from the portal.

It’s probably not the worst idea anyway. With Abanikanda and Vincent Davis likely gone, Pitt would have Rodney Hammond and C’Bo Flemister set to return plus Montravius Lloyd and possibly one more freshman back. Adding an experienced player to work in a rotation with Hammond and Flemister, as well as serving as insurance against an injury, makes sense.

So far, we’ve seen Louisville freshman Trevion Cooley announce an offer from Pitt, and there have been some apparent connections between the Pitt staff and Miami back Jaylan Knighton. I don’t know where either one of those situations will lead, and to be honest, I don’t think either guy would even consider Pitt until knowing for certain what Abanikanda is doing. The staff may be having conversations along the lines of “We expect him to go,” but I don’t think any transferring Power Five back will take a serious look until something definitive will happen.

So that one is in a holding pattern.

Offensive line
The other interesting spot is the offensive line. Two transfer linemen have public Pitt offers: Kent State tackle Marcellus Marshall and Purdue guard Spencer Holstege. Both offers are relatively fresh, so we’re gathering info as we can. Overall, I don’t think there’s a dire need for offensive line transfers, as long as the guys who can return from the 2022 roster do return. If you have Matt Goncalves, Branson Taylor and Ryan Baer at tackle and Blake Zubovic, Jake Kradel and Ryan Jacoby in the interior, you’ve got a good group to build from, after which you’ll need to find some younger players to step up - guys like Terrence Moore and Terrence Enos.

That said, if you can get a mature, developed, veteran lineman who has experience, you bring him in.

Continued...

Tonight is the first time in a long time that Pitt actually matches up with Syracuse well. Best shooting team capels had in terms of shooting the 3 and a few capable options putting in the middle of the zone. Is it finally a time for John to have a breakout night? I think so, Pitts shooting will pull out the zone and John should have his advantage inside. Looking forward to tonight’s game for once. These games always play close I’m just hoping Pitt makes a statement and also please shut down former commit Judah mintz.

Anybody else hearing this? Apparently ND flew out to visit him?

Things seem to have went silent are u hearing anything?

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Kyle Williams was unable to come to Pitt this weekend for an official visit, but he did have a FaceTime call tonight with Frank Cignetti and Tiquan Underwood.

We’ll see what plays out with Williams in the next few days, but I think Pitt’s got a real shot here.

Less than 48 hours until Signing Day, and it definitely feels like the countdown is on. Let’s look at everything going on with Pitt’s recruiting class heading toward the (first) finish line.

- We’ll begin with the weekend that was. Pitt had four official visitors and got four commitments. That’s an easy one to draw a line through, and to be honest, it was fairly expected; I think we all had a pretty good idea of the status with each of the four visitors heading into the weekend, and everything went as planned.

- The first announced commitment was Penn State transfer Christian Veilleux. As we’ve laid out for the last two weeks, there were three priorities for offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti this offseason:

Get a veteran transfer to be the starter in 2023. Get a younger transfer to learn the offense over the next year in advance of being the starter in 2024. And get a high school prospect to grow and develop.

Boston College transfer Phil Jurkovec filled the first need and Agoura (Calif.) prospect Ty Dieffenbach filled the second one. That just left the “young transfer” spot, and Cignetti identified Veilleux as the top target there pretty early in the process (which is to say, early in the last two weeks).

Veilleux fits the bill pretty well. He spent two years at Penn State, so he has been around college football enough to understand what it takes to play at this level: the speed of the game, the work that has to be put in and simply what it’s like to be a student-athlete. I think there’s value in that.

And while Veilleux doesn’t have a lot of on-field time in his college career - 79 total snaps, 35 pass attempts - he does have a game against Rutgers in 2021 that stands out. When starter Sean Clifford left in the first quarter with the flu, Veilleux stepped in and shined, completing 15-of-24 for 235 yards and three touchdown passes.

So you’ve got a young quarterback (three years of eligibility remaining) with a good pedigree (his offer list was impressive) and a strong showing in his limited sample size of playing time. There might be better quarterbacks in the portal this offseason, but Veilleux seems to fit what Pitt needs pretty well.

- The next announced commitment came from Israel Polk. A three-star receiver prospect at national powerhouse St. John Bosco in Bellflower (Calif.), Polk committed at the end of a whirlwind recruitment of less than a week.

That’s not an exaggeration. Ty Dieffenbach’s quarterback coach brought up Polk during a conversation with the Pitt staff last week. I believe that was Tuesday. By Thursday, Polk had an offer from Pitt. By Friday, he was in Pittsburgh for an official visit. And by Sunday, he was committed.

By the time he signs on Wednesday, Polk will have been on Pitt’s recruiting board for roughly eight or nine days.

Sometimes things happen fast in recruiting.

I think Polk looks like he’s worth a late-cycle chance. According to MaxPreps, he was St. John Bosco’s leading receiver, posting a few more catches than his teammate, four-star Louisville commit Deandre Moore. He also matched Moore with eight receiving touchdowns and played a fairly big role in the Braves’ march to a state championship and No. 1 spot in the USA Today Sports Super 25 ranking of high school football teams.

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- Veilleux and Polk are two of the four commitments, and it doesn’t take much deductive reasoning to figure out that the other two are also the other two recruits who visited this weekend:

West Palm Beach (Fla.) Cardinal Newman defensive end Maverick Gracio and Steel Valley defensive back Cruce Brookins.

We’ve written a lot about both of those guys over the last two weeks, especially leading into their visits, so we don’t need to recount too much here. But I’ll point out two things. One is that I get the impression the Pitt staff believes Brookins can follow in the footsteps of some of Pitt’s other successful WPIAL defensive backs - guys like Dane Jackson, Damar Hamlin and M.J. Devonshire. They think he’s got that kind of ceiling.

The other thing to point out is that Gracio allowed Charlie Partridge to offer perhaps the greatest commitment-hint tweet ever:

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- Moving on, we’re tracking two more areas: other transfer candidates and the existing recruiting class.

- On the transfer front, Indiana tight end AJ Barner was at Pitt yesterday after visiting Michigan the day before. I have heard from one source that he is likely to make his commitment today. That same source also indicated that Michigan is the likely winner here.

I think Pitt was in front from the time Barner went into the transfer portal, but a somewhat recent push from Michigan seems to have changed the order. I’m not ruling out the Panthers as a landing spot for Barner; I’ve heard that his visit yesterday went well, and that was his second visit to Pitt in four days, as he also stopped in the South Side on Thursday morning. So there’s legitimate interest and the Panthers have a chance, but it feels like they probably won’t get Barner. We’ll see what develops.

- There’s also UNLV receiver Kyle Williams. He was hoping to take an official visit to Pitt this past weekend but was unable to do so due to a transcript issue. I’m not sure if that issue will cause a delay in his transferring, but some paperwork does have to be in order just to take a visit, and that’s apparently what Williams ran into.

While he couldn’t visit in-person, Williams did have a FaceTime session Friday night with Frank Cignetti and Tiquan Underwood, so he had a chance to get to know those coaches a little better. I’m still reaching out to a few sources, but I get the impression that Pitt has a really good shot here.

- Speaking of transfer receivers, I continue to hear that Kent State’s Dante Cephas is most likely not going to end up transferring. He pretty quickly became one of the top receivers in the transfer portal, but some academic issues appear to be holding him back from actually transferring anywhere. Whether that means he goes back to Kent State or tries the NFL, I don't know. But it sounds like there are some things that will prevent him from transferring anywhere. We'll see what happens there.

Continued...

We met with Pat Narduzzi after practice today. Not surprisingly, he was noncommittal on the question of who the starting QB will be for the Sun Bowl. But here's what he said:

"Nick Patti was on fire today. So off of today, it’s Nick Patti. We'll see what happens tomorrow."

I didn't see this posted anywhere. Right move by NCAA. I know Brandon George was close. Not sure if this allows any other players to get action.

This is nuts. If the Steelers were in the NFC south, they probably go 12-5 this year and people would be declaring them contenders.

Then they’d lose their first round playoff game and pick 26th in each round at the NFL draft.

I much prefer missing the playoffs, having full and clear perspective of how far away you are from a championship, and having better draft positioning rather than making the playoffs and being a sacrificial lamb for a team that’s actually good.

Some would rather the playoffs. I strongly disagree.

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Pat B brought up an excellent point on his radio show. He feels Pitt should hire a "GM" per say to organize this new era of college football high school / portal / NIL recruiting. It was a very difficult task for coaches to keep up with just the high school recruiting during the season let a lone all the new angles. This position would work hand in hand with the football staff + recruiting staff, organizing player recruitment, NIL and portal info. Be the first to get a head of the game.

you need to google it. One of the top 5 craziest finishes to an NFL game ever IMO.

Disclaimer: I have 0 inside information about why he sat out. This is just my opinion on the situation as a whole.

While I understand the frustration and the inclination to immediately criticize his performance, I really do feel for John. In my humble opinion, this has less to do with him and more to do with how the circumstances have changed.

Last season, Pitt was atrocious. There were 3 ACC-caliber players around John if we’re being generous. They only had one way to win: try to drag teams into the mud defensively, and play exclusively through John offensively.

This team is sooo different. The strength of this team offensively is the perimeter players, that’s no secret. And I think in those 6 weeks John missed immediately before the season, the team bought into a play style they really liked. They like to play 4 out 1 in and pretty much use the 5 (Fede) exclusively as a screener and rim runner. The focus of the offense is to create penetration and breakdowns off those ball screens and put the guards in positions to make reads for shooters/themselves. When you make teams respect your shooting, that’s when things open up for Fede.

This does not suit John’s playstyle, and it’s not the role he or they feel he should be playing. He wants to get interior position, post up and go to work, not spend the whole possession running up to set screens and then rolling hard to the rim.

The most frustrating part is: if he embraced the role Fede plays, I think he’d play it far better than Fede. He’s a far better finisher and attracts far more attention on those rolls which would open everything up that much more. But I think there are two completely different identities: one when John is on the floor and one when he’s not. And the guards only want to play the second way, even when John is in.

So if he’s frustrated, or if he’s in a bad spot mentally, I cannot blame him. I truly think it all relates back to those 6 weeks and the identity shift that occurred during that time. It’s been extremely difficult for him and the team to adapt to his return. And through it all, he’s been a great teammate. I hope we see a new John on Tuesday.

With the Sun Bowl less than two weeks away, Pitt has got a case of the opt-outs after four players announced on Monday that they won't be playing with the Panthers in El Paso. On today's Morning Pitt, we're discussing the opt-outs, their replacements and how far the relevance of the bowl system might slip if this continues.