Watching this Pitt season and especially last night is bringing back Majors II and Dixon II memories for me. Most people don't like the "Back to the Future" hires and most times they do fail but most coaching hires in general fail. More coaches are fired than leave for a better job. Mack Brown II has worked. Greg Schiano II is working. Rutgers is 3-1 and were tied with Michigan late in the 1st Half and Michigan didnt put the game away until late in 3rd quarter.
Majors II didnt work but for administrative reasons but even those teams had NFL players, some really good. However, I dont think this is the least talented team we've had since those days (the 98 2-9 team is right there too). If you look at our starting 22, do we have ANY NFL players? Bartholemew maybe but he'll probably transfer for a bigger contract. Is that it? And the scary thing is the young guys cant get on the field....and they were lower recruits so maybe they arent good.
After 2 #1 seeds in 3 years, Dixon couldn't build off of that and really started getting killed in recruiting. The talent level dropped off significantly but he was a good enough coach to maintain the program as a "bubble team."
I'm not calling this Narduzzi II because the entire Narduzzi era has been similar minus the lucky Kenny Covid year. However, what we're seeing is not so dissimilar from Dixon II as the talent level from a historic season seems to be getting worse every year. 11-2, 8-4, 5-7 or 4-8, what's next year 3-9? And blaming NIL doesn't work. Syracuse, Duke, Lou, and other like schools have gotten better. We arent competing with Ohio State and Penn State for recruits (sadly we used to compete with PSU until Franklin ended that). Narduzzi has recruited offensive players at very low level recently. We didnt have any TEs for years and were playing Rutgers cast-offs. Now we have a good TE but have no P5 starter level WRs. The OL is a mess. No P5 QBs on the roster. And no young prospects coming up.
I'm not sure there's an answer here. Duzz needs a total rebuild, at least offensively but that takes time unless he hits the portal and he has never done that to a significant level and not sure we have the NIL money to offer competitive salaries this off-season.
Majors II didnt work but for administrative reasons but even those teams had NFL players, some really good. However, I dont think this is the least talented team we've had since those days (the 98 2-9 team is right there too). If you look at our starting 22, do we have ANY NFL players? Bartholemew maybe but he'll probably transfer for a bigger contract. Is that it? And the scary thing is the young guys cant get on the field....and they were lower recruits so maybe they arent good.
After 2 #1 seeds in 3 years, Dixon couldn't build off of that and really started getting killed in recruiting. The talent level dropped off significantly but he was a good enough coach to maintain the program as a "bubble team."
I'm not calling this Narduzzi II because the entire Narduzzi era has been similar minus the lucky Kenny Covid year. However, what we're seeing is not so dissimilar from Dixon II as the talent level from a historic season seems to be getting worse every year. 11-2, 8-4, 5-7 or 4-8, what's next year 3-9? And blaming NIL doesn't work. Syracuse, Duke, Lou, and other like schools have gotten better. We arent competing with Ohio State and Penn State for recruits (sadly we used to compete with PSU until Franklin ended that). Narduzzi has recruited offensive players at very low level recently. We didnt have any TEs for years and were playing Rutgers cast-offs. Now we have a good TE but have no P5 starter level WRs. The OL is a mess. No P5 QBs on the roster. And no young prospects coming up.
I'm not sure there's an answer here. Duzz needs a total rebuild, at least offensively but that takes time unless he hits the portal and he has never done that to a significant level and not sure we have the NIL money to offer competitive salaries this off-season.
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