Pat Narduzzi smiled ear-to-ear as he watched his 2022 Pitt football team trot onto the Beano Cook Fields for the first day of a new season Monday morning.
Clad in a straw hat, a cutoff hoodie, and basketball shorts, the Panthers’ head coach was as fired up as ever in welcoming 110 eager talents into what is expected to be a continuation of a breakout era for the program.
Overcast skies couldn’t dampen the mood as the 9 a.m. warmups began behind the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. Music was blasting, whistles were blowing, and grass was being turned up for the early sessions, which ran into the afternoon on Day 1 of a month-long buildup to the season opener on Sept. 1.
The time for speculation and prognostication is over. An Atlantic Coast Conference championship defense is the focus of a Panthers team which defied most expectations last season and is primed to live up to heightened ones in 2022.
"Coming off a championship, it's in the past," Narduzzi said during his press conference. "Nobody cares what happened last year. They really don't. Nobody in this room is going to care. Coaches, staff, or media. We just got to work on the next. It's the 2022 team. It's a different team than the '21 team, and I think our kids have a good mindset of what that means and what they have to do to be something different than what '21 was."
Monday marked the first of three practice sessions accessible to media members this week, which will be followed by four access-point sessions during each of the next two weeks, then three in the final week leading up to the season kickoff luncheon, Aug. 26 at The Westin Pittsburgh, Downtown.
Before we know it, West Virginia will be in town to renew the Backyard Brawl rivalry in one month’s time.
But, there’s a long road to traverse in the process.
The battle for the Panthers’ starting quarterback role between Nick Patti and Kedon Slovis continued to spin, but stock can’t exactly be bought into either as a frontrunner until pads are put on at the end of the week. Even then, the length of the battle isn't specific, as a starter can be named at any point during the month.
Narduzzi wants the winner of the position to prove that he's "that guy" to his locker room.
"They've got to go out and execute," Narduzzi said. "They've got to show what they did over the summer has pushed them ahead of the other guy. ... It's going to come down to what they're doing, and really, I want the whole team to know who 'that guy' is. I don't care what position it is, if I have to make the decision, then we got issues. Everybody should know when we make that decision. It's not like everybody's going, 'Oh, man, I thought it was the other guy.' I don't want controversy. I want everybody to know that's the guy, so I'm hoping something comes fast, but we'll see how it goes."
The respect between the two quarterback candidates is mutual, and so will the support for the chosen starter.
For Patti, it's another chance for him to show what he's capable of -- a challenge he's embracing.
"It's just another chance to prove I'm going to be that dude, and that just speaks to my confidence," Patti said before adding of Slovis, "I got the chance see a couple of his games when he was at USC. I like him a lot as a player."
Slovis brings three seasons and 27 games of experience to the battle, which is an element to consider. He spoke to Narduzzi's point about building confidence within the locker room and showing it that he can be the guy.
"You have to let coach be comfortable with you being the 'guy,'" Slovis said. "Have confidence in you making the right decisions and owning and operating the offense, and the other thing is the guys around you have to know that. I think those two things, if the guys around you feel confident in you, if coach feels confident in you. At the end of the day, the quarterback's main job is to go win the game and allow the offense be productive."
In the midst of this, new offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti Jr. is installing his offense, and the expectations remain high for whomever the incumbent starter is.
The situation isn’t about inexperienced freshmen duking it out; Slovis and Patti are veterans who have seen the field one way or another, leave it as Slovis’ time as a starter at Southern California or Patti’s tenure as a backup behind Kenny Pickett for multiple seasons.
"The quarterback's got to be able to make great decisions," Cignetti said. "Great decisions in the passing game, he's got to make correct decisions in protections and the run game, you've got to be able to complete the ball. So you've got to be a great decision maker, you've got to be an accurate passer, and you've got to be able to protect the football."
The Panthers and defensive coordinator Randy Bates have all of the ingredients to have a top-flight overall defense, which is returning what is probably the best defensive line in college football along with a strong back line led by Brandon Hill and a linebacking corps led by SirVocea Dennis.
Bates doesn't give his players carte blanche on every play, but he does allow for instinct to kick in if a big play can be made. He referred to having players playing "more gray than black and white" in situations, which has led to prior success.
"Our main responsibilities on defense are to go make big plays," Bates said. "When you make big plays on defense, you get to go across the hall and play for those guys [the Steelers]. When you make a tackle, really if you look at it, if you think of the top defenses, Georgia, Alabama, they never have the leading tackler in the country. Why? Because they don't play as many snaps. If you're making a lot of tackles, that means you're playing a lot of plays. We want to go make tackles for loss, we want to go make sacks, we want to go make interceptions. Sometimes you have to go play gray a little bit."
The Panthers were predicted by a polling of media members to finish second behind Miami in the ACC Coastal Division, which is only going to serve as bulletin board material for the locker room.
Oddsmakers have the Panthers' over/under at 8.5, which is lower than expected for a defending Power Five conference champion. ESPN's College Football Power Index has Pitt at a calculated win-loss record of 8.7-3.5, with a 98% chance of winning at least six games and earning bowl eligibility, a 24% chance to win the Coastal Division, and a 6.8% chance to win the ACC.
The CFPI has Pitt ranked 20th, based on a net points scale determined by an expected margin versus the average opponent on a neutral field.
That's awfully low for a Pitt team which is returning the bulk of its stars. Cleary the losses of Pickett and Jordan Addison are heavily skewing these analytics.
Even more bulletin board material.
"I kind of like that," All-American defensive tackle Calijah Kancey said, "the fact that we don't get any respect. That's the story that I grew up on, even with me being a smaller D-tackle and coming to Pitt, not being that 'big-name school.' I'm used to that. A lot of are guys are. A lot of our guys didn't come out of high school as five-stars, four-stars, or whatever, so we live that underdog story. That's not new to us."
