Players seldom become tabbed as "irreplaceable," but that is exactly what Calijah Kancey was for Pat Narduzzi's defense.
Stacking on top of that is the replacing of a green dot-caliber player and a defensive captain in SirVocea Dennis, who provided the voice and the wit to make that complex and layered defense come together in cohesion.
With Pitt set to kick off its 2023 season at 3:30 p.m. Saturday against Wofford, those options of filling in are becoming clearer, though production from those options is yet to be determined. A defense losing six starters to the NFL has much to make up for. Along with Kancey and Dennis, that includes replacing a team captain in Deslin Alexandre, the athletic Haba Baldonado, and NFL-caliber safeties in Erick Hallett and Brandon Hill.
The Panthers were exceptional with those six in the lineup. Now, they will have to forge onward in this anticipated 2023 season without them.
"You find out in those games, right?" Narduzzi said Thursday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex in his final press conference prior to Saturday's kickoff. "You find out -- I'd hope -- from what we've seen in practice, you see growth whether it's Sammy (Okunlola), whoever it is. A lot of these young guys, we're going to find out where they are. Kyle Louis is a long way from where he was a year ago even though he missed spring ball with an injury. There's a bunch of freshmen that are closer now than they were in the past."
Though Okunlola and Louis are redshirt freshmen who are expected to see expanded roles for this defense, they aren't the only ones. Okunlola and Louis are merely depth pieces at positions where that NFL talent has moved from. Kancey, of course, is the major loss for the Narduzzi defense. His presence hardly can be described by words, other than just from naming his accolades of being a unanimous All-American and the ACC Defensive Player of the Year. That is the irreplaceable quotient to this team -- offense notwithstanding.
Experience matters, too. Alexandre played in 58 college football games while Baldonado suited up for 40 along the defensive line, the third-team Pro Football Focus All-American Dennis tallied 42, and Hallett and Hill dressed in 49 and 40, respectively. Adding in Kancey's 37 games, that is 266 combined games of experience from all three levels of the defense that are lost to the NFL.
Where does Narduzzi go from here?
To find that answer, one can refer to the Sun Bowl victory over UCLA in December.
"Guys have earned their opportunity to go out there," Narduzzi said. "You start off with the base group of guys that went out and worked for it and have done their job, and then we're going to find out who those other guys are as we go. So, it's just something you've got to play by ear and get a feel for. You have different packages for different guys to go in. 'Hey, he does this well, so let's put him in on these three plays.' We'll game plan it up like that."
Circling back to that thrilling 37-35 win over the Bruins would unearth a lack of nine starters who sat that game out because of injury, transferring, or an opt-out in order to prepare for the NFL Draft. In total, Pitt had to play without 17 players in that game against a ranked Bruins team that had current NFL talent Dorian Thompson-Robinson running the show at quarterback.
That defense swarmed Thompson-Robinson for three interceptions and forced the now-Cleveland Brown to the bench. The defense forced five turnovers in total, including a fumble recovered by linebacker Solomon DeShields and an interception by Javon McIntyre.
DeShields and McIntyre are two of the "next" for Pitt.
DeShields is set to start at Narduzzi's "star" linebacker position, while team captain Shayne Simon will transfer to the "Mike" spot previously occupied by Dennis and will operate as the on-field signal caller. After missing most of last season with a knee injury, Brandon George will move from being Dennis' backup at the "Mike" spot to manning the "money" linebacker spot.
Not having Dennis as the team's voice on the field will have to be replaced, but Narduzzi feels Simon is up for the task.
"I would say if we had a green dot and we could put a microphone in his helmet, he would be our green dot guy for sure," Narduzzi said of Simon. "... I think Shayne's got a good feel for it. He did it in the UCLA game -- as you know -- so he started that game at the Mike and did a great job. He can manage it. He gets it. He's a really smart kid, so does he have it like SirVocea? I don't know, we'll find that out. Didn't know (Dennis) had it like he does, but he's got a sixth sense, I guess. He's a little different."
McIntyre has an opportunity to be the next breakout safety of the Narduzzi defense, which would continue a line in recent memory including Jordan Whitehead, Damar Hamlin, Hallett, and Hill. McIntyre showed a strong finish to his 2022 season, which included being named the ACC Rookie of the Week after Pitt's final regular-season game at Miami. He earned his first career interception, recorded two pass breakups, and had one tackle for loss. He chased that with a career-best eight total tackles and his interception on UCLA's opening drive of the second half in the Sun Bowl.
Grouping McIntyre with Spring Game MVP P.J. O'Brien and Florida transfer Donovan McMillon gives this room three capable bodies to replace the NFL talent.
"Makes it fun because now you've go to coach your tail off again and get the next crew ready," secondary coach Archie Collins said this week. "It's always the next man up and right now those two guys are 'the next.' It's been fun seeing the maturation throughout fall camp as well as the offseason like I've said before. But they're doing a really good job right now."
Granted, the Panthers bring 18 seniors, including 11 "super" seniors, to help usher in that youth on either side of the ball.
Narduzzi has created a culture that has weathered a turbulent era within college football. The current landscape offers rare opportunities for programs to build and keep young depth. In the era of instant gratification and social media-worthy highlights that only multiply in quantity by the season, the majority of the programs across all divisions and conferences are struggling to see that young depth come through, largely because of the power the transfer portal has granted to players.
Pitt has seemingly benefitted the other way around, with Narduzzi utilizing the transfer portal to help fill in holes while maintaining a consistent stream of young players to develop through a track, and fitting into Narduzzi's systems while doing so. This has come with multiple success points in his eight seasons on the Panthers' sideline, including seven winning seasons, two bowl wins, and an ACC Championship in 2021.
In Narduzzi's ninth season, though, much of that flavor that brought success in 2021 and a 9-4 season with a bowl victory in 2022 has moved on, setting up the table for that young depth that has remained at Pitt. That experience had brought 20 wins in two seasons, allowing Pitt to be one of just over a handful of FBS teams to finish the 2021 and 2022 seasons with rankings inside the Associated Press Top 25.
Perhaps right where Narduzzi wants them to be, though, Pitt is unranked and optically undervalued because of the amount of youth moving into prominent roles.
"I say this all the time, we can feel good as we stand out there, and you had a good day yesterday, and this guy looked good, that guy looked good, but it all comes down to what you do on Saturdays and nobody cares what you did the last two years," Narduzzi said Monday. "Twenty wins are never going to get you a win this year."
