Yes, speculation on recruiting.
Still a Pitt commit, Lucas Nix, has been selected for the U.S. Army All-American Game.
Scranton-area TE Hubie Graham had Dave Wannstedt in the stands watching him last week. He also made an offer to Graham’s teammate Eric Shrive — a two-way tackle.
A lower-tier prospect Pitt is showing some interest in is Brian Clarke from Hanover.
Clarke has plenty of Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) schools interested. The University of Buffalo has been a top pursuer. Penn State has recently requested more game tape. Others include Akron, Connecticut, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Rutgers – the list goes on and on.
The interest began just after Clarke was recognized as one of Pennsylvania’s top linemen when he was selected to the Associated Press Class 2A all-state second team as a junior. He starts at offensive tackle for Hanover Area, but colleges view him as either a center or guard because of his physique.
He seems interested in getting out-of-state, but he also enjoyed his visit to Pitt (stunning since it was the UConn game).
Gorman said on the radio today that Nix said he’s 100percent committed, even if there’s coaching turnover.
Where have you heard that about Baldwin? I know he likes Pitt a lot, but I didn’t think he was going to announce until closer to Signing Day.
Reason I ask, too…I live in Aliquippa and I’d love to see that pipeline continue. He’d be a big-time signing for them.
I’m hoping for Baldwin, Collier, Saddler and Graham, and then lets load up on some linemen and linebackers. I’d love to see Pitt get Saddler and then have Saddler bring Shayne Hale with him.
What we really need is LBs and lineman – have you seen who is playing LB for us? A QB, a WR, a S, a CB, a couple of 2* LB, some kid made out of chewing gum and duct tape i think…its a fucking mess. McKillop was a 3* LB. That’s it on the depth chart. We’ve had 2 4* LB prospects in the last 5 years – one’s a redshirt freshman playing 3rd string right now and the other is a true freshman that isn’t on the 3-deep at all. I won’t even get started on the mess than is our lines.
I’m thinking due to the fact our coaches can’t make 2 or 3* kids play above their potential, we’re going to have to be loaded at every position to compete…
With all due respect, I wouldn’t care if we had a Fitz, Bryant, Latef Grim and Derek Kinder coming back next year on the wideout depth chart. When a kid like Baldwin is in your backyard, has an interest in attending the school, has family ties to the school and rates as highly as Baldwin does, you need to get after him. You can never have enough depth at any position and Pitt is in no position to pass on a quality athlete (and by all accounts student and kid) simply because they have more glaring needs elsewhere.
I’m going to disagree with you on the LBs as well from this standpoint – what position these kids played in high school to me is irrelevant. Kids get moved all the time, and it happens everywhere.
Murray was a QB in high school but he was also a very solid strong safety with a body size that would allow him to grow into a college safety/LB tweener. If you’ve ever seen Central Catholic play, you know how fundamentally sound their defenders are. Those fundamentals weren’t lost on Murray – he’s arguably the best form tackler on the team.
As far as Dickerson goes, it’s way too early to say he won’t amount to anything. He’s gradually getting better and in a more aggressive scheme that we may see as early as next year, he could prove to be just fine. He wasn’t setting the world on fire as a wideout, partially because he never caught up after being hurt early on last year. And while he likely would’ve had a good future here as a RB, that changed after McCoy committed. The kid is too athletic to keep off the field.
Nix – our four-star LB – needed to add some weight and he’s still young. He’s got a good pedigree and was highly-rated coming in. The chances of him working out are good.
There’s raw talent on the D-lines that we haven’t seen in a long time with players like Malecki, Duhart, Sheard. Same thing with the o-lines with kids like Thomas, Pinkston, Nix and Jacobson. The problem is that a lot of these kids are young, they may not be getting great coaching and they may not be playing in good schemes. That could likely change next year if some coaches are let go.
I don’t disagree with you that we need linemen and LBs and those positions need to be the focal points of recruiting. I just don’t think at any point Pitt can afford to ignore a talent like Baldwin simply because the WR/TE position is already in good shape.
On defense, you have Mckillop whose the man on D right now but then you have guys in the secondary that wouldn’t make third team on most BCS schools. We need Linebackers and Safeties. Dickerson should not be made a fool of by having him play behind somebody at LB. What a waste. Put the kid on Offense and keep him there. Remind me to not put Dave Wannstedt on my Stratego team.
I love the aliquippa pipeline. There players have all been great for us.
Stoosh – we’re going to have to completely disagree on Shane Murray. I re-watched the game, and on every other play he was either A) standing flatfooted, lost, waiting for someone to come to him, or b) someone came to him, and was shoving him 10 yds downfield, and he couldn’t get off a single block. Then, in the ultimate irony, they show him onscreen in the third or fourth quarter, and Rece Davis feels compelled to say something nice about him – and then, by some sick joke, he makes a tackle on the next play! That may well have been his first – I can’t find defensive game stats for the game, anyone know where I can find some? Bottom line, watch the game in mute, watch him on every play, the kid is terrible. We might as well have had 10 on the field. You may be right though – 10 or 15 yards down the field, if he’s unblocked, he may have a nice tackling form. I prefer guys who tackle a little closer to the LOS or can get off a single block from a 5’6 160lb WR. Update: found some season stats. Over a dozen guys have at least 1 tackle for loss this season, Murray has 0. He averages less than 4 tackles a game.
Who is the LB on the other side? Gunn maybe? Haven’t seen him do anything special.
I’m thinking we’re putting these other kids at different positions due to lack of recruiting – not because they project there. If we had real LB prospects we wouldn’t have to be doing this. Plus, I was looking at where they projected in college, not just what they played in HS. Still nothing.
And we can barely even get 3* LB prospects ever. We’ve had 2 in the last several years. This is unreal. They need to recruit this area much harder. PSU is taking in 3? very good LB prospects, from PA IIRC, just this year.
Stoosh – I too think Nix will work out, and maybe Lindsey will too, in a few years. Dickerson may figure it out some day too. But we need to recruit more to put around them – we have nothing. Cupboard is still bare. And you can’t recruit 2 LBs in 4 years and expect anything.
Panthoor – “On defense, you have Mckillop whose the man on D right now but then you have guys in the secondary that wouldn’t make third team on most BCS schools. We need Linebackers and Safeties.”
Exactly. Watching them on film turns your stomach. Our D is still going to be terrible next year unless a miracle happens. Either the coaches gotta coach up the kids to play above their talent, or we need kids with a ton of talent to make up for bad coaching…
This is one of those situations, where a good D coordinator fits a system to the players, and not the players into a system.
Even if we give up the big play, I’d much rather see us having our LBs periodically up on the line, hitting the gaps, blitzing, and just playing aggressive….then I beleive you’d see marked improvement in our LBs.
Hail to PITT!
-al-
I’ll defer to your research on Murray. I admittedly haven’t been isolating on him when I watch the games and I also didn’t see as much of the UConn and UVA games as I would’ve liked, so I didn’t get to see much of him there. From what I’ve seen of him, I’m impressed with his fundamentals, but I will agree with you that there’s room for improvement there.
Like some of the opinions expressed above, I tend to think the problem here is coaching and scheme-related, not the kids. I think the kids are fine and I think if we played a scheme that took more advantage of their athleticism, we’d see different results.
The worst position to be put in as a linebacker is to have to sit back and wait. You have no momentum at the point of attack. You end up doing nothing but catching lead blockers. And while I understand the rationale of stringing out the play (taking away the big play), you end up increasing the burden on your d-line by hoping that they maintain a consistent push into the backfield. When that doesn’t happen, or when the o-line can at least neutralize the d-line, it creates problems for your LBs because your LBs are just sitting there waiting to catch a RB with a full head of steam.
As someone mentioned above, this same scheme got blown up the last couple of years with natural linebackers with much more experience and pedigree at the LB position – Session and Blades – than we see out of the current outfit. This leads me to believe it’s the scheme and not the players.
And I’m sure that coaches and schemes have something to do with it – but when every other guy can at least once this season rise above the coaches stupidity and hit a guy in the backfield, and in half a season you can’t, I begin to wonder…. I didn’t mean to single him out, but I went back and watched every play of the game and wrote down names and numbers of people really sucking ass, and the two names I came up with as glaring weaknesses were Murray and Strong. This also might be a function of other guys not getting burned as much as those two did because the play didn’t go in their direction, but still…
And i’m going to agree with whoever said maybe 2-10 is what we need to get rid of rhoads. You see, I still Wannstedt a chance because he hasn’t been here forever. Rhoads, even with mediocre talent, should have at least an AVERAGE defense. That’s all I’m asking for at this point. Instead, its a fucking embarassment. These guys are too busy reading NCAA stats instead of watching their team get buried on film.
Who’s the DC for USF? Maybe that guy wants paid a lot to come sit in the snow and rain… not that we actually pay a lot…
