Brandyn Cook is a consensus 3-star center out of Ohio. He was one of the earlier commits to Pitt. But while Coach Chryst stated that all scholarships would be honored, that did not mean he wouldn’t make it clear what kind of opportunities would (or in this case would not) be available to actually play.
Cook, 6-foot-2, 300 pounds, said new Pitt coach Paul Chryst suggested he look elsewhere because of his height.
“He didn’t think I would be able to get a fair shot at Pitt, basically because of my height,” Cook said. “Being a competitor, I wanted to go where I can play and to a place where I am needed and a place where I am wanted.”
Cook said he committed to Graham two days after receiving a scholarship offer and did not entertain further offers.
“I am a man of my word,” Cook said. “I shut it down.”
So Cook is heading to Miami (Ohio) instead.
Cook’s weight, on the recruiting sites, is listed at 265 to 290.
I realize you could and very legitimately argue this is no big deal. Losing a 3-star player that is now heading to the MAC hardly seems like losing a stud. And there has to be a level of trust that the coach knows what he is doing — and what he wants from the center spot.
But I admit, this one has me a little surprised for a few reasons. The first is that Pitt needs centers. Yes, Ryan Turnley turned out to be a revelation, and at 6-6, 320 pounds is probably more along the lines of what Chyrst and OC Bostad want. But after Turnley — and especially for the future things are not that simple.
Backing up Turnley would be Chris Jacobson (6-3, 295 pounds) — assuming Jacobson gets that 6th year. But that only covers next season as both will be seniors. Otherwise, the only other center listed on the 2-deep from last year is Left Guard Ryan Schlieper (6-4, 305). I have no idea what he can actually do at the spot, as he has never actually played center.
The second issue is that Pitt has only one actual center on the squad — by which I mean he was actually was recruited to play center. Artie Rowell, from the 2010 class. Rowell redshirted this past season, but guess what? He might have gotten bigger in mass from his 275 pounds freshman weight, but I doubt he grew beyond his 6-2 frame.
Rowell cannot be looking at what Cook says as a good sign for his own future. Basically Rowell and Cook are the same height and reasonably close in weight.
I’m sure that Chryst and Bostad have some plan. Maybe they have a JUCO in mind for this class or next year. And I know that the O-line is a big deal for both of them. I also know that the O-line has been a complete question mark nearly every year this millennium. Even cutting loose an average recruit from that area seems extra risky at this point.
There are rumors that Cook is actually more like 5’11 260 as opposed to the listed heights and weights, this would explain only MAC interest when the kid has gotten plenty of accolades.
*Note Wilson was short, but he wasn’t noodle armed.
Legacy Prodigy’s are almost impossible to get rid of, in the business world as well. Even if they run daddy’s company completely into the ground.
(and then throw in the coaching fraternity unwritten bylaws)
I think if the kid doesn’t have a chance to make the team then the coach is right to tell the kid.
IMO the offensive line has turned out more NFL caliber backs and set a very high mark of yards gained in the last 4 years. The Pittsburgh media has no idea what their talking about in this area when they evaluate PITT players.
I’ve only been paying attention to this site for the past couple of years, but has it always been this incessantly abusive of Pitt quarterbacks preceding Tino Sunseri and Bill Stull (a non “legacy”)? I mean did people used to do this to Pat Bostick (now revered as the guy who was cast aside by Tino’s “legacy” status), Tyler Palko and Rod Rutherford too?
Also agree with what you said. Fwiw, some of the best OL we had had this past decade were recruited as DL:
Chas Spencer (started in the NFL for a few years)
John Malecki (still on Steelers’ squad)
Jason Pinkston (started with the Browns as rookie)
I’m sure there are a few more — the above just off the top of my head
when i saw them bring treyvon hester in for a vist this week end becuse he is 6 foot 3 290 all most the same as cook
they are listing hester as a ol men so why move one and get allmost the same thing
it has to be that hester is really 6 foot 3
and cook 5 foot 11 or 6 even.
the OL got beat, the WRs were underwhelming AND Tino Sunseri should not be playing D1 quarterback.
but to put him up there with dan the man
that is blasphemy
OT Jimbo Covert (1st round pick 83 – many times all-pro)
OT Bill Frallic (1st round pick 85 – many times all pro)
OG – Doug Sams (6th roound pick 83)
OG – Ron Fada (9th round pick 83)
C- Jim Sweeney (2nd round pick 84 – all pro)
joe
tino should be at some div 2 school .
you speak BLASPHEMY. you might be a HERETIC.
EMel and the football gods may smite thee.
Just who showed more ability? They all struggled. (I just changed the from stunk to struggled, sounds nicer, but they did pretty much stink)
I think that performance-based comments are much of what this blog is about.
some of us have been some what negative but do you really blame us after every thing that has happenend in the last 2 years
and do you think that i am mad at Wbb i am not i think he should say what he wants when ever he wants
but i like to pull his tail have a little fun with him.
becuse if 9 people on here say it is red out side he will say it is black but that is ok becuse he is Wbb and we like him
the point is you should say whay you want it is a free country
dont get to serious ihave my point you have your and we will walk down different sides of the same street
Nope, Tino is special in this regard. For starters, he’s easily the worst starting QB in program history (or at least the modern era started under Johnny Majors I in 1973).
Kevan Smith is a distant second — but KS gets a pass because he was sufficiently self-aware to realize it and switch to baseball.
Tino’s case is made worse by coaches and media alike parroting the nauseating infuriating party line that he gives us the best chance to win. But my eyeballs tell me that Pitt would have had, at worse, 11-1 records in both 2011 and 2012 (losses to Miami in 2010 and Rutgers in 2011) — and been Big East champs — with even consistently mediocre QB play.
In fact, there is zero doubt in my mind that Wanny would still be HC had he played anyone else at QB last year.
Pitt has had 2 real head coaches in the last two years, now going on three. It is difficult to grasp 3 new systems, but in 3 years, it is murder.
Maybe I am drinking yellow Kool Aid, but I am glad to see a coach comfortable on his own skin who doesn’t need a sound bite to feed his confidence.
I presume we will lose some recruits…so what? It’s not like we were better than our nearest competitors, WV, OSU, PSU. repeat after me “winning programs take time to build, winning teams not so long”. Which would you prefer? I want a friggen program like VTECH…not a shooting star.
HTP!
he wold be here.
Little tidbit of 2013 recruiting. Malik zaire no2 rated dual threat qb in 2013 has pitt in his top 3 with ohio state and nebraska. He was very high on wisconsin before chryst came to pitt and chryst himself is now recruiting him to the burgh. Chryst has a proven record of recruiting and signing very good qbs, so i like it. He is from ohio, so if chryst could steal him from under urbans nose thatd be HUGE
But I’ll agree that better QB play would have gotten us a few more wins.
becuse if we say it is blue you will say it is black. but that is ok if we all thought the same it would be very dull. but tino still sucks
Apparently Corey Jones was one player who wasn’t going to be able to cut it for acceptance. We may have a few others also and that would open up some slots for 2012.
then it will be some one still in pro play off
but at least then we only have to look at to teams to find who it is
the glass is allways half full never half empty
allways try to think that way young man
now go get me more info.
This is a good move.
We had a QB who had started 11 games and contributed to wins in Pat Bostick but DW didn’t see the need for him to be ab;e to compete for an OPEN QB slot.
I don’t know if Sunseri is the worst QB in PITT history or not and I’ll say that sometimes he makes some very good plays, but he is so damned inconsistent that you can see something is wrong with him out there. His play in the fourth quarters of close games is atrocious and you can’t blame his panic and poor decision making at those times on anyone but him.
Personally, I think the sense of entitlement he copped from DW’s decision making back when the 2009 bowl game ended helped to screw him up. It would have been better all around had he competed and won the starting job in 2010 on his merits.
http://www.theringer.com/forums/ohio-state-recruiting/5266-12-oh-dt-terrell-jackson.html
J. P. Holtz commits today. Everyone believes it will be PITT but we’ve been down that road before. It isn’t happening until it actually happens, there are things we know that we don’t know also.
However, last year at this time, Tino had the same amount of experience in Graham’s new system as did Myers and Gonzalez — 0 … yet Graham never waivered about making and keeping him No. 1 until the Utah game when he gave Anderson more snaps … and as we saw he fared worse than Tino …. because, any QB who is constantly pressured and doesn’t have WRs open is going to fail.
One was once able to do the same for Pitt – but the uniforms don’t look like Pitt any more.
Comment by wbb 01.25.12 @ 7:49 am
.. and BTW, Tino was much better in the 4th quarter under your manWanny than he was under Graham .. look it up!!Comment by wbb 01.25.12 @ 7:53 am
and your point is? Well, one answer to your “pressured with no receivers open” question is to throw the damn ball away if you can’t run for yardage, but are we really having this discussion about Tino again? Without question wbb, you are Tino’s biggest defender on this blog, for whatever reason. You get pts for resiliency and debate, but we have all seen enough of Tino’s perfomances on the field to form contrary opinions(as you call it “simpleton analysis”). And posting Danny Marino’s o-line in defense of Tino? are you saying Tino would have been a 1st round NFL draft pick and lead his team to a Super Bowl in his rookie season with that line? We had a poor choice of QBs last year due to poor recruiting and Tino may have been our best option given the dearth of talent, but he still sucked as a D-1 QB. Put this to bed until it rears its ugly head again with spring camp. On to promising recruits, with Frankcan, pk and Reed updates. HTP
The players we are losing are moving on to small schools. That should say worlds about the players we are losing. Let Chryst do his thing.
And I already explained that I wasn’t comparing Tino to Marino .. I was just pointing to the fact that even with that OL Pitt had, the greatest passer in Pitt history could not put up a TD in a bowl game … meaning that a QB cannot do it all. And Tino didn’t even have the protection that Dan had , and certainly didn’t have the recivers (Dawkins and Collins.)
What I’m saying is that the offesne this past year had MANY, MANY more issues than just the QB .. and both the OL and the WRs were every bit as pathetic than the QB
I’ve been out of circulation for a few days, it looks like Pitt’s recruiting has taken a very positive turn. Things are looking up. Hail to Pitt.
Alex Van Pelt
Pete Gonzalez
Dan Marino
Rod Rutherford
Tyler Palko
I hope I can add a current roster player to this list. Time will tell
Really excited about Ryan Lewis- looks fast, athletic, and has a family football background so he’ll probably come in working hard- I think he was a steal
That should be obvious … Shanahan had more drops in the 1st half vs USF than he had his entire 1st 2 years. This entire offense was out of sorts, playig without any confidence .. and missing blocking and route assignments.
but we have no OL commits there are 5 good one out there still taking vists 3 of them 4 stars and 2 of them 3 stars and 3 of them are to vist wisconsin and one has WVU on his list.
but they are not visting here and are coachs
in the past have talked to them when they were at wisconsin and you know were JJ Denmen went
so my point is if you have the best coach then they should at least vist or denmen should be here unless they know something we dont is our OL
COACH goin to the bears pitt never came out and said he wasent. no offical statement.
I just hope that they are actually able to land the kinds of kids that they want in that regard, or it will be a short tenure. The O-line has been the major problem with Pitt teams now for a number of years, and that’s a big reason why I’ve advocated getting away from pro-style offenses here, which don’t work if you can’t consistenly get the really big boys up-front. Hopefully these guys will prove me wrong.
54 Chris Jacobson OG Sr. RS 6-3/295 Pittsburgh, PA (Keystone Oaks )
55 Tom Ricketts OT Fr. RS 6-6/285 Pittsburgh, PA (North Allegheny)
56 Arthur Doakes OT Fr. RS 6-6/360 Lebanon, PA (Lebanon)
57 Artie Rowell C Fr. 6-2/275 Harrisburg, PA (Central Dauphin)
58 Kevin Barthelemy LS So. RS 6-3/240 Moon Township, PA (Moon Area)
64 Shane Johnson OG Fr. RS 6-5/325 Fort Washington, MD (DeMatha Catholic)
66 Justin Virbitsky OT Jr. RS 6-4/280 Jermyn, PA (Lakeland)
70 Juantez Hollins OG So. RS 6-5/305 Aliquippa, PA (Aliquippa)
74 Matt Rotheram OG Fr. RS 6-6/350 North Olmsted, OH (North Olmsted)
75 Ryan Turnley C Jr. RS 6-6/320 Hopewell, PA (Hopewell)
76 Ryan Schlieper OG So. RS 6-5/305 Wexford, PA (North Allegheny)
77 Zenel Demhasaj OG Jr. 6-7/330 Brooklyn, NY (New Utrecht H.S.)
Big, slow players-run pro style
Small, fast players-run the spread
Big, fast players-system doesn’t matter, you’ll win
Small, slow players-system doesn’t matter, you’ll lose
It remains to be seen if he can get the players he needs to run his system.
It was like this last season his mind just went completely blank under pressure from both the DL and from just the circumstances of the game itself. He made mistakes that even Pee Wee players know not to make.
I’ll still say that Sunseri has the physical tools to succeed at QB in college – except for his deep throws. Not being able to do that though allows defenses to adapt their play to stopping him in other ways and that hurt him and us last year.
I think the best thing Chryst and staff can do with him is let him know in no uncertain terms that he is at the same starting point as all the other QBs on the roster in competing for the starting spot.
Then, if he wins it, and you know he probably will, let him know that they expect the same level of effort and production as any other member of the starting offense.
I think Graham put way too much pressure on Sunseri’s head and it got to him in a big way.
I think we have a pretty decent set of returning personnel there and if Jacobson can come back that’s a bonus. Turnley was very good at Center. Rotheram, if he stays healthy might just blow up with increased playing time and Ricketts is well though of also.
However, I don’t expect a miracle and all of a sudden we’ll be as good as Wisconsin has been over the last decade, but I think Chryst will ID the potential starters, simplify the blocking schemes and adapt the offense to function behind those guys.
If we can get to the level of how the OL was functioning in the latter DW years then I think we’ll do well. McCoy, Lewis and Graham didn’t pick up all those yards on their own you know.
