Yesterday was an eventful off-season day for the Panthers. We had one verified recruit commitment in Jaymar Parrish, a big FB from local Gateway HS along with one unconfirmed rumor about former Rutgers QB Tom Savage transferring to PITT after a short lay-over in Arizona.
First let’s look at the recruitment. So far Paul Chryst has recruited five players, four of them on offense. He’s gotten two big OL, a TE and a powerful FB in Parrish.
“They’re going to line him up as a traditional fullback because they’re a pro-style offense team,” said Gateway coach Terry Smith. ”He’s an extremely physical blocker and just a tough, hard-nosed kid who is really athletic.”
Now, think back to what Chryst said he was going to put out on the field offensively and what he built so well at Wisconsin; a highly productive running game with big, strong players up the middle. That is exactly what he’s recruited so far at PITT.
Jaymar Parrish has not been ranked yet but look at Scout’s FB prospects for 2013. Parrish is on the list but the telling thing is that only three FBs are awarded any stars at all by Scout.com at this point nationally. Rivals.com has five FBs total with all being three star kids.
At Wisconsin Chryst loved this type of FB and used them pretty regularly. Last year they had Bradie Ewing, a 6’0/245 FB who ended being drafted in the 5th round by the Atlanta Falcons. Ewing had only seven rushing attempts for 33 yards but also caught 28 passes for 328 yards (11.7 ypc) in his two years of play with the Badgers. He was also the #1 rated FB going into the draft.
Just for fun compare that with what Henry Hynoski did at PITT over the course of his career where he had 37 carries for 134 yards and 40 receptions for 283 (7.1 ypc). Of course Hyno didn’t have three 1000 yards rushers on his team one year either.
This is the FB model Chryst wants to replicate when he gets his kids on the field over the next few years and is what we were used to seeing at PITT under DW. Whisky hasn’t rushed their FBs much but used them mostly as a lead blocker and receiver out of the backfield. Parrish, at 6’2” and 235 lbs and having been a TE who caught 22 passes for 524 yards and four touchdowns, is well equipped with size and good hands to be that pass receiving FB Chryst has had and wants now.
As an example of Parrish’s blocking ability, last season when Gateway played Bishop McDevitt he went up against #1 nationally ranked five star DE Noah Spence and blocked him effectively enough call it a draw. When the rankings come out he will probably be at least a three star recruit.
Tom Savage’s rumored transfer is an interesting issue. According to his Twitter feed he alludes to playing for PITT (good luck finding it, I can’t read more than three or four Tweets before getting dizzy). Here is what Chris Dokish had to say about Savage:
“Last but not least, Rutgers and Arizona transfer Tom Savage has hinted that he may be transferring to Pitt. A one time elite recruit out of Cardinal O’Hara HS in suburban Philly, the 6’5″ 240 pounder had a big freshman season before his losing his job as a sophomore. He then transferred to Arizona and sat out last year.
However, before being eligible to play a game Savage left Arizona after the season. Citing family matters, he tried to be eligible immediately and transfer back to Rutgers, but the NCAA denied him. For that reason, it looks like Savage will have just one year of eligibility remaining and that won’t be until 2013. In that case, it just may be better to start Chad Voytik in his second season rather than Savage in his first- and last- season, but since there’s no guarantee that Voytik will be good enough, I guess Savage would be an excellent fallback option.”
For a little background on what he did at RU here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Savage enrolled at Rutgers University in 2009, and after Rutgers opened the season with a loss to Cincinnati, he was named the starting quarterback. He led the team to a 9-4 record. During his freshman year at Rutgers, Savage passed for 2,211 yards and 14 touchdowns, while throwing only 7 interceptions. In arguably his best game of the year, he completed 14 of 27 passes for a season-high 294 yards and 2 touchdowns against the University of Central Florida in the 2009 St. Petersburg Bowl.
He was named on the All-American Freshman Team by the Football Writers Association of America.
In 2010, Savage threw for 521 passing yards, two touchdowns, and three interceptions. Early in the season, he was sidelined by an injury to his hand and replaced with freshman quarterback Chas Dodd. Dodd remained the starting QB based on his performance against Connecticut in his first ever start.
Savage would be nice to have on the roster I suppose but IMO we can forget about his playing over Sunseri in 2012 regardless of if he can get eligibility to or not. Here are their numbers from their first year of playing (Savage as a FR).
CMP ATT YDS CMP% YDS/A TD INT RAT
Savage 149 285 2211 52.3 7.76 14 7 128.7
Sunseri 223 346 2572 64.5 7.43 16 9 137.0
As you can see, and even though they are only stats, Sunseri was more productive. Add to that Sunseri has two years experience under his belt with this team it would be a tough decision for a HC to sit him down and I don’t think Chryst would even if he had that option.
However, if this transfer is true and Chryst has been courting Savage, it sends a strong message about how Chryst feels about Myers as a QB on his team in the future.
Pretty good day for PITT football all around…
Note: As an update on dates of recruiting here are how many kids we had commit each year before June 1st:
’13 – 5 PC – so far
’12 – 1 TG
’11 – 1 DW
’10 – 2 DW
’09 – 0 DW
’08 – 2 DW
’07 – 2 DW
’06 – 3 DW
’05 – 3 DW
I could take or leave Savage. Why spend a scholarship on a player with just one year of eligibility? There has to be a juco transfer worth a shot. If anything, Savage is way more of a bust than Tino. From what I remember seeing him play at Rutgers, he had a rocket arm, granted, but he was immobile, did not have great awareness, and lacked touch on his short passes. Granted, he was a freshman, but he also will not have played a game in 3 years when he finally suits up for Pitt. That is a heckuva lot of rust to shake off. Someone prove me wrong please, I’d love to be excited about Savage coming, but I’m just not feeling it.
As far as FBs scoring TDs I really thought that would be the case with Hynoski, as big and strong as he was. But he was actually pretty ineffective in close to the goal line and only scored one TD in his three years at PITT. It would be great if Parrish turned out to be a reliable short yardage back.
It makes absolutely no sense to waste time and energy, not to mention a scholarship on a one year wonder. And by “wonder”, I mean after you see him start, you wonder why Chryst is playing him.
Put the effort into the guys who are already on the roster and have been putting in the time to work themselves into playing time.
Dobie – I meant ‘verified’ in contrast to the unconfirmed rumors about Savage. Of course nothing is set with recruits until LOI Day.
Dr. Tom – even if two of those QBs you mentioned get playing time this season it still is no guarentee we’d find a starting QB there except by default.
Voytik is a big question mark, Myers hasn’t shown anything in three years and Anderson may not be built for D1 ball.
I think that if Savage, who had one full and productive year of experience at this level of play is one the roster next year he very well may get a chance to either start or be QB2.
One scholarship for one year is a drop in the bucket to have a proven QB as back-up. The last thing we would want is a return to 2007 when we went through our top two QBs and ended up having a true FR play almost the whole season.
Why not have that insurance in case it was needed?
the guy just got here 6 months ago, after the chaos that preceded him.
Gonna take a couple years to get to know the local high school coaches, gain their trust.
Same with the asst. coaches and recruiting their areas.
Gotta be tough to recruit anyone, with the mess we’ve had the past couple years, no???
Now, if he sticks around, and this is his class in 3 or 4 years, then maybe I’m a little iffy.
For coming here on the fly, cleaning up the disaster, and getting some of these guys to come to Pitt, that’s why I’m a little unexpectedley excited.
But, that’s me.
One thing to remember that after Savage’s productive 2009 true FR year he had an injury in 2010 and lost his job permanently to Chas Dodd who was mediocre in his play with RU. So you have to wonder what Schiano was thinking about Savage at that time.
Savage was a highly rated 4* on Rivals.com and was tagged the 8th best QB nationally so he’s got talent. Since he last played in 2010 that might factor in also.
I still think that Savage on the roster in 2012 would be a win/win for both parties. Best case scenario would be Savage comes in, plays well and wins the starting job from our incumbent; worst case is that we’d have an experienced QB behind Sunseri and someone who would make Sunseri look over his shoulder.
I hear two different WPIAL HCs tell Chryst ‘I’ve got a kid for you coming up’.
I wouldn’t say I’m excited about the recruiting so far but I wanted Orndoff and lately I really wanted Parrish after I did some research on him.
I’m certainly satisfied though and think we’ll land some big fish during the season. I don’t think too many WPIAL/PA coaches are going to automatically steer their best away from PITT like they did last year (Shell was a different issue).
panther lair says paul chryst will add a former 4 star QB to the roster this summer
must be savage yes no
UNLIKE TINO WHO CANT.
AND HIT THE WR becuse tino cant.
Ya Reed, you’re right. I am very happy with him.
I guess I mean, a couple years, just to start getting a little pipeline going, where the coaches send their kids to Pitt for their first stop.
Ahh, we both know what each other means!!!
Real happy with Pitt right now, pigskin and roundball!!
Heading into the 2010, the Sporting News, in its 2010 College Football Yearbook, called Lewis “the game’s most complete runner” and listed him as one of the five leading candidates for the Heisman Trophy.
Well we saw what having a non-threatening QB did to “the game’s most complete runner” and his Heisman trophy candidacy. Teams stacked the line of scrimmage and our running game suffered.
Savage’s stats, his true freshmen year are very good, considering he didn’t dink & dunk his was down the field, like you know who does. And his 14 TD’s and only 7 intercepts were better than anything Sunseri has done, even though Sir Tino had 4 NFL players and 1 first round draft pick WR on his team in that comparison. That being the magnificent Jonathan Baldwin, who if I remember correctly, the media trid to make the scapegoat for Sir Tino’s lack of talent. (actually some on this site as well) Whereas if it wasn’t for Baldwin’s acrobatic and one handed catches of poorly thrown passes, Sunseri’s stats would have been far worse. Fact !
Let’s all hope somehow, someway they can get Savage eligible for this season.
The fact is that in 2009 we had 2344 yards for 4.9 ypc and 25 TDs. In 2010 we had 2154 yards for 4.6 ypc and 24 TDs, virtually the same numbers save for 14 yards per game less in 2010.
As to Lewis he was injured in 2010 – that had nothing at all to do with Sunseri and Graham was ripping off runs at a 6.2 yps average which was much higher than Lewis did in either year. Graham had 922 yards in 2010, that and Lewis’ injury are what brought his numbers down. Lewis had 325 carries in 2009 and 219 in 2010 (106 less), of course he had less production and part of that was because Sunseri was passing the ball pretty well.
As to the impact Sunseri had on our rushers in 2010? Well, as stated above Graham had 6.2 ypc and Lewis had 4.8 which was exactly what McCoy had in his two years at PITT. Our running game didn’t suffer one bit.
C’mon man, there are things to blame Sunseri for but not everything under the sun and certainly not this issue.
hi EMel how are you bud.
time you are right abought most things most of the
time but you know i must allways back my man
EMel.
and with tino my dislikefor what he has done to
pitt football clouds my jugement of him i cant
help my self.
he just plays like a first year freshmen and this
is his last year he makes me want to get drunk on game day.
they come from the shadows part of the dark ones host begone smiley steve and take tino with you.
There has certainly been a dark cloud hanging over PITT football, which even extended out and hung over the basketball team last season. Whether it came from Sir Tino or Pederson or a combination of the two, fact is…..it certainly does exist. Maybe we should call Max Von Sydow and have an exorcism performed at the COL.
Veritas et Virtus !
