With about two weeks until training camps kick off across the country, hope springs eternal at nearly every college football program.
Goals of bowls, visions of championships and win projections on the high end of reality mark the conversations this time of year.
Rather than temper expectations this season, given personnel losses on both sides of the ball, Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi and his player representatives had no problem raising the bar for themselves last week at ACC media day in Charlotte, N.C.
“I don’t necessarily know what people expect of us,” left tackle Brian O’Neill said. “I know what we expect of ourselves, and that’s more than eight wins.”
O’Neill and his teammates are well aware that for all the progress they’ve made entering Narduzzi’s third season, they’ve been unable to break eight. First it was an 8-4 record in 2015, with a loss to Navy in the Military Bowl. Then it was 8-4 again a year ago, ending on a sour note against Northwestern in the Pinstripe Bowl.
Not only do the Panthers have the logical objective of winning more games than a year ago, but they’re also thinking bigger. Some teams talk about simply taking the season one game at a time, trying to get better each day, and while those cliches don’t go unused by Narduzzi, he’s also not backing down from a larger mission.
“[We] will be more of a target this year than a year ago, because people know [we] play tough football. I think from the outside, the image is Pitt can play,” Narduzzi said. “How much they can play, we’ll find out. It would be nice to get double-digit wins. That’s what we need to get to.”
Ten or more victories will be a tough mark to hit, given non-conference clashes with likely top-15 teams Penn State and Oklahoma State in addition to the ACC slate. Factor in the voids left by five NFL draft picks and seven other starters, and the most ambitious outlook for the upcoming season might come from the Panthers themselves.
When predictions from the ACC’s writers were released Monday morning, Pitt found itself picked fourth in the Coastal Division — the same preseason spot as a year ago, and the same spot where the Panthers finished in 2016 — but with seven first-place votes out of a possible 167.
“When you look at the Coastal … I think top to bottom, it’s a better division, but probably the two best teams are in the other division,” Narduzzi said, comparing his side of the ACC to the one with Clemson and Florida State. “But just like we’ve had the last two years, we’re going to have an opportunity to win the ACC Coastal, and that’s our goal is to get that championship.”
The checklist of what it will take to achieve that was outlined by Narduzzi, O’Neill and senior cornerback Avonte Maddox.
• Don’t get caught up in last season’s success: “I think people go, ‘Oh, Pitt might be back here,’ but with our kids, you don’t recognize it,” Narduzzi said. “I sure hope they aren’t thinking about the Clemson win right now. If they are, they’re probably going to get slammed in the face.”
• Find the consistency that eluded them a year ago: “We can go beat Clemson, do a really good job beating Clemson, be a great team, but then we were in a tight game with Marshall with four minutes left,” O’Neill said. “It’s being able to get to a level and keep that level.”
• Improve on a defensive effort that left plenty to be desired, especially in the secondary: “Obviously, we did give up a lot of yards through the air,” Maddox said. “But as a team, we all fight through adversity, and that’s something we’re working on in the back end.”
For better or worse, it won’t take long to gauge where Pitt stands in 2017. Training camp starts July 31, Youngstown State comes to town Sept. 2, then it’s those big-time matchups in back-to-back weeks.
“I think anytime you play a great opponent like Oklahoma State and like Penn State, that it gets your guys locked in early,” Narduzzi said. “You better be locked in. They’re not waiting three weeks to get into a tough game. They’re not going to get bored, I’ll tell you that. They’re not going to get bored at all.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: July 17, 2017, 6:23 p.m.
Updated: July 18, 2017, 4:15 a.m.
