| 42. Pittsburgh Panthers |
| #6 in ACC |
I mentioned yesterday that the Pac 12 South was the worst Power 5 division. Well, then the contender is the ACC Coastal. The difference is that at least Pitt won that division. They did so with a 6-2 conference record, even though they were otherwise 0-5 in FBS games. It continued a theme with Pitt under Pat Narduzzi where the Panthers have a better winning percentage in ACC play (.625), than they do in non-conference (.400). Four of those eight non-conference wins are against FCS opponents, so it’s actually .250 against FBS non-conference opponents. Either way, an ACC Championship Game birth, the first division title for the school, maybe kept Narduzzi’s seat from becoming too hot, but didn’t cool things enough for him not to tinker. At times the Panthers’ running game looked great, churning out perhaps the single best effort ever in their win over Virginia Tech, running for 13.7 ypc on 36 carries, and having the highest overall ypp in at least the last 15 years in the FBS. Overall though, Pitt was #12 in the ACC in scoring, and even that “great” rushing attack was only third best per carry in their own conference. So offensive coordinator Shawn Watson is out, and former UMass head coach Mark Whipple is in. The early returns from spring practice is the team plans to throw the ball more...a lot more. That’s not incredibly hard to do when you averaged just 22.6 pass attempts per game. That was almost 5 fewer passes than the next lowest non-option ACC team. At least on the rare occasion Georgia Tech threw and caught the ball it worked, averaging a conference best 8.6 ypa, and an NCAA best 21.0 yards per completion. Pitt had the ACC’s second worst yards per attempt average (6.3) and were bottom 20 nationally in yards per completion (11.0). The offense needed an overhaul anyway, but the returning personnel made the matter more urgent. The Panthers lost both all-conference running backs, four all-conference offensive linemen, and an all-conference fullback, who was probably the best fullback in the nation, with the obvious caveat that only about a dozen teams play one with any sort of significance. That means Kenny Pickett is going to have to get a whole lot better. The expectations on Pickett were probably unfair. Pickett was handed the QB1 job in the season finale of 2017, and led the upset of #2 Miami. We didn’t see enough of him for that game not to be the takeaway. While he wasn’t bad, he didn’t do enough when he was asked to do something. He avoided interceptions, but he was 10th in the league in passer rating, and only completed 58% of his passes. He was viewed as a dual threat guy, and was given the permission and play calling to exploit that with 8.4 carries per game, but averaged just 1.9 ypc, on a team that averaged 5.6. Yes, sacks are part of that, but that was the other problem, how many sacks he took. For a team that threw the ball as rarely as it did, and had five, yes all five, linemen be named all-conference, there’s no excuse for taking 33 sacks. Pickett took sacks on 9.85% of dropbacks, 12th most nationally. You would expect a guy with little starting experience to suffer early, but Pickett actually got worse as the season wore on, up to 13.75% over the final quarter of the season, sixth most. Whipple wants to put more on him, can he handle it? Narduzzi is very hands off with the offense, so it’s been Pitt’s defensive failures which have fallen on him. There is a good chance this will be his best defense at Pitt, based on where the talent lies. He’s very dependent on his defensive backs succeeding without help. It’s why his early Michigan State defenses were bad, the previous staff left him no secondary, and some solid front sevens couldn’t cover for it in his scheme. Same deal at Pitt. So while the front seven looks to be worse than last year, the secondary should be his best, led by a pair of senior all-ACC players in Dane Jackson and Damar Hamlin. If they take a step forward, it makes the entire scheme look a lot smarter.
| KEY PLAYERS |
| WR | Maurice Ffrench, Senior |
| C | Jimmy Morrisey, Junior |
| K | Alex Kessman, Junior |
| . |
| DE | Rashad Weaver, Junior |
| CB | Dane Jackson, Senior |
| S | Damar Hamlin, Senior |
| 41. Tennessee Volunteers |
| #11 in SEC |
A lot of coaches rebuilding a program go young, knowing they aren’t going to win right away anyway. Jeremy Pruitt really had no choice on offense. Even coming out of the spring he was at most going to start one senior, depending on whether Stanford grad transfer Keller Chryst won the quarterbacking job. He didn’t, which means the Vols return all eleven offensive starters, 91% of their offensive production, second most nationally behind only Southern Miss. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they are returning 91% of the production from an offense that was second worst in the SEC, pretty much across the board. S&P+ was a lot more forgiving to the Tennessee offense, thanks to the nation’s second toughest schedule. Western Kentucky made one decision for Pruitt, by hiring away offensive coordinator Tyson Helton as their new head coach, and the Vols made a big hire by poaching Jim Chaney from Georgia. The first task is revitalizing the running game, which has been among the nation’s worst for a few years now. Breaking in four new starters last year along the offensive line, it was unlikely that the running game was going to be good, but I don’t think fans expected it to fall from the second worst in the SEC, to the worst. The line was the fourth worst in the FBS in standard line yards, but was dead last in stuff rate, with running plays being stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage on 32.6% of attempts. If they get that figured out, Jarrett Guarantano was actually a pleasant surprise to me. He was the most experienced (in the Tennessee program) quarterback that Pruitt inherited, but he seemed to give him every opportunity to lose the job, having him compete with Will McBride in the spring, and freshman J.T. Shrout in the fall, along with bringing in Chryst as a grad transfer. Guarantano reclaimed his job, and put up solid stats, particularly considering how poor the line play and running game were. It will be interesting to see if Chaney wants to increase the pace at all. The Vols moved at the 4th slowest pace of the Power 5, averaging 2.05 plays per minute. You combine that with a lousy offense, and you get 61.1 offensive plays per game. Only Georgia Southern, with the slowest pace, and nearly no passing game, had fewer. The defense had no youth crutch to rely on, they started five seniors, and while it was not up to Tennessee standards, it was still a big improvement over 2017, when they gave up over 250 ypg on the ground, one of the worst in the country, and certainly the worst in the SEC, but improved to 9th in the SEC, allowing 155.2 ypg on 4.2 ypc. The slower pace mentioned above helped there too, as S&P+, while liking the offense more than traditional stats did, was not nearly as high on the overall defense. While the graduations, and the early entry of Quart’e Sapp (despite his very weird 2018) hurt, the best players do return, with a full offseason of what has already proven to be much better defensive coaching. The most intriguing has to be cornerback Bryce Thompson, who decommitted from South Carolina last spring, flipped to Tennessee after spring practice had already begun, and was a major contributor the entire season, leading the team in interceptions. A year ago, the team broke spring without even having him on the roster, and now he might be their best defender.
| KEY PLAYERS |
| QB | Jarrett Guarantano, Junior |
| RB | Ty Chandler, Junior |
| WR | Marquez Callaway, Senior |
| . |
| LB | Daniel Bituli, Senior |
| LB | Darrell Taylor, Senior |
| CB | Bryce Thompson, Sophomore |
