2022 season: 9-4, 5-3 in the ACC (second in ACC Coastal division)
Head coach: Pat Narduzzi (ninth season)
Like its city, positioned at the convergence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, Pittsburgh football finds itself at a convergence of its own in 2023 between what it has been and what it hopes to be.
The 2021 ACC football season was full of surprises from top to bottom: Clemson finishing third in the Atlantic division, Florida State logging a .500 record in-conference and no ranked teams ending inside the top 10. Perhaps the biggest surprise, however, was an ACC Championship contested between Wake Forest and Pittsburgh.
The Panthers throttled the Demon Deacons 45-21, capping an incredible season that ended with standout quarterback Kenny Pickett earning a Heisman finalist nod. 2022 wasn’t half-bad either, with Kedon Slovis impressing under center, running back Israel Abanikanda shattering about as many records as he could and a lethal defensive duo of Calijah Kancey and SirVocea Dennis terrorizing opponents all season long.
Leading into 2023, however, most of the pieces that helped the Panthers surge toward the top of the conference are gone. Pickett went in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft to the Steelers. Explosive wideout Jordan Addison left Pittsburgh for a year at Southern California before ending up with the Vikings. Slovis has left for BYU. Abanikanda is with the Jets. Kancey and Dennis are both now on the Buccaneers’ payroll. With all these guys now departed, the Panthers need to find their next “it” men if they hope to stay in the lofty position they have climbed to the last couple years.
A new starter under center in former Boston College and Notre Dame signal caller Phil Jurkovec provides an instant replacement to Pickett and Slovis, and the returns of running back Rodney Hammond Jr. and starting receivers Bub Means and Konata Mumpfield provide some solidity on the offensive front. The Panthers’ defense is experienced and highly capable, even with Kancey and Dennis gone. And the team still has a fantastic head coach in Pat Narduzzi, who has led Pittsburgh to the second-most ACC wins behind Clemson since 2015.
The big question will be whether Jurkovec stays fit. Injury plagued his time in Chestnut Hill, Mass., with the graduate student fresh off a knee injury that sidelined him for last year’s Duke game and a hand injury that kept him out of most of the 2021 season.
If Jurkovec is healthy, Pittsburgh can challenge near the top of the ACC. If he isn’t, it can’t. Simple as that.
So while some signs — NFL departures and Jurkovec’s injury record chief among them — point to a year of regression, others, like a returning receiver room and an incredibly able running back, indicate that this team will be just fine. As a result, Pittsburgh’s season will likely be some combination of both: some performances that remind their fans of the explosive ACC-winning offense of two years ago and the defensive machine that characterized Panther football in 2022, combined with some tight losses against teams with more talent.
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Andrew Long is a Trinity junior and sports editor of The Chronicle's 119th volume.