Benching of Jurkovec proves Slovis was right to leave Pitt

Let’s talk about the guy that nobody within Pitt's walls wants us to talk about. 

If this was a "Harry Potter" movie, we might as well be talking about Lord Voldemort in the flesh. Unlike the "Dark Lord" or "You-Know-Who," though, Kedon Slovis was right. 

The quarterback once hailed for his arm at USC transferred to Pitt at the beginning of last year for a fresh start. He didn’t ask for all of what he ultimately received as a product of a shaky offense throughout the 2022 season. Even after a really solid Backyard Brawl performance and a decent-enough first half against Tennessee for Pitt to remain in the game, his season was turned upside down. After that, he wasn’t the same.

Neither were things for Pitt, up to this point. 

Everything came to an ugly halt as Slovis suddenly transferred out of Pitt in December, only for Phil Jurkovec to announce hours later that he was going to make his emphatic return home. The Pine-Richland kid and hometown hero was set to champion the WPIAL and bring hometown football back to Pitt.

As of Wednesday, the honeymoon is over, Jurkovec’s career is over, and Slovis was right. 

According to a report from the Post-Gazette Wednesday afternoon, Pat Narduzzi is making the call to bench Jurkovec in favor of Christian Veilleux, while Nate Yarnell will be relegated to backup duties. Yes, that means Jurkovec is being pumped down to the third-stringer as a 23-year-old journeyman. This change will take effect when the Panthers host Louisville a week from Saturday at Acrisure Stadium.

After Pitt's 38-21 loss to Virginia Tech Saturday, Narduzzi said he was going to take this open week to evaluate his quarterbacks room.

"I'm going to re-evaluate where we are," Narduzzi said. "I see a lot of things that need changed on offense. We've got to move. We got nine first downs. it's hard to win a football game. We got two explosive plays, that's all we got. So we've got to look at what we're doing, how we're doing it, and how to fix it. That's my job as a head coach is to fix it. It doesn't come down to one guy. It's everybody. It's a team loss, period. That's kind of what it is, honestly."

An era ends before it could begin.

Frank Cignetti Jr. went on record in the summer and said Jurkovec was originally going to be brought into Pitt to compete with Slovis for the starting job for the 2023 team. 

"We were actually bringing in Phil before Kedon left," Cignetti said in mid-August. "We wanted Kedon to compete with Phil and, obviously, he didn’t want to."

Slovis wanted no part of that and transferred out. Now he is at BYU, where he has done a fine job of commanding the Cougars to a 4-1 record.BYU has posted 31.0 points per game and Slovis is sixth in the Big 12 in passing at 248.0 yards per game.

Jurkovec, meanwhile, hit a season-high of 235 passing yards Saturday at Virginia Tech, and nearly half of the Panthers' yards in that game came from his 75-yard touchdown to Bub Means that required 32 yards after the catch and his screen pass to C'Bo Flemister that Flemister put all of the work into. His benching comes as Pitt navigates into a bye week at 1-4. The worst start in the Narduzzi era leaves more open questions that he has ever faced before. 

Namely, was Cignetti the right choice to take over for Mark Whipple as offensive coordinator?

It certainly seems that way as of now. Maybe the 2021 Kenny Pickett season was just that. But, last year without the Heisman-contending quarterback was supposed to be in ushering of a new philosophy on offense. Slovis was never going to be Pickett, but he also was not supposed to throw games away, either. 

In hindsight, without revisionist history, he did not do that in the way that Jurkovec did. Last season became the season to remember for Israel Abanikanda, as he led the ACC in rushing and rose to become an NFL draft pick at just 20 years old. That lifted the Panthers to nine wins and a ranking in the Associated Press Top 25 for the second consecutive year. Abanikanda's storybook season covered the warts of the Cignetti play book -- the same play book that brought down Slovis and helped bring down Jurkovec.

While Slovis is not putting up Heisman-hopeful numbers at BYU, he is holding his own. And, now, he looks like the smartest man on the South Side for leaving it.

Meanwhile, much like Voldemort's message to Harry Potter in "The Deathly Hallows Part 2," Jurkovec was the boy who lived through stops at Notre Dame and Boston College. Now, his career has come to die in his own back yard.