Istill remember the first day of pads of the 2010 Pitt football training camp like it was yesterday.

Dave Wannstedt and Greg Gattuso had built the Panthers defensive line into something pretty special during their first four years. Wannstedt’s motto was always “I’ve never been around a great defense whose defensive line didn’t kick the tail of the other team’s offensive line on a regular basis,” and his track record from 2005 until that season spoke for itself.

Gattuso, however, told me going into this particular camp, “We have a freshmen coming in this year that might be better than all of them.” And of course he was a local kid, so I was somewhat familiar with him. Still, he wasn’t a big-name recruit, didn’t have a huge offer sheet (or really much of an offer sheet at all beyond Pitt)

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