Pitt Football Spring Practices: Isaac Bennett returning in limited role

A few days ago, it was reported that Pitt had lost both running backs James Conner and Isaac Bennett for the remainder of the spring drills. That, however, appears to be only partially the case.

Conner remains out, but Bennett will apparently be going part-time to some degree. Paul Chryst spoke at practice on Tuesday, confirming the team would get what they could out of the senior.

"We’ll try to get as much out of Isaac Bennett as we can, and it’ll be good for Rachid Ibrahim. We’re getting through it. Obviously we don’t want to lose James Conner and we don’t want to have Isaac limited, but long term I think we’ll be alright. It gives James the opportunity to focus on some stuff that he needs to learning-wise, so we should be alright. We’ve got to be smart with how we’re practicing but we should be able to get everything done."

That's good news, obviously, for a few reasons. First, it means his shoulder injury wasn't as serious as was initially believed. Another thing his return does is take some of the load off of Rachid Ibrahim, who was the only true running back still healthy in the spring. Lastly, it allows him to continue to get some reps with new starter and redshirt sophomore quarterback Chad Voytik. I wrote about this earlier, but handoff reps between a new quarterback and his running backs are pretty important to establish some familiarity and work through timing issues.

It seems as if it's only a limited capacity, but getting Bennett back at all is still an important thing.

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