Pitt Football Recruiting: RB Chawntez Moss commits to Panthers

Recently, we had discussed Pitt getting off to a slow start (relatively to other P5 programs) in terms of recruiting for next season. But in the past four days, the Panthers have snagged a pair of new commits.

A few days ago, it was Bricen Garner committing to Pitt. Today, the team landed a verbal from running back Chawntez Moss out of Bedford, Ohio.

For starters, Moss isn't purely a 'Narduzzi guy.' Per Rivals, he was on the radar of Paul Chryst and company last year:

"I've been liking them for a long time," Moss told Panther-Lair.com Sunday. "I was supposed to go to a game last year, but we lost that week in the playoffs and I didn't feel like going anywhere. But I was supposed to get an offer if I went out there, so I knew they were interested.

"Then Pitt got the new coaching staff, and I wasn't sure if they were recruiting me so they weren't in my top three. But my coach told me Coach (Pat) Narduzzi wanted me to come down to camp and that all the coaches wanted to see me.

Per Rivals, he checks in as a three-star running back (247 says the same as does Scout). He had mostly offers from smaller programs, but did reportedly snag a couple from Iowa and Cincinnati, too.

His Hudl highlight film from last year shows him making plenty of big plays. And while the focal point of him is as a running back, we'll see if he sticks there. He made big plays on defense and special teams and looks like he could play a number of positions. That said, he is the only running back in the class thus far so his position could be dependent upon the team's depth there by 2017 (assuming he redshirts next year).

He calls himself an all-purpose back in the Rivals article and watching that Hudl video, it's hard to disagree. He seems to do a lot of things and if he stays in the backfield, could be a nice change-of-pace back if nothing else. Just a versatile guy.

The other noteworthy thing here is that Narduzzi's small class already has an Ohio flavor. Three of the five commits are from that state and that's only one fewer than the four Pitt had under Paul Chryst in 2013 and 2014. It's far too early to tell if that's an area Narduzzi is going to continue to hit hard, but so far, Pitt is having some success in that state.

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