You've been a nice addition to this board, and have conducted yourself with class in a hostile environment, but right now you're falling prey to the echo chamber within Pitt fandom. Year after year, we hear how Pitt is finally ready to make a run, only to see more of the same. And then the rationalization. Reality for Pitt is a couple of winning seasons here, a couple of losing seasons there, but always a reversion to the mean of a .500 sort of program.
Pitt's trend right now is not positive. Pitt has long been an undercoached team of role players with a couple of explosive playmakers who either wanted to stay home (Whitehead, Revis, etc) or who Pitt was willing to take a chance on who contributed mightily and then got the hell out of Dodge ASAP (Shady, Fitzgerald, etc). You don't have those kind of guys on your squad right now, and you are what your level of recruiting says you are. You are what your record says you are.
All the predictions that 8 or 10 or 12 guys on the squad across different position groups are suddenly, all in the same year, going to go from unproven mid-level guys to All-Conference, All-American level guys is wishful thinking. Pitt is going to score 25 per game, give up 30 a game with a couple of horrifying blowouts skewing the numbers. 5-7, 6-6 kind of year if they stick together. Would be 4-8 playing in the B1G East.
The kids on this year's Pitt squad will be better players than they were last year. But they won't be better players than the 3 drafted players and the handful of undrafted free agents who left. And on at least half of the Saturdays this fall they won't be better than the kids lining up across from them. That's who you are as a team.