University of Pittsburgh Athletics
The Loyalty, Leadership and Unselfishness Pitt Is Betting On for 2026
7/17/2026 5:55:00 PM | Football, General
CHARLOTTE — The questions at ACC Kickoff always come loaded the same way. Who's overlooked. Who's disrespected. Who has something to prove.
Pitt has heard some version of that question for years, and on Friday, sitting under the lights at the league's annual preseason gathering, the answers from Pat Narduzzi, Mason Heintschel, Braylan Lovelace and Ryan Baer didn't sound like a chip-on-the-shoulder speech.
They sounded like something quieter — and, if you talk to enough people in the building, a lot more repeatable. Ask four different people from four different corners of the roster what makes this team tick, and you'd expect four different answers.
Instead, you got the same three words, over and over, without anyone feeding them the line: loyalty, leadership, unselfishness. Not a slogan on a locker room wall. A pattern, showing up unprompted, from a 12-year head coach and from a lineman who's given the city everything he's got.
That's the story of this Pitt team heading into the season. It's not a program insisting it deserves more attention, but one betting that the stuff nobody most people don't notice is exactly what wins championships.
Where It Starts
Narduzzi has told this story before, but it still means something to him every time. His father carried a folded-up quote about loyalty in his wallet until he died in 1988, and it shaped how Narduzzi has run his whole career.
He turned down multiple head coaching jobs before Pitt, spending 11 years as an assistant under Mark Dantonio and waiting for a place that actually fit. Now, he's entering his 12th year leading Pitt football.
"I'm a loyal guy," Narduzzi said. "I like loyal players. Loyalty is everything. Too many guys think about where the next job is going to be, players think about their next team. The best thing for you to do is stay in certain places for a long time. I love where things are going. I fit with the people there. I love our players and team."
That trickles down to the players. The Panthers have five players that have been with the team for five years, one of those being Baer. There's two guys who have played four years with Pitt in Lovelace and BJ Williams.
Baer is from Ohio, but joked that he's lived in Pittsburgh nearly as long at this point. He said the loyalty is inherited by Narduzzi rather than invented.
"It starts up top with Coach Duzz," Baer said. "He's been here for 12 years, and he loves us. You can tell how much he cares about us. He's about Pitt. He loves the community. I just think it's a reflection of him."
For Heintschel, loyalty is the thread connecting his whole football life, long before Pitt entered the picture.
As a freshman in high school, he talked to his parents about transferring to a private school nearby — then decided to stay and try to do something special with the guys he already had. They won a division championship for the first time in 40 years.
He made the same call again during recruiting, staying committed to Pitt through interest from other programs, then again when Narduzzi and offensive coordinator Kade Bell trusted him enough to start as a true freshman.
"Having that faith in me playing me as a freshman, that's a tough position for them," Heintschel said. "Having that trust in me, I owe everything to them."
The Guy Who Won't Call Himself That
Every fall the players vote on captains, it's rare for it to be a non-senior. Kyle Louis was the first since 2019 when he was voted one last year. Narduzzi said he wouldn't be shocked if Heintschel gets voted team captain this year.
Heintschel wouldn't be the first sophomore captain, but he'd be part of a very short list.
"He's a natural leader," Narduzzi said. "He's got those characteristics that you can't coach. It's hard to teach leadership to these kids. Either they got it or they don't."
Baer sees the same thing from the trenches. He has been through a plethora of quarterbacks over his time as a 3-year starter for Pitt football. But there was something special about Heintschel.
"He didn't come out and say, 'I'm the guy,'" Baer said. "Everyone around him told him, 'This is our guy.' He's really good and he just acts that way."
That distinction matters more than it might sound like on paper, because Heintschel himself doesn't frame it that way at all. This was the first ACC Kickoff appearance for all three of the players.
For Baer it took five years. Lovelace took four. Heintschel walked in as Pitt's starting quarterback with a lot of attention on him. But he truly doesn't seem himself as being the No. 1 guy.
"I feel like I'm just another person," Heintschel said. "I just go out and enjoy and have fun. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so why not have a blast with it?"
It's a strange thing to hear from someone who took over the starting job midseason as a true freshman and is walking into year two as the unquestioned starter — the guy his coach says might be voted a captain, the guy his left tackle says never had to ask for the job.
Everyone around him has already decided. Heintschel is the last one to say it out loud.
What Doesn't Show Up in the Box Score
Baer may have brought up unselfishness first, but Narduzzi placed the most importance on the word.
It's the piece that can unravel a team fastest if it slips. He's watched quarterbacks protect their own completion percentage at the expense of the offense before, and he's blunt about where that leads.
"If Mason worried about his passing stats or throwing completions and taking sacks because he doesn't want to have a bad completion ratio, that's a problem," Narduzzi said. "We need our quarterback thinking about Pitt football, what's best for Pitt football."
It plays out on the perimeter, too. The stat sheet rewards catches and targets, not blocks. But during the spring, Baer noticed that the receivers weren't just focusing on routes and touchdowns.
"The wide receivers were blocking for each other on screens, celebrating with each other," he said. "It's just a different vibe."
On the offensive line itself, Baer has learned a version of unselfishness that looks almost like its opposite. It's not about staying quiet to keep the peace.
It's about trusting that a teammate calling you out is doing it for the group, not against you. That shift, Baer said, has taken real work to build, because it means letting go of the instinct to protect a friendship over fixing a mistake.
On defense, Lovelace frames the same idea in terms of restraint. Rather than gambling for a splash play, the linebacker room has bought into staying disciplined within the scheme and trusting the ball to come to them.
"Nobody's really taking too crazy of a risk to make a play, and then they miss it," Lovelace said. "Everybody's doing their job. Everybody's locked into what they've got to do, and when their play comes their way, they know they're going to make it."
None of this shows up in a box score in July. It's not the kind of thing that trends after ACC Kickoff. But it's the answer this program keeps giving when asked what actually separates good teams from great ones.
"Respect is earned," Narduzzi said. "So you've got to go out and win another championship."
Pitt hasn't won one since 2021. The words that came up again and again in Charlotte suggest they think they know exactly what it'll take to get back.
