Former Pitt QB Chad Voytik says sharing the position can be stressful but still have a happy ending

Pat Narduzzi will start the 2024 Pitt season with a question mark at the game’s most important position. Quarterbacks Nate Yarnell and Eli Holstein will play in the opener Saturday against Kent State, the coach said. He has yet to name a starter.

It isn’t ideal. Narduzzi didn’t have this problem when Kenny Pickett was the unquestioned starter for four seasons.

But this doesn’t have to end badly. It didn’t in 2015 when Narduzzi was confronted with a similar situation.

Back then, it turned out well for Nathan Peterman, the transfer, the new guy in town. Meanwhile, Chad Voytik, who had strong support in the locker room, was looking to hang onto the job he held in 2014.

In his first season at Pitt, Narduzzi and then-offensive coordinator Jim Chaney went out and found Peterman, who was with Chaney at Tennessee in 2012.

The quarterbacks shared the position for the first two games — victories against Youngstown State and Akron — before Peterman won the job in Week 3 and ended up leading Pitt to consecutive 8-5 seasons in 2015 and 2016.

”It was a stressful time for me,” said Voytik, 30, now a financial advisor for Northwestern Mutual in Chattanooga, Tenn., his native state. “Everything changed. I started the 2014 season. Not to say that we had an amazing season, but we had a pretty, solid powerful offense. We scored a lot of points.”

Pitt scored 30 or more points in each of the last five games in 2014 while running back James Conner became an All-American and ACC Player of the Year and wide receiver Tyler Boyd had his best season for yardage (1,261) and touchdowns (eight).

But coach Paul Chryst left after the 2014 season, and everything changed.

“I felt very good about my first year as a starter,” Voytik said. “It was difficult for me changing everything up. Absolutely, there was added pressure. That’s a difficult spot to be put in.”

But he added, “I totally understand the predictament.”

“I was given every opportunity and a very fair shot at (winning the job). I didn’t perform very well. At that level of football, if you don’t perform very well you shouldn’t keep playing, especially when you have someone like Nate behind you who clearly is a very talented player and he showed that after I was gone.”

When Peterman visited campus prior to signing, Voytik was his host.

“I wanted what was best for the team and to be a good teammate and that’s what was asked of me at the time,” he said. “I would do it again tomorrow.”

Yet it was strange for the incumbent quarterback.

“It’s an odd dynamic that you’re kind of creating your own demise in a way,” he said. “The two-quarterback system, it forces you to go out and perform. But, for me, being the assumed starter and the guy from last year, I kind of, by default, was put in that role.

“I think they did it really well. How they approached it was very tasteful. Ultimately, Nate’s the better quarterback than I was. The better man came out of top. I’m OK to admit that. I had a very difficult position to be put in as the assumed starter that probably wasn’t their actual first pick.

“I was constantly having to look over my back. I was the starter, but I really wasn’t. I knew it was a just a matter of time when they were going to start working him in more and more.”

Of course, the situation is dramatically different this year.

Nine years ago, Narduzzi didn’t know Voytik because it was the coach’s first year. He started the first two games, but Peterman also played. Finally, Peterman won the job in Week 3 at Iowa, leading a comeback that fell short, 27-24, when the Hawkeyes’ Marshall Koehn kicked a 57-yard field goal with no time left on the clock.

In the current situation, Narduzzi has worked with Yarnell since 2021 and knows him much better than he knew Voytik. Because Yarnell and Holstein appear to be on equal footing — otherwise, one would have been named the starter by now — the quarterback who plays the best over the first one or two games will win the job.

“I don’t want it to drag on,” Narduzzi said.

Voytik, 30, still follows his alma mater — he earned a degree in finance from Pitt before getting his MBA at Arkansas State. He transferred there and played the 2016 season.

He was in the stands in Knoxville when Pitt played at Tennessee in 2021, and he plans to go to Louisville for the game there Nov. 23. Five years ago, he returned to the Pitt campus to give a finance talk to Pitt engineering graduates. He and his wife Amanda have a 22-month-old daughter Ella.

Meanwhile, Peterman has been in the NFL with three teams since the Buffalo Bills drafted him in the fifth round in 2017.

Both players are doing more than OK, and Voytik looks back at the situation without rancor.

“The person (who doesn’t come out on top) probably really wishes they hadn’t been put in that spot,” Voytik said, “and could have performed even better without that added pressure of someone breathing down your neck.

“That’s just sports. That’s the beautiful part of it.”