Inside The Panthers

WR Carl Jean-Bart Connected to Former Pitt Panthers QB

Set to visit Pittsburgh next month, Carl Jean-Bart has an interesting connection to a former Pitt Panthers quarterback.

Kevin Sinclair

X: @CarlJB26
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Carl Jean-Bart has an interesting connection to Pitt Panthers football. It's part of why the Florida receiver plans to travel to Pittsburgh next month. The super-productive receiver announced this week that he set plans for a visit on March 20. It came just over a month after the Panthers extended an offer to Jean-Bart (Jan. 23). 

“I like Pitt,” Jean-Bart said. “I’ve got some people who are from Pitt, so I know a little bit about it…Coach Rod (Rutherford) trained me a little bit and I played for his 7-on-7 (team) last year. He was a quarterback at Pitt, and he went to the NFL for a little bit.”. 

“I know they like to throw the ball. I know I like to hear that they throw the ball. I talked to Coach (Lindsey) Lamar. He came down and talked to me a little bit. Yeah, I like it," he continued. 

“I just want to go down there, check it out, see it in person, meet with everybody ‘cause I hear a lot of good things about it. 

“Like I said, my trainer (Rod Rutherford), he's a quarterback coach. So, I'll be out there with him, he’ll be throwing the ball. He’s from Pitt and he talks a lot of good things about Pitt.”

So far, Jean-Bart carries various offers aside from Pitt, including FAU, FIU and Wake Forest. 

The Panthers coaching staff has done a good job of consistency within his recruitment, another part of why Jean-Bart will be in Pittsburgh next month. 

“For me, I feel like it was…having regular conversations (with Coach Lamar). Of course, a lot of coaches come, they’re going to talk to you, but it's like when they give you a number, they actually hit you up, texting you, checking on you, stuff like that. "

“That shows that you actually care about a player. And that's what I look at when it comes to looking at colleges and stuff. That's one of the things Pitt did. He texted me and was checking on me, making sure I was good.”

If you look up the rising senior’s receiving yardage, you’ll notice that he essentially tripled his numbers between his sophomore season and his junior year in 2024. 

In 2023, the Orlando (Fla.) Evans standout put together 30 receptions for 424 yards and seven touchdowns. When he returned last fall, he tallied 68 catches for 1,379 yards and nine touchdowns. 

However, Jean-Bart hit a bump in the road as a sophomore. 

“...When you looked at my stats for my sophomore season, it was like 500 (receiving yards) or 400 (yards). I got hurt my sophomore season. I didn't play my full sophomore season,” Jean-Bart said. “I got hurt halfway through. So, yeah, I only played five, six games.”

In the footage below, you can watch Jean-Bart cut-up quality defensive backs at a recent invite-only Under Armour camp. 

Clearly, the varsity defensive backs struggled to contain the Florida product. 

“I felt really good. I was beating the DBs a lot, as you can see. I got like 1 minute and 30 seconds of film just from that camp,” Jean-Bart said. “So, I had a good time…I was just doing my thing balling out.”

At 6-foot, 180 pounds, it isn’t obvious where Jean-Bart will fit best at the next level across the field receiver, boundary receiver, and slot receiver roles.

Even so, there’s one specific role he seems to be applied to most often. 

"I wouldn't care where the coach puts me as long as I'm on the field getting the ball,” Jean-Bart said. “I don't really care, but if I had to pick, I feel like most of the time coaches like to put me in the slot because I'm a faster receiver and I know how to get open.

"I usually like going in the slot. It's a lot more field, a lot more things you can do in the slot position."

While Coach Rutherford has influenced Jean-Bart regarding Pitt football, it was a family member who drew his interest in the game at a young age. 

“When I was growing up, I was really young and my dad's brother, my uncle, went to Georgia State,” Jean-Bart said. “He played running back, and that's really what made me fall in love with the game. I fell in love with the game early.”

After playing football in pads from the age of five in Savannah, Georgia, Jean-Bart moved to Florida where he continued playing youth football. Although he returned to the Peach State for his eighth-grade year, he returned to Florida where his game has flourished. 

To this day, he continues to credit his uncle as an inspiration. 

"Yeah, I got it from my uncle. Watching him made me want to play more and more, and he was really good. The only thing that really slowed him down was the injuries. So, I was playing when I was super, super young."

For now, some could argue that Jean-Bart’s modest recruiting rankings don’t match his on-field performance and production. 

He’s a big-time producer facing big-time talent in Florida 6A, including foes like Apopka and Lake Mary, schools that churn out scores of Power Four prospects. 

It’ll be interesting to see if the recruiting networks increase his ranking and if his offer list will grow with it. Given his track record and recent camp performance, it wouldn’t be surprising to see both come to fruition. 

As things stand, Pitt has Jean-Bart’s full attention, and he’s thrilled about his upcoming trip to Pennsylvania. 

“I just want to see how they practice, see the field, see how everybody acts with each other,” Jean-Bart said. “I want to get to talk to the coaches and get to know them. 

“As for right now, I only know Coach Lamar, so I just want to get to know the rest of the coaches, see some of the players, see how the team acts with each other. To take some pictures with some of them, maybe get some Pitt cleats or something like that, anything like that would definitely be nice. 

“That's probably some things I'm looking for when I'm going up there.”

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Kevin Sinclair
KEVIN SINCLAIR

Kevin Sinclair writes coverage of the Pitt Panthers along with the Baltimore Ravens, the New England Patriots, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Tennessee Titans for On SI. Previously, he was a recruiting reporter and managing editor at Irish Illustrated, the privately-owned Notre Dame site within the 247Sports Network, for over seven-and-a-half years. Kevin studied multimedia journalism and has been a sports writer for nearly a decade.

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