The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently reported that Pitt and offensive coordinator Kade Bell agreed to an extension that includes a raise in salary and locks him up through the 2027 season. Bell’s extension also includes a drastic increase in his buyout that would provide a significant barrier if Bell decided to pursue an offer elsewhere. 

The deal follows a season in which the 32-year-old play-caller transformed the Panthers offense after two lean years under Frank Cignetti. Pitt only averaged 318 yards total offense per game in Cignetti’s final season. In Bell’s first season, that average jumped to 409 with transfers redshirt senior running back Desmond Reid and redshirt sophomore quarterback Eli Holstein establishing themselves as the foundation of the brigade. 

To start Pitt’s season, Bell’s offense came out strong, leading the team to victories including come-from-behind wins against Cincinnati and West Virginia in September. As the season wore on and the losses started to rack up, the Panthers’ offense lost some of the potency and efficiency that drove the team’s early success. However, injuries to starting quarterback Holstein in November exacerbated the struggles of the offense.

But the turnaround of Pitt’s offense compared to previous seasons is not shocking, given Bell’s previous success throughout the lower levels of college football. Before his arrival in Pittsburgh, Bell coordinated offenses of three other schools at the FCS and Division II levels. 

In 2018, Bell’s father and Valdosta State head coach, Kerwin Bell, handed him the keys to the offense and reaped the rewards. He engineered an offense that averaged 52 points per game and spearheaded the school’s Division II national championship run. After a one-year stint at South Florida as an analyst, Bell was once again leading a potent offense at Division II Tusculum. While there, he led an offense that averaged more than 500 yards per contest. 

For his last stop before Pitt, Bell once again followed his father, this time to Cullowhee, North Carolina, where he was named offensive coordinator of Western Carolina in 2021. Again, his offenses produced gaudy numbers, with the Catamounts eclipsing 500 yards per game in his final season. 

All of this is to say that the proof is in the pudding. There is no question that Bell’s style and scheme can produce results and have done so at multiple levels of college football. The capacity of Bell’s blueprint to thrive at the highest level of college football was clear in the first half of the season. 

A differentiator of Bell’s offense is its ability to keep a team in a game opposed to the previous two years when Pitt’s inefficiencies made them fall behind and stay behind in games. This was clear in weeks two and three of 2024 when Pitt overcame two double-digit fourth-quarter deficits with multiple quick-strike drives in each game. The no-huddle system and explosive nature of the offense give Pitt the ability to remain within an arm’s length of its opponent whenever it falls behind. 

It is also important to remember that last year was the first year of Bell’s system and his first at the FBS level. There was a learning curve for everyone involved. At this point last year, Pitt’s returning players and newcomers alike were just getting their first reps in the offense and attempting to grasp its intricacies. The number of players with experience in the up-tempo offense was sparse. 

In 2025, the offense returns about a dozen players who occupied consistent roles throughout the season and have plenty of reserves biding their time with the hope of cracking the rotation in the fall. The staff also hit the transfer portal, receiving commitments from multiple offensive linemen and wide receivers, two positions of need. 

Continuity is an oft-overlooked aspect of team building. In the transfer portal era, roster retention is paramount, and creating self-induced turnover with the cycling of coaches is a sure-fire way to handicap a program. With Bell’s system established and a contract that locks him in for three more seasons, the staff can now sell recruits on the opportunity to develop and play in a system that consistently produces results.

Spring practices this season are about fine-tuning the complexities of the offense and acclimating the transfers and early enrollees to the offense. With a swath of returners already well-versed in the offense, this process should go much smoother than last year. By the time training camp rolls around in August, the offense hopes to fire on all cylinders when they host Duquesne at Acrisure Stadium on Aug. 30.