Pitt Football Class of 2025 Breakdown: Versatile Safeties

Over the past few seasons, Pitt football has built stability at the safety position, churning out one solid tandem after another.

The past two years it was Donovan McMillon and Javon McIntyre. Before that, it was Brandon Hill and Erik Hallett, who both went on to get drafted into the NFL. Preceding them was the hometown duo of Damar Hamlin and Paris Ford.

Assistant head coach and safeties coach Cory Sanders has played an instrumental role in the recruitment and development of those players, and he’ll once again do so with the most recent 2025 safety signees in Cole Woodson and Josh Guerrier.

Pitt is welcoming in a safety duo that showcased all-around playmaking ability in high school, which makes the pair that much more intriguing.

“What really popped out of film is their versatility,” Sanders said on National Signing Day in December. “When you see both those guys, they’re kick returners, punt returners, they play offense, they play defense, running back, wide receivers, making a lot of plays out there. That was a really big thing that popped out and started the process for us.”

At Battlefield High School, Woodson made an impact in all three phases. The 6-foot-1 recruit pulled in 15 receptions for 364 yards and five touchdowns. Defensively, he totaled 27 tackles, two interceptions and two fumble recoveries. He also returned a pair of kickoffs for touchdowns.

Watch Cole Woodson’s Hudl highlights here.

Guerrier – a 5-foot-10 recruit – excelled all over the field at Ocoee High School in Florida. On offense, he rushed for 375 yards and caught 32 passes for 675 yards and five touchdowns. At defensive back, he totaled 60 tackles, six tackles for loss, two sacks and three interceptions. In the return game, he amassed 793 combined kick return yards.

Watch Josh Guerrier’s Hudl highlight here.

The ability to make an impact on every play is what the Pitt coaching staff was looking for and they have found it with Woodson and Guerrier.

“As a coach, we love playmakers,” Sanders said. “You love guys that can just make plays. They got the ball in their hand, their making explosive plays on defense. Both those guys have over three interceptions this year. They both got returns for touchdowns. They just have an innate ability to make plays. Sometimes you just can’t coach some of those things.

“When it comes to the moment of truth and it’s time to make a play, those guys show up. That’s what we look for. As a safety, you’re going to live in some one-on-ones, we’re going to play some defense, and you got to have some thick skin to play back there in the secondary and we want guys that are like that and up for those challenges.”

Another important piece for Sanders in recruiting a player like Woodson is his family background. Woodson’s older brother, Caleb, is a rising junior linebacker at another ACC program.

“Being around his family, his brother plays at Virginia Tech, he’s a linebacker, he has another brother at Virginia. He comes from a line of family with great education. The family knows the importance of football. Mom might know more football than some of the guys on the team. She’s very into it and knows a great deal about ball,” Sanders said.

Cole Woodson on his Pitt official visit in June. Photo courtesy of Cole Woodson on X.

Woodson’s intelligence also stood out to Sanders.

“When Cole got here and got him on the board and talked football, he’s a very cerebral person. I look forward to coaching Cole because he’s going to challenge me as a coach. The conversations we have on the phone – it’s not even football – just life in general, he’ll talk to you about politics, I think he’s in Trigonometry III, the level of classes he’s in in school, he has like a 4.6 GPA. When he was here on campus, his IQ of talking football.”

As Woodson made a strong first impression on Sanders, so did Guerrier.

“For Josh, a story that really popped out for us. He came to the second scrimmage during spring last year. During that spring, it was literally the coldest day of practice, literally freezing cold. We were down at Acrisure Stadium. All the recruits went up to the box. Josh stayed on the sideline the entire scrimmage next to coach Collins listening to every single adjustment we made. We knew in that moment, that was a kid that we wanted to coach,” Sanders said.

Pitt safety Joshua Guerrier on official visit. Photo courtesy of Joshua Guerrier’s Instagram account.

He was another player that showed his willingness to push himself and that was exemplified by another experience Sanders had with him on his official visit.

“The kid is just a junkie for football. Even when he was on the official visit, we bring kids in Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Friday morning, we have team run. 6:30 team run. He tells me Thursday night, ‘Coach, I want to go to the team run.’ I don’t really think he’s telling the truth, so I set my alarm, hoping he doesn’t text me – I wanted to get my sleep, long night the night before. 5:30, Josh texts me, ‘Coach, you coming to get me?’ Get him, he’s at the team run watching our players. That’s the type of kid we’re getting right there – a kid that loves the game of football,” Sanders said.

Guerrier will enroll early at Pitt, while Woodson will join the Panthers in the summer. Nonetheless, both safeties will be developed in the same way like every safety that Pitt football recruits.

“We recruit everybody starting at field safety. We don’t truly recruit boundary safeties here. We want guys that have that speed, twitch and foot turnover to be able to play that field safety position. We always start them there and where we go from there is where we go. You’d like to play left and right and play both positions like Cruce [Brookins] did this year. I think those guys have that ability,” Sanders said.