Phil Jurkovec Benched for Christian Veilleux as Pitt's QB; Will Transition to TE

Just five games into his career at the University of Pittsburgh and starting quarterback Phil Jurkovec has lost his job and is changing positions.

The sixth-year senior will be making the move to tight end as sophomore Christian Veilleux takes over as the starting signal-caller, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Noah Hiles.

Jurkovec announced that he was transferring to Pitt from Boston College in December and went 1-4 as a starter.

He reportedly began work at his new position during practice Thursday, per Hiles.

Following Pitt's loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday head coach Pat Narduzzi was asked about making some changes to the offense after the Panthers put on yet another lackluster performance.

"I'm going to re-evaluate where we are," Narduzzi responded. "I see a lot of things that need changed on offense. We had nine first downs. It's hard to win a football game when you have two explosive plays, and that's all we got. We gotta look at what we're doing, how we're doing it and fix it. That's my job as a head coach to fix it. It doesn't come down to one guy. It's everybody. It's a team loss. Period."

It was announced that Jurkovec would be benched Wednesday.

Jurkovec has bounced around quite a bit during his collegiate career. A native of Pittsburgh, he was a four-star prospect out of Pine-Richland High School and ultimately committed to Notre Dame.

After a couple of years with the Fighting Irish in which he had minimal playing time, Jurkovec transferred to Boston College. With the Eagles he started 24 games and passed for 5,183 yards and 35 touchdowns over three seasons.

In this one season at Pitt, Jurkovec has thrown six touchdown passes and has been intercepted three times, each coming in Pitt's 17-6 road loss to West Virginia.

Much like his predecessor, Christian Vellieux is a transfer, coming in from Penn State.