NEW ORLEANS — The last time Dennis Pitta was in The Big Easy, it marked the peak of his football life.
New Orleans was where he and the Baltimore Ravens captured Super Bowl XLVII over the San Francisco 49ers.
Now, 12 years later, the BYU legend is back. And while playing for a championship was a thrill, Pitta finds making the rounds on Radio Row for interviews and other media appearances to be a much more relaxing experience.
“I can enjoy the week a little bit more than when I played in this game 12 years ago,” Pitta told the Deseret News earlier this week with a laugh. “But man, (returning to New Orleans) brings back a lot of really cool memories and experiences I had that week in particular. Fortunately, the week ended really well for us, so I’ve got a lot of good memories being back here.”
Pitta had a productive outing in his Super Bowl appearance, catching four passes from Joe Flacco for 26 yards and a touchdown.
With that performance, he joined Golden Richards and Jim McMahon as the only former Cougars to find the end zone in the big game.
Pitta is one of 11 former BYU players to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans, a list that includes the likes of McMahon, Todd Christensen, Tom Holmoe and Andy Reid, who helped the Packers win a title in 1997 as an assistant under Mike Holmgren.
The Super Bowl Pitta appeared in has gone down in history as one of the most infamous, as a power outage struck the stadium early in the second half and halted play for 34 minutes.
Baltimore led 28-6 at the time of the stoppage, but the 49ers rallied after the power was restored and scored 17 unanswered points.
That late pushed created some drama, but the Ravens ultimately prevailed to secure a 34-31 victory.
“We had all the momentum in the world in that Super Bowl in the first half ... and the lights went out,” Pitta said. “For 45 minutes, we sat on the field and waited as these old lights fired back up. I mean, it was crazy. It was just surreal sitting there on the field thinking, ‘This is the biggest game of any of our lives, and I’ve never experienced a power outage like this in any game at any level.’ It’s kind of hard to fathom how this happened in such a big game on such a big stage.
“Long story short, by the time the lights came back on and we took the field again, all of our momentum that we had gained had been lost. ... We saw our lead quickly start to go away, but fortunately we were able to hold on in the end and come away Super Bowl champions.”
Drafted in the fourth round of the 2010 NFL draft, Pitta played in 66 games across six seasons for the Ravens, logging 224 receptions for 2,098 yards and 13 touchdowns.
The southern California native originally arrived in Provo as a walk-on but then blossomed into a consensus All-American for the Cougars, ranking No. 2 in program history for receptions (221), No. 4 for receiving yards (2,901) and No. 10 for touchdowns (21).
A number of hip injuries ultimately ended Pitta’s NFL career following the 2016 season at age 31.
He has since served as a color commentator for Baltimore’s radio broadcasts, and he earned his bachelor’s degree from BYU in 2022.
In recent years, Pitta has entered into the coaching world, having once been on the same high school staff as his former Cougar teammate — and brother-in-law — Max Hall in Arizona.
Now in Southern California, Pitta finds himself coaching high schoolers once again with some other famous BYU alumni.
“I’m a volunteer coach at San Clemente High School, and I’ve done it for two years,” Pitta said. “It’s been a blast. ... I’ve really enjoyed coaching at the high school level. I coach wide receivers, and I coach with John Beck, our quarterbacks coach, so we have a really good time. Byron Rex is also on our staff, the father of Isaac Rex, who just recently played. It’s a fun little staff over there, and we really enjoy it.”
While Pitta played on some of BYU’s most beloved football squads in the late 2000s, he’s especially excited about the current group of Cougars, who could challenge for a Big 12 title in 2025 — which would be the first conference crown in Provo since 2007, when Pitta was just a sophomore.
“It’s been remarkable, the direction (of the program) been incredible,” Pitta said of his alma mater. “I think we all had lower expectations going into (2024) based on how the previous year went, and they far exceeded all of those expectations. For them to do what they did in the regular season and in the bowl game was pretty remarkable, they just blew me away. It’s been so fun to watch.
“(BYU is) trending in the right direction with recruiting and all that, so it’s a fun time to be a fan, for sure.”
