With five starters and a slew of depth returning, Pitt offensive line coach Dave Borbely sees a lot to like in his group this spring.

After Tuesday's practice, Borbely spoke to the media about the returning starters, the development process, learning a new offense and more. Here's the full rundown of what he said.

How much deeper can you go with your teaching and your expectations when you have everybody back on the offensive line?
Borbely: I had several individual conversations with those kids at different points, particularly later in the year. The question was, should I come back? Is it worth it for me to come back? And the answer was yes, because I feel like we’ve done more than scratch the surface, but we can improve everybody’s game. Right now, it’s like, when you’re a freshman, you take 100 level classes, sophomore 200 level, you know, and we’re kind of working at the graduate level right now. I think we can take them - not that the fundamentals change; we can become better fundamentally. Those are day one 100 level classes. But when I say we can take it further, we can take it further schematically from an understanding standpoint, for sure, and build on what we’ve done here for the last three years with these kids. And then I think with all of them individually, we can improve all of them fundamentally, technique-wise, and I think we still have a long way to go, I really do. That’s not a bad thing; that’s a good thing. And it’s not a slight, by any stretch. I think that this crew - you know, Marcus Minor’s only been with me a year, Owen’s only been a one-year starter up to this point. Carter Warren is a guy whose skill set - the ceiling is so high for him. And you’ve got Jake Kradel, who is dinged up a little bit right now. Blake Zubovic, we can improve his game, and he started - a lot of people don’t realize, he started the last six games of the year, and so did Matt Goncalves when Houy was hurt.

So we’ve got a lot of guys who have played. Some guys haven’t played a ton of ball, but I think the ceiling for us is still very high. So I think, in short to answer the question, I think we can take it a long way there.

That process of building year after year, does it hit any bit of a hitch or a hiccup when you’re getting a brand new offense?
Borbely: No, not really. A lot of what we’re doing, these kids did in 2018 as freshmen and redshirt freshmen. Now, a lot of them were’t on the field for us. And even with Coach Whipple here, we had a lot of these concepts installed; we just didn’t use them very much relative to the run game because we were a throw-first team, and when we ran the ball, it was generally - when we really wanted to run the ball was in the second half.

So we’ve run a lot of the same concepts. The thing that Frank had said to me was, ‘I don’t want to change anything you’re doing up front, as far as your techniques, your calls.’ He said, ‘That’s your baby; you take it.’ So I’ve just really incorporated everything we’ve done over the last few years, as far as our calls and our techniques and just incorporated it into his offense. It’s like, ‘Okay, fellas, last year we called it apples; this year we’re calling it bananas.’ So it’s been a very smooth transition for us.

What does it say about your guys that they all wanted to come back together?
Borbely: I think it says a lot about the culture of this team, I think it says a lot about the culture of this room and, frankly, how Coach Narduzzi runs the program. And I think they feel really good about the coaching that they get. So I was really excited about it, and I think it says the most about the culture and what this team is all about. How they’re treated every day and how they feel about the program. So I felt really good about that.

You said that Frank is letting you guys stay who you are. You guys closed out a lot of teams in the second half last year, and Marcus said he’s excited to do some more run-blocking throughout the game. How does that change your approach and how you guys talk about being a four-quarter team that might be running the ball that much more?
Borbely: That process is really - it’s kind of a pound-the-rock sort of mentality in that sometimes the rock’s not going to crack on the first couple of hits. And the run game - to me, the run game is about getting your pads set, knowing how the defense is trying to play you, the movement of the front relative to the pressures that they bring, so it takes a little time for them to start to feel that. I think that we’ll find out that, as the game goes, I think we’ll get stronger and stronger. At least, that’s my hope.

My message to them as we started spring, and I reinforced that today, is that our defense is pretty good against the run. They’re one of the top defenses in the country against the run. If we can run the ball relatively well against our defense, I feel good about what we’ll be able to do during the season.

Honestly, the last four years, we have not - we’ve really struggled running the ball against our defense. So you go into the season and you’re kind of not sure how it’s going to all turn out, and we’ve been able to run the ball. We’ll have to be a four-quarter team, and on top of that, I think I’ll have more guys that I can play this year, so I don’t have to play Carter Warren 95 snaps. I think we’ll have people that we can play and we can be fresher in the fourth quarter and really have a chance to really close teams out, hopefully.

What have you see from Izzy this spring so far?
Borbely: Izzy is a really dynamic runner. He’s got speed, he can break tackles and he hits the hole so far. I think you can feel his confidence when he runs the ball. You know, last year, you could tell there was some indecision for him; this year, this spring, he’s been very confident and I think that’s true of all of our backs. They’ve all - honestly, I don’t really know until I watch the film who’s carrying the ball. I don’t really pay attention to it. And all three of them honestly look the same to me. They’re having a great spring so far, and all of them can break tackles. That’s the thing I see with Izzy: he’s such a powerful runner. He’s got speed, but he’s such a powerful runner that he’s a hard guy to deal with.