He said what he said

NOTRE DAME, Ind. — Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi stood at the podium and had a lot to explain following a 58-7 loss to No. 14 Notre Dame on Saturday evening. Narduzzi’s team now owns a 2-6 record out of the gates, the worst of his nine-year tenure, and the program’s worst start since the 1998 season.

The 2023 campaign itself is off the rails, but Saturday’s game took it to a different level for Pitt, Narduzzi, and the state of where this program is going in the future. Pitt’s 51-point loss on Saturday is largest defeat of his career and it is one that has brought on more questions than answers.

The press conference following Pitt’s losses under Narduzzi have generally been the same through the years. I have been doing this for six years and can almost recite the responses following a Pitt defeat.

‘We need to make more plays’

‘It falls on me’

‘We have to do a better job of (insert what they did wrong)’

‘Coachspeak’ is a real language spoken across locker rooms all over the world, and Narduzzi speaks it well, but we all know something beyond the generic answers was said on Saturday night in the tiny visitors press conference room of Notre Dame Stadium. The Pitt coach brought up how the team is going through a ‘tough situation’ right now in his opening remarks, but I thought that needed a little more context and pressed him further on it.

“Well, I mean when you lose like you lost today and had a tough one last week, why is it,” Narduzzi replied. “I’ll go back, as a football coach you lose a lot of good players from a year ago and you think as a coach you’re going to replace them and obviously we haven’t. Again, it starts with me. I didn’t do a good enough job coaching today. Put it on me and we’ve got to make plays. It just comes down to making plays and doing a better job coaching.”

Within that answer, the ‘coachspeak’ flows through as natural as always, but a little nugget in there needs addressed and of course, it’s the elephant in the room right now. The 51-point loss is one thing, but what came out of the postgame is an entirely different conversation, and it seemingly has taken on a life of its own.

Let’s get this out of the way: Narduzzi called out his players and his own recruiting.

He did. Period.

There was additional context to what has initially posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, and we all saw how that blew up on the app on Saturday night. But whether you saw a snippet of the press conference, something on social media, or read the entire full quote, no matter how you consumed those few sentences, they were still uttered by Pitt’s head football coach, and it’s not a good look.

I have always sensed Narduzzi is a player’s coach and has been willing to stick up for his guys through the years. I do believe there is generally a good vibe and culture around the Pitt program from my impressions of covering the team, but even with that in mind, this quote did not come off well and all of his players saw all of it, too. They reacted unkindly to it over social media, because why wouldn’t they? I don’t know if he meant exactly what he said, or for it to blow up the way it did, but again, the words were spoken.

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out within his own locker room over the next week, especially with No. 4 and undefeated Florida State coming to town on Saturday. Pitt looked completely outclassed against Notre Dame, and the second half snowballed in a bad way. What Narduzzi said should not have been worded as such in public for the world to see, but his message isn’t all that off if we’re being honest about his assessment.

Pitt’s roster is not up to par this season.

The record reflects it and so does the 51-point beatdown that happened on Saturday night. Pitt tried to take a broken down quarterback from a program below them in the ACC and tried to sell it as something that could work and as we saw, it didn’t, and it tanked the season from the start and now it is spiraling out of control completely.

But then again, who is to blame for that? Sure, he took ownership of the loss itself and said all of the things a coach normally would say, but he can’t walk back those two sentences. He is ultimately responsible for putting an ACC championship contending team on the field, especially after back-to-back top 25 finishes, but Pitt certainly is not anywhere in the ballpark to that success this season.

Pitt’s recruiting rankings in recent years have not all that great, but typically this program has shown the ability make it work and succeed anyway. The Pitt coaches are good at developing players and there is no denying that. Pitt has more draft picks than any other ACC team over the past three years, and they aren’t top 100 recruits, either.

Pitt gets more with the less more often than not, but at a certain point you need to prepare for down years and not let them hit you as hard as the 2023 season is striking down Pitt right now. A few more recruitments going their way, hitting the portal a little harder, or even simply having younger guys ready for the moment are all alternatives that could have saved this season a little bit.

Narduzzi's ability to develop talent and winning the ACC title two seasons ago are all well and good, but because of where Pitt sits in the recruiting rankings from year to year, a season like this is not of the question. Pitt can't reload like Notre Dame can. I think everyone understands that, but it’s one thing to realize it and also watch it unfold. I think that’s where Narduzzi was coming from, but he did not say it so eloquently, and of course, the quote went viral against him.

It has been a trying season for this program, from ‘Boo City’ to ‘Vase Gate’ and now whatever we want to call this press conference from Saturday night. But really, it was just another chapter in a season going nowhere.