Narduzzi after Day One: "We're on a pursuit"

"We got practice number one in. We really had a good day of practice. Still need to learn how to practice a little better, staying up off the ground in shorts. But overall, good recall from what we did in the spring. Intensity’s there, the attitudes there. We need to finish plays a little better. I don’t know if our finish was as good, but that's because we haven’t been out there all summer. They’ve been coaching themselves."

What’s the difference between year one and year two?
"Year two, I’m grayer, got a little less hair. Our kids know what they’re doing. There’s more recall in what we’re doing. They can go out there a really run the practice themselves. They know the offense, they know the defense, the know the tempo we want. As coaches, [we’re] coaching the little things."

Is it nice to have James Conner back out there?
"It’s great to have James, but I can’t say he wasn’t out here, that’s the crazy thing. You would think he wasn’t with us, but he was here for winter workouts, he here during spring ball. But to know that he’s full go, we’re trying to quick whistle, whether he’s in or someone else is in. One of the players said ‘coach don’t baby him. He’s a man.’ We know he’s a man, but still need to be smart. He had a good day today. It’s great to get him out here. It’s real, he’s back 100 percent and we’re looking forward to seeing what he can do better."

How much is Conner doing in practice?
"He’s doing everything. He’s not limited. He’s going to be limited more by us than him because he’s never going to turn anything down. As coaches we’re going to have to limit him. But he’s over there throwing shoulder at people with shorts on. We’ve got to slow him down."

Is running back a position that the time off shouldn’t be a big problem with instincts?
"You can say that, but there’s more than instincts. It’s catching the ball, it’s the mental part of the game that you need. It’s not just running the ball. Some people might think that being a running back is easy - you just carry the ball and find the hall. But there’s a lot more to it than that."

Is Conner able to do everything the way he was doing it during camp last year?
"It’s hard to tell. I’d have to go back to practice one last year and just watch him out there. He looks good, but I’d really have to go back and analyze today’s practice. We could very easily go back and say ‘let’s look at that drill and see what he looks like.’ But I don’t see a difference with the naked eye."

Is there one thing you’re trying to stress or get out of the first week of practice?
"No, the six days between now and Saturday’s scrimmage, if we’re only looking for one thing we’re cutting ourselves short. Every coach is looking for about a hundred things. The nine assistant coaches that are coaching a position, that multiplies pretty big."

What position do you see the most competition at?
"That’s a good question. There’s competition I believe at the defensive end spot. A year ago there wasn’t a whole lot of competition. But I feel like there’s competition there, there’s confidence at the corner spot. I feel like at the field safety spot, with [Terrish] Webb and Reggie [Mitchell], they’re both good players. It’s kind of fun as a coach to say ‘both of those guys are starters really.’ But who’s going to be the first person to take a snap there? And offensively, there’s a lot of receivers out there that have talent. I think there’s going to be constant competition all the way up to September 3rd at that spot. And again, they’re fighting for those o-line spots. There’s only two guards, two tackles and a center. Everybody knows we’ve got a little bit of depth of the offensive line, so there’s competition there. Tailback there’s competition. We’ve got some talent, now we find out who can stay healthy, who can mentally stay in the game and who physically can do the job."

You lost five guys to pretty significant injuries. How hard are those conversations?
"It’s easy to come out here and coach. Those are the hard. There kids, it’s their life. They come out here and work all summer. Thank god for our medical care here in our city of Pittsburgh, for our scanning procedures. There’s not a lot of places in the country that are going to find what we find. I’ve seen some bad things happen on the field and our indoor facility in the winter. I thank our doctors and the city of Pittsburgh for the care we have for these guys?"

What’s the dynamic like at running back with what [Qadree] Ollison did last year and Conner coming back?
"There’s going to be times where you’re going to see two, three tailbacks out there, maybe four, who knows? We’ll find out in the end. We’ve got really good competition obviously with James - the older guy - to the young guys."

Do have any sort of preferences in how you want to compose a schedule?
"I’ll let Scott Barnes take care of that. Put them on the schedule and we’ll play them. We have no preference. We’ll leave that up to the guys who really make decisions. There’s times when they ask us and they don’t listen to us anyway. It doesn’t matter. We’ll let take care of it."

There’s a theory that you want to play as many conference games as humanly possible to determine a conference champion. Do you think that way? If you’re playing another Power 5 team does that matter?
"We’re always going to play eight conference games. We’ve got those on the schedule this year. We had them last year. There’s no easy way to where we want to go. We want to play great competition, it really doesn’t matter?"

The phrase ‘The Pursuit’ has been thrown around a lot. What is the meaning behind that?
"It’s just our catchphrase for the season. We’re on a pursuit. Our kids know where they want to go and we call it ‘The Pursuit’. You can walk out the door over there and the kids are going to see it as they walk out on the field. What is your vision? Our vision is to be in Charlotte in December and that’s what we’re on the pursuit to."

Was ‘The Pursuit’ your idea?
"It was our idea. It’s a team. It’s not mine, it’s ours. It’s a group effort."

Is it fair to say you and Coach Canada are a good match personality wise?
"I would say probably. I hope I’m a good match with all of our assistant coaches. He’s high energy like I am, I guess. But I’m kind of tame out there right now, so I guess he’s got a little more enthusiasm than I’ve got."