Narduzzi breaks down the decision to start Slovis

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce that Kedon Slovis will be the Panthers' starting quarterback.

Here's a rundown of everything Narduzzi said about Slovis, Nick Patti and more.

Narduzzi: We had practice number 19 last night. It was an outstanding practice, a lot of enthusiasm under the lights around game time for next Thursday night’s home opener. But I was really happy with last night’s practice.

I wanted to get everybody together. It’s been a long competition between Kedon Slovis and Nick Patti. I think we’ve come to a conclusion here and want to name a starter. But just a little bit about both of them - it’s been long. It’s been a long, competitive - we’ve looked at every tiny little detail of every statistic you can possibly go from: third down, red zone, team, everything. We’ve got it mapped out from spring ball. And it was a close competition. We couldn’t come out of spring ball to make that decision. It was not an easy decision to make right now either to make that call. But the first thing I’d say about both of those guys is, they’ve got high IQ at that position, both of them can lead our football team into an ACC schedule, so we’ve got confidence in both of them. But unfortunately at the quarterback position, there’s one guy. It becomes a one-man show, and like I said, we’ve got confidence - and there’s going to be a time throughout the season that someone else is going to have to step up, just like every other position.

These two guys together in that room, with competition, with Kedon Slovis being the new guy coming in and Nick Patti being the vet, I just couldn’t be happier with what Coach Cignetti, the culture he’s built in that room and how those two get along. They’re like two brothers in that room from everything I see. So we’re lucky to have both of those guys.

With that, after long conversations with the staff, Kedon Slovis will be our starting quarterback here for that home opener next week and moving forward. I just have a lot of confidence in what he’s done. I guess it really comes down to probably a little bit more consistent, very accurate with the football and he’s a really, really good passer. We think he can lead us. So that’s the conclusion we came to after a long, long, long time.

How is the progress as far as, Nick understood the guys, he had a better sense of the team, but what did you see in Kedon’s progress and when did you feel like he started to take that jump ahead of Nick?
Narduzzi: It’s hard to say that - ‘when’ - if I told you when, then you’d say, ‘Oh, you made that decision back on that day.’ It’s just been a slow process. I think everybody has a lot of confidence in Nick Patti and he was the guy that’s waited a long time to be the guy. As a coach, as an offensive coordinator, as a quarterback coach, as a staff, we can’t just make personal decisions about who is best to lead this football team and the city of Pittsburgh. Like I said, it wasn’t easy, but we came to that conclusion after a long time, just like some other positions. It is the highlighted position, it’s the one you guys are here for today, but there’s a lot of positions we think the same thing about, whether it’s the middle linebacker or that safety that’s going to protect the deep end of the field.

I know you just praised both of those guys, but what was the separator?
Narduzzi: I would say the separator was probably just accuracy. Just accuracy. And again, Kedon’s really, really good in the pocket. And Nick is, too; I don’t want to slam him, because he’s good in the pocket and he’s going to scramble. But I’d say just putting the ball where our receiver is going to catch it and be able to get yards after the catch.

Obviously the quarterbacks have to show you and Coach Cignetti that they’re the guys for the job. How much of this was involved in showing the locker room and his fellow teammates that Kedon was the guy for the job?
Narduzzi: I think that’s always the case. I think that’s the case with every position. You could grab a guy in here and say, ‘Who’s the best at this?’ And they’ll be able to tell you. I haven’t gone around and asked a bunch of guys in camp, but I think it just became evident as time went on that that was what we had to do.

Was there any leadership qualities or experience that came into play with Slovis?
Narduzzi: No, it’s not a leadership thing. I think both of those guys are leaders, whether they’re captains or Eagles or whatever, both of those guys are leaders. Our quarterback better be a leader. So it had nothing to do with leadership. They both will do a great job there. But they wouldn’t be quarterbacks if they weren’t both leaders already. Both of those guys have leadership qualities and will lead this football team.

Do you feel like Slovis gives you a chance to push the ball downfield and attack vertically?
Narduzzi: We hope so. We hope so. That’s one of the - if you can only throw a short ball and you can’t throw a deep ball, you’ve got problems. So yeah, that’s one of the reasons: the accuracy of deep balls, intermediate throws, making good decisions and - I guess we talked about accuracy being one of the big reasons; also protecting the football. We want possession of the ball, and if we don’t have possession, we want to punt it away, and I think just the consistency there of protecting the football and making sure it’s in our possession and we’re not going to give it away is also probably one of the reasons.

How much did mobility play into your decision?
Narduzzi: Mobility, I think both of them are very mobile. I think both can move, make plays with their feet like a Kenny Pickett-type guy. We’ll find out if they’re both tough like Kenny, but both of them can make plays with their feet, so they’re dual-threat guys.

Do you anticipate packages for Nick like you had two years ago?
Narduzzi: Not right now, and don’t need one right now, but if we need to, I’ll let you know that we put them in and we’ll tell the other team.

You’re a big “OR on the depth chart” guy. Is this one - like, Kedon is the guy until he’s not the guy?
Narduzzi: Kedon is the guy, and we have a lot of trust and faith that he’s going to be the guy.

How have you seen his relationship build with the receiving corps especially getting the timing down, extra work he’s put in and stuff like that?
Narduzzi: They were out there all summer. It wasn’t just Kedon; they were all working. I couldn’t tell you when guys were with Kedon in the summer and when they were with Nick. But both of them worked their tail off. They’re both in the office for a long time. They work; that’s the one thing I’m sure the Steelers are figuring out - that Kenny is a worker. We’re going to work over here and they’re going to find a way to get better than somebody else by working at it. You can’t just have a talented arm and a talented body and be a talented passer without working at it. It doesn’t matter. You better study the game of football and I trust both of those guys will prepare like starters.

How have you seen the excitement from both of them leading into next week?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I don’t know. I haven’t seen excitement yet. I don’t know. I think the fans are excited. We’re low-key. I think there was some excitement last night in practice. But quarterbacks are like this, I think our team is like this; they’re worried about ourselves right now and then we’ll worry about - excitement starts, probably, next Thursday morning when you wake up or maybe Wednesday night when you can’t sleep. That’s when it kind of hits you. Until then, we’ve got a lot of work to go into this thing.

What was the input and feedback like with you and Frank working up to this decision? Did you have a conversation with him last night or this morning?
Narduzzi: We have a conversation every single day. Every evening at 6:45 for the last 25 days or whatever it’s been that we’ve been in camp…during camp we meet every evening on practice and we go through the entire depth chart and go through every name on that depth chart - How’d he do today? How’s that guy doing on the scout team? We go through it every day, how those guys are doing, so the conversation goes on. And then obviously we’ve had some one-on-one conversations as well to figure out where we’re going and what we need to see and what we need to get.

Did you take input from any of the other players on the offense?
Narduzzi: No, because everybody’s got their opinions, right? You just have to watch it, and you watch who’s moving the ball down the field and I think they feel comfortable with both of those guys. It’s a comfort thing.

How similar is what Frank does to what Kedon was doing at USC? How much of an adjustment has this really been for him?
Narduzzi: An offense is similar. The quarterback, they sit back there in the shotgun, they take the snap, they might clap or they might put their hands out, they might raise a knee. At Southern Cal, they threw the ball, they handed off; it’s all the same. A little different schematically, but we’re different than we were last year. There’s some similarities in what we do in our passing game and run game; certainly, there are some similarities to B.C. So it’s hard to say, but football is football. You watch it and - I really watched a ton of USC tape here in the last two months, just watching them play and not watching Kedon but watching them because obviously the offensive coordinator at West Virginia is from Southern Cal, so there’s that whole aspect of it and very similar offenses.

Experience had to play a big part, didn’t it?
Narduzzi: Not really. Obviously it’s a check in the other box, but I wasn’t going to say, ‘Oh, we’re starting this guy because of that.’ It’s not because of that. It’s based on what we saw and the body of work from the first day of spring ball all the way through last night’s practice.

You mentioned Kenny earlier; he’s next door trying to win a starting job replacing a guy who’s going to the Hall of Fame. Either of these two guys, whoever starts, there’s going to be comparisons to Kenny. Kedon playing at USC in a big spot like that, did that sort of maybe provide him with the mental toughness that might come if he doesn’t look like the 2021 Kenny Pickett in Week One?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I wouldn’t want anybody to have to fill those shoes. Kenny wears a size 18. Kenny is Kenny. Kedon is Kedon. And Kedon’s got to be Kedon. He’s not going to sit there and measure himself off of who Kenny Pickett was in a different offense. We just want him to play within himself and do his job and I think it comes down to that. I’m not going to compare myself to Mike Tomlin or Vince Lombardi. I’m just Pat Narduzzi. That’s who I’m going to be. And I think once you start to change or try to be somebody else, maybe things go off the rail.

I think maybe more along the lines of being at USC and the spotlight that commands, maybe developed the mental toughness that - we might write about Kenny and compare him to Kenny, but that’s not going to bother him.
Narduzzi: Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to bother him. I hope he doesn’t read anything. If he does, we’re going to try to teach him how to not to. We’ve taught that through fall camp. We told them not to listen to you guys. Cut out the noise. The only people that really matter are the guys in this room. Nobody else’s opinions - it’s really what the coaches, what we’re telling you - we don’t want the outside noise coming in here. We love you guys being here, we love you writing, but not going to really - we don’t want to listen to it. I don’t want to listen to it, and I hope our players don’t listen to it.

I’ve seen players go down. I’ve seen good players crash and burn because they’ve listened to the noise. I guess Nick Saban would call it the rat poison; is that what talks about? Rat poison? Don’t read it. The good or the bad. You’ll start to feel yourself, too.

Kedon said in the offseason that he wanted to throw with his receivers 10,000 times like Joe Burrow did at LSU. He said on the first day of training camp, he felt like he was in sync with his receivers and they had the timing down because they had thrown so many reps. Did you see that from the start with him?
Narduzzi: We saw it. He threw a ton of balls with these guys. Like I said, this summer, they’re not sitting around going to Pirates games, although they wanted to go to them. They were throwing a lot of balls. I’d leave the office late at night and they’re out there under the lights throwing the ball. I was like, ‘Who is out there and what are they doing?’ There’s times they’re in the indoor facility at 10 o’clock at night and they’re out there throwing. There’s been a lot of work put into it, and again, Kedon’s worked hard to get where he is today. That’s for sure.

Nick has been in this situation before as a backup quarterback; how much are you and Coach Cignetti looking forward to having that experienced guy in a role that he has been in for the last few years?
Narduzzi: We’re fortunate. Let me just tell you this: we’ve got two really good quarterbacks that we feel confident with, and we really do. I can’t say right now that we have a third-team guy. We’re still looking for that guy, to be honest with you. But we feel really good. It’s a good thing. There’s not a lot of people around the country that have what we have, as far as having two really good quarterbacks that you - again, you don’t want to have any problems, but if you do, you want to be ready for it, so at least we feel ready for that.

I’m interested in the logistics of how you make the decision. Did you call them both in together for a meeting or do it one at a time?
Narduzzi: One-on-one.

What was the reaction?
Narduzzi: Obviously, one guy’s excited. Nick Patti was the classiest guy in the world. Understood, gets it, smart, classy, just like you knew Nick Patti would be. He’s a team guy, he understands and you’ve got to love Nick Patti.

What are some things you might do differently with Kedon this year, considering a new offensive coordinator and obviously no one is the same quarterback - Kenny’s shoes are big - but you’re going to be asking a lot of Kedon. What are some things that you might do differently with Kedon this year compared to what you guys have done in the past?
Narduzzi: I can’t answer that. We’ll find out next Thursday. To me, you can’t really find out about a guy - you can watch videotape at previous spots, but we’re going to find out the new version. I think Kedon’s a better football player than he was as a freshman at USC and I think Nick Patti's a better player than he was last year and what you saw in the first two series of the bowl game. We’ll find out the 2022 version of Kedon Slovis. You can put a stamp on him and tell me or tell somebody, ‘This is what he was there and who he’s going to be now.’ I’m excited to see what he does, but we’ll find out in real game action when the bullets are flying live. The bullets haven’t been flying live. The quarterbacks have been non-contact, so it’s going to be important to go out there and make quick decisions with the ball and put the ball on the money. It’s not an easy job.

The other day Neal Brown said he expects to see some version of last year’s offense. How much or what percentage of this offense will be last year’s offense?
Narduzzi: Again, Neal’s a smart guy and you’re a smart guy. Obviously if you’re doing something well, you want to keep doing it in the run game and the pass game, so there will be similarities. Like I said, there’s similarities in what West Virginia was doing a year ago and they bring in the offensive coordinator from USC.

Football is football. There’s 11 guys out there; you can only put them in so many different positions. So there’s going to be similarities. We’re going to do things that we did well. We’re going to stop doing the things we didn’t do well. And then we’re going to add and make things better. Our kids were familiar with the offense a year ago, so we’re going to do what we do and I’ve been very, very impressed with Coach Cignetti and the preparation of our staff and our players throughout spring ball and camp, and I’m looking forward to watching the product.