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EL PASO, Tex. - The questions were inevitable, whether Pat Narduzzi knew they were coming or not.

In the aftermath of Pitt’s 14-13 loss to Stanford in Monday’s Sun Bowl, the Panthers’ head coach took to the podium and talked about statistical oddities and missed opportunities, trips to the red zone that didn’t reach the end zone and a long field goal attempt that could have been shorter.

But ultimately, the questions had to come about Pitt’s offense, because the loss to the Cardinal wasn’t the first time the Panthers had come up woefully short on that side of the ball this season.

In the last three games - the regular-season finale at Miami, the ACC Championship Game against Clemson and the Sun Bowl against Stanford - Pitt scored a total of 26 points. Clemson put up 42 points, so a few more touchdowns might not have been enough for the Panthers in that one. But the losses to Miami (final score: 24-3) and Stanford (final score: 14-13) were in reach, if only the offense could produce just a little more.

Instead, the offense was flat and lacking any real consistent threat in the passing game.

So, with the most recent memories of the season being lackluster offensive performances, there was no doubt that Narduzzi would face questions about the offense that pertained to more than the events of that afternoon.

The first was about next year: how could the offense get better this offseason?

“Well, we’ve just got to continue to look at what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and evaluate, really, every part of the program,” Narduzzi said. “You look at - I mean, you’ve got a second-team All-Pac-12 quarterback (Stanford’s K.J. Costello) that throws for 105 yards - it looks like 105 yards and we threw for 136. They’re averaging 250, 280, but obviously some good defense being played out there so give them credit. But I thought we did some better things, obviously, than we did in the last game, so we’ll just continue to go back to the drawing board and evaluate what we’re doing.”

The next question narrowed the focus: does Narduzzi expect any offseason changes to the coaching staff?

“I’m not going to talk about that right now. I like our staff right now. I like our players. I’m going to digest this football game.”

And on the third question in the sequence - the fourth question of Narduzzi’s postgame press conference - the finest point was put on the matter: what is Narduzzi’s confidence level in offensive coordinator Shawn Watson?

“High. High. What’s their confidence in their coordinator? They had 208 yards, we had 344. I don’t know. I mean…”

Narduzzi is right. Stanford had just 208 total yards and 105 passing yards, which is below Pitt’s totals of 344 overall and 136 passing. But a key difference is that the Cardinal have had a strong year passing overall. Costello threw for more than 3,400 yards in the regular season and hit on 29 touchdown passes.

Pickett was a starting quarterback for 14 games this season and fell short of 2,000 yards.

That’s quite a contrast, and it’s the body of work that will have Narduzzi doing some soul-searching in the coming days and weeks. If he believes that Pickett’s inexperience and Pitt’s issues in pass protection were the biggest problem, or if Watson bears more individual responsibility for a passing offense that produced fewer yards than all but 11 programs nationally (despite playing 14 games).