Narduzzi: 'Find a way to get it done and that’s what we did'

Pat Narduzzi met with the media following his team’s 34-13 win over Western Michigan. The Pitt head coach discussed Nate Yarnell’s first career start, an unpleasant ride to the stadium, and more. Here is a complete rundown of everything Narduzzi had to say.

Narduzzi: I don’t know where to start here guys. First of all, I’m just awful proud of our entire football team. We talked about the next man up as you guys know and our guys played next man up football today. You talk about Nate Yarnell — I can start on the trip down here. I can talk about the (expletive) police escort they had down here. It was embarrassing. I can talk about the bottles they threw. I’m not happy with the fans throwing bottles at our kids. I felt like I was down in Morgantown I guess, I don’t know. That’s what we thought only happened in Morgantown in the rivalry game, but throwing stuff at our kids was a classless move, but let’s go back to the positive stuff in Nate Yarnell, what a special day for him. He led the guys in the fight song and couldn’t be more proud of the performance he put out there. Does it surprise me? No. I’ve seen that guy for a year and a half on scout team. You look at a guy that hasn’t been through spring ball, was a fourth string quarterback coming into this game, and he is as cool as a cucumber. You just talk about relaxed, he’s in the hotel this morning playing I don’t know Beethoven or something and I was like, ‘woah, who is that?’ And it was Nate Yarnell. Just relaxed like he’s been there before. It’s just great to see it and I’m happy for him and we probably could have thrown it more with him. We weren't afraid to, but we really just wanted to pound them because we knew they couldn’t stop the run as much as they blitzed. We knew we could pop some and our offensive line did a heck of a job, our fullbacks, our running backs. Then defensively, three turnovers, heck of a performance. Again, that’s Pitt football, Pitt tough, find a way to get it done and that’s what we did.

When did you notice Nate was getting comfortable and settling in?

Narduzzi: I felt it all week. Like I said, he had to battle Derek to get the start. On Tuesday it was like, whose better? OK Derek (Kyler) is better, then on Wednesday it was Yarnell was better. Half the staff was Yarnell, half (Kyler) and then by Thursday it was like Yarnell is the guy. I mean he did it in practice and that’s no disrespect to Kyler. He’s just so calm in the huddle, and I thought he looked comfortable out there the whole time. I don’t he was nervous, not one bit. Not even close, which was shocking because I was damn nervous.

When did you tell Nate he was starting and what was his reaction?

Narduzzi: We told the team I guess on Thursday afternoon during our walkthrough, no Friday after our walkthrough we told them. Coach Cignetti may have told him Thursday night or something like that, but Friday I told the team because I wanted him to be prepared. Actually last Sunday night I told the team, ‘Listen,’ — We made the mistake one time when I was at Cincinnati and Gino Guidugli got hurt, the starting quarterback and you learn as a coach what not to do and we thought Gino Guidugli was going to play the entire week then he came out there and threw the ball about three yards and it fell out of his hand and he couldn’t play. It wasn’t a good day and our team was deflated. I’m going to prepare our guys early like, ‘Hey Slovis is not going to play and someone else is going to play. We’re going to play with our third or fourth string quarterback.’ So we knew early in the week and I prepared them mentally just to know that hey this is what…don’t be surprised on Saturday. I wanted our guys to prepare in every respect to make sure we stepped up and did our best efforts for Nate and make sure his job was easy.

Did you know all week Kedon wasn’t going to play?

Narduzzi: I can’t say all week, but I didn’t want to play Kedon. He was cleared to play. He was cleared to play, but I didn’t want to play him. I just felt like we needed to find a way to go on the road and find out what Yarnell did. Again, he could have played. He was out there going through warmups. He could have played, but I just wasn’t going to do it. I didn’t think it was fair, and he practiced during the week.

Fair to who?

Narduzzi: Fair to (Slovis). I just didn’t know if he was 100% right. If he takes one hit and we lose him for the next two weeks — I just didn’t think, I just wanted him to be 100%. Maybe he was 98%, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I wanted to find out what our football team had on the road against a team that…we got a little revenge. My dad said a long time ago that payback is a bitch and payback is a bitch. Sorry EJ (Borghetti).

You were missing a lot of guys tonight…

Narduzzi: We lost a lot of guys, yea there was a lot of guys and we continued to lose a lot of guys. They called targeting on the field that goes up to the box and it comes down and it’s just like one thing after another. I mean that’s what we’re trying to take out of the game: launching and head down and targeting, and then they wave it off. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m just coaching football.

You mentioned the defense’s effort and mentioned payback, how big was this for them to hold them to under 200 yards?

Narduzzi: It’s big. They had a lot of tendencies because we knew what they were going to do or try to do. It was not the first time we played them, so they had a lot of tendencies and we thought we could crush them on defense and we did.

How about Erick’s (Hallett) play tonight?

Narduzzi: Erick Hallett is a football player. Go all the way back to last season, he’s a football player. That was a great one in the end zone, took really seven points off the board for them as a turning point. But the biggest one was Marquis Williams on that pick-six. That was electric. That was another big time play and that’s what great defenses do, they find a way to make plays. Even if you look at the six points they had in the first half, those are both gimmes off a guy getting blocked into punt returner and we went three and out on defense but they kicked the field goal because they had the ball right there. And the other drive I think was a pass interference call and they had one little run on us, but they didn’t really do much at all.

Does tonight say something about your depth and recruiting the past few years?

Narduzzi: I think so. When you look at the guys out there, I think Nahki Johnson was out there at the end playing. I think we’ve got some good football players. Obviously you’d like to have your starters out there, but you find a way to get it done one way or another, just find a way. And our kids did.

That was the fourth defensive touchdown for you guys in the last five games. Can you talk about the value that provides especially in a situation like this with your third string quarterback?

Narduzzi: Fourth-string quarterback. He was the fourth-string quarterback going into the week. Understand this guys, Nate Yarnell, fourth-string quarterback. He was running scout cards. He was Hendon Hooker a week ago. He was reading cards. He hasn’t been in an offense. He really hasn’t been over there paying attention to it, but he will be now, right? He’s going to be over there. We lost a great scout team quarterback. I’ve seen him do this for two years and all last season when he was healthy. Our defense misses when he’s not there. He’s a football player and he makes plays with his feet. He can throw it and he drives us nuts on defense because he’s a football player and that’s what he is.

He didn’t get many snaps at practice last week then?

Narduzzi: None. Zero. I mean he was the scout team quarterback and he hasn’t had a snap with our offense since probably the third week of fall camp. Really the last week and a half, two weeks we were getting ready for West Virginia and he was running scout cards since then.

You had Jake (Kradel) at center and Zubovic in at right guard, can you talk about that decision?

Narduzzi: That was just the combination that Coach Borbely liked and again they did a great job. Jake has played center before so we knew that would be easy. We had a lot of faith and trust in Blake Zubovic and he did an outstanding job. And I’ll tell you the guy that might be the unsung hero is Ryan Jacoby. We’ll wait and see and we always vote on that, but I just saw that guy was pancaking people. He was wearing No. 84 tonight if you didn’t know who that was, Jerry. Wears 84 and 61 and we put a tight end jersey on him today and he was plowing people. He was impressive.

When did you decide to put Jake at center?

Narduzzi: Sunday.

Your offensive line talks about a standard it holds itself to, did you feel that standard was met today?

Narduzzi: It was. I don’t know how many rushes we had today. I haven’t seen the stats. We’ll probably get them tomorrow. They did a heck of a job.

Back-to-back 100 yard games for Abanikanda. How has he grown since that West Virginia game?

Narduzzi: He’s gown. I mean Izzy has been Izzy. He’s our starting tailback. He’s a special player. He almost popped one. He’s just running hard. Now let me just tell you, they’re blitzing probably 70% of the time, which I told you guys Thursday afternoon that we expected to see a bunch of blitzes and that’s exactly what we saw. The offense did a great job and an amazing job of really blocking movement and I was proud of those guys. C’Bo (Flemister) came in and you guys saw C’Bo run a little bit. That one run he did all by himself. He just kept going. He is a hard, strong, balanced runner. I was happy to see him, and then Vince had some great runs, too. We had three tailbacks out there that did a nice job and just keeping them fresh.

Did you anticipate the 52-12 running plays tonight?

Narduzzi: Yes and no. We felt like we could throw it more with Nate, but even in that last drive there was 7:32 on the clock. Our goal was just to eat the clock up and just run it down their throat and that’s what we did.

The trick play Western ran, was that shown on tape at all?

Narduzzi: It wasn’t shown on tape and we didn’t press it and we were playing off and MJ jumped it and saw the bubble and the guy blocked and then goes. Nice trick play, should have fallen for it, but we have not seen it, but they have run bubble-gos before just not out of that formation.