Pat Narduzzi held his final press briefing of the week on Thursday and talked about WVU's run game, where Pitt has to improve and a lot more. Here's the full rundown of what he said.

Narduzzi: Should be a great time. I think our kids are excited. We’ve had a really, really good week of practice - better than last week. If practice is any indication, I think our guys are locked in and ready to roll.

What makes it a better week from last week?
Narduzzi: You know what? I kind of answered this on my radio show the other night. Just as you go through what you did, as a head coach I try not to micromanage; I try to let offense, defenses kind of do what they feel they need to do, keep the guys healthy without getting guys banged up. You want to go into battle with your guys. I just saw some things in some periods that I didn’t like and I knew I didn’t like it, but I didn’t say anything. Like I said, it starts with me. I just didn’t like it. It’s too early in the season to go, ‘Oh, we can’t get hurt, we have to make sure we’ve got this guy,’ all of that stuff - you have to play the game of football. I feel like we did not play the game of football last week. Now, we executed and did all of those things, but the game is fast and you can’t go from Saturday playing a real game against fast people to playing tag football during the week and then getting to Saturday and expecting to be fast and expect that bang. And there’s going to be bang.

Like I said, I put it all on myself. Now, whether that had anything to do with it, I have no idea. We’ll find out this week, because there was none of that this week. I made that apparent last Sunday, like, ‘It’s my fault.’ With the coaches, it’s my fault, I let it happen.

How are you preparing for an atmosphere like what you’re going to experience Saturday night? I know you can pipe in crowd noise and play John Denver a thousand times, but how do you get them prepared for everything from the moment the bus arrives at the stadium that they’re going to face?
Narduzzi: You know, it’s another game. The bus has got 18 wheels or whatever the heck it’s got. We’re going to roll up into that stadium. We’ve got about a 50-yard walk to get into the locker room. It’s not a big deal, okay? And once the game starts, it’s over, you know? I think you guys think we hear everything, we see everything; these guys are - they’ve got jobs to do. If they’re looking around like this, they’ve got issues. If they’re hearing too much, they’ve got problems. They better be locked into what they have to do and that’s about it. I mean, I don’t hear anything that’s going on. I’m so lasered in - somebody asked me a question the other day, I was like, ‘I have no idea.’ During the game, I’m locked in, I’m zoned in, I’m in a zone and you just don’t really - you know, coming out of the tunnel, you know, maybe you get hyped up. After that, it’s over. Really. I don’t care if you’re up at Western Michigan going through the tunnel and people are throwing stuff at you. I mean, we came out of there and there were people standing right next to me. I hadn’t been to a stadium where people are standing right next to me, normal fans with a rope. So it doesn’t matter what atmosphere you go in, it’s all the same.

What have you guys done to fix some of the pass pro issues?
Narduzzi: We’ve had a better week of practice. And again, have we fixed them? We’ll find out. But everybody can talk about the pass pro, we can talk about the quarterback, we can talk about the receiver routes, we can talk about the defense; it is 22 guys. You know what we do to take care of the pass pro problems? Run the ball. But you know what we do to take care of the running the ball part of it? We don’t fall behind 20-7 or whatever the score was. When you fall behind, you’re going to be passing it more and the defense is pinning their ears back and going. We can’t let that happen. That’s going to be the key to victory, is running the football, being balanced 50/50, not letting them know that we’re passing the football and that corrects a lot. When you smack them in the mouth and you’re putting somebody on their back, that’s what you need. When you’re going backwards, you’re going to continue to go backwards.

So that’s where it starts: running the football and stopping the run. Defensively, we have to stop the run. We can’t let what happened last week happen. That hurt the offense. You let them run the ball, you let them drive and score touchdowns, you hurt the offense and they get in a different mode. That’s not a good mode to get into. For anybody.

I imagine there have been times when you’ve seen something but you’ve trusted your coaches and players to handle it and it’s been handled before. Is that one of the biggest margins of good and great coaching, knowing when to micromanage and when to trust your partners?
Narduzzi: Kind of, but there’s been times when I thought it and then it worked out well. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s good, we got through the week and did it that way and maybe we do it again next week but it doesn’t work that way.’ Again, like I said, I think it’s more about when - like, what, did we think we arrived after Wofford and we’re just going to protect everybody? We didn’t do anything yet, and I knew that but I let it happen.

Speaking of running the football, thinking about the game that Rodney had against this team last year, is there any more motivation to get him the ball this time around?
Narduzzi: Again, I’d like to hand the ball off 50 times. And if it goes 50 times, he’s going to have 25 carries and he’ll be exhausted after the night’s over. We have to keep the run involved in our run game, period, in the game. We can’t get into a one-dimensional - you turn into a one-dimensional offense, I don’t care who it is, we’re licking our chops if a team’s one-dimensional. That’s what happens.

I read a lot this week about the West Virginia offensive line. What have you seen from those guys?
Narduzzi: They’ve got 130-some starts. They’re experienced. They’re older guys. Their tight ends are all back. 87’s a big dude from, I think, LSU. A transfer, he’s 6’7”, he looks like he’s big, he’s athletic. They’ve got their front. They’ve got what they want to run the football. And they ran the football on us last year, so it’s going to be a great challenge for us and we’ll find out. They’re going to throw their ‘now’ routes out there, they’re going to have a lot of RPO’s on the edge and we’re going to have to - when I say stop the run, we have to stop the runs and all the short throws that are going to come off of that. That’s what we practiced this week.

The offense has taken a little bit of time to get going in both of your games this season. How do you guys address that to make sure there’s not a three-and-out or a punt after that first series?
Narduzzi: Well, we get going faster. It’s been an emphasis this week. It was an emphasis last week. One of our keys to victory was to start fast; we just didn’t. So we can talk about it. We have to go out and operate.

Do you feel like you guys have go-to plays that can be your start-fast plays yet, or is that something that’s still in development right now?
Narduzzi: I think it’s still in development. We’ll figure that out, but I think we’re getting closer.

You mentioned West Virginia ran on you last year; the next week you came out and held Tennessee to 90 rushing yards. Is that an example of how you had the first game and saw where the holes were and you were able to repair it and it’s what you’re trying to do this week?
Narduzzi: Yeah, if you remember me talking after last year’s game, it wasn’t that we were that bad; it was just the first - it was coming out of camp and doing it, and probably coming out of Wofford, we really didn’t know. We could play slow and maybe still stop them. So I think that’s part of it. They’ll be licking their chops, based on the way they ran it and what they saw last weekend, so it will be a great challenge for our defense.

After the Wofford game, you said you wanted to see Phil maybe run more and he said following Cincinnati that he thinks he could do more in the run game. Do you still want him to be running a little bit more?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I want him to do it when it’s right. We talked about that one scramble where he took a hit going to his left and he was up in the air - I can’t believe he held onto the ball. It’s a heck of a play. It’s a strong, strong man. But I wish he would have taken off and run that one, but he didn’t have the angle, Coach Cignetti thought. So there’s all those. But he’s got to make that decision. If we tell him to run, there’s times he should be throwing it - he made some unbelievable passes in that game, too. Some of those touchdown passes were like, whoa, those are some big-time throws. But we’re going to focus on the things he could have done better and again, as we know, it wasn’t all on him.

On the note of Phil, do you think that his experience and having been around the block gives you guys a little bit of an advantage when you consider all the circumstances - coming off a loss, playing on the road against a rival. Does that experience give you guys a little bit of an advantage here?
Narduzzi: I don’t know if it gives you an edge, but you feel comfortable with it and I know who Phil is as a person, I know what kind of - I know what’s in his heart. I know who he is. And that’s the thing I feel comfortable about. So he’s got to go out and do it on the road. I know he loves to play on - he’s been excited all week about playing on the road. He loves that atmosphere, which I think a lot of our kids do. They’re excited.

What are the keys your defensive front has to watch for that their offensive line likes to do to try to control the line of scrimmage?
Narduzzi: You know, it’s not keys; it’s really just playing our game. We have to play with leverage. We have to attack. We have to attack them up front. We have to get penetration and cause havoc in the backfield. I think that’s the main thing. Our linebackers have to get downhill and they have to all be on the same key. That’s what’s important about that. Do your job. Everybody has to do their job.

This game last year was the moment when M.J. really burst on the scene. How have you seen him change or develop as a person or a player since his big moment from the Brawl last year?
Narduzzi: You know, that big moment - that moment is long, long, long past. We’ll be watching that in 20 years going, ‘That was a great play,’ but nobody cares what happens in 2022. I could give a darn. I can tell you that. It doesn’t matter. You can go from hero to zero real quick, okay? It doesn’t really matter. It was a great play, he was flying down the sideline, but it’s over with. That was a year ago. We’re not looking back. We’re looking forward.

What about since the time he got here, though; how has he grown as a player into playing corner and being a good corner?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I mean, he has become confident. I don’t know if he came to Pittsburgh as confident as he is, but just working every day with Coach Collins and Coach Sanders in the secondary, he’s become a much more confident player. He pays attention to the details, he does the little things right. He’s a really good cover corner that we hope makes another play on the ball.

Are you worried about Greene as a passer?
Narduzzi: You know what? Anybody that drops back, you worry about them as passers. If I had to say which one do we have to stop - have to stop - we better stop his run and his RPO’s off of that run, which that is included in there. So we better be on him. But his ability to run - if you put on a little Greene highlight tape running counter and slipping through tiny little holes this big, he’s got great vision for a quarterback. He’s like a running back that’s taking a snap. It’s Wildcat. He’s really, really good. I haven’t seen a lot of quarterbacks as nifty as he is in the called run game. And he’ll scramble. He likes to scramble to the right, to the left, he’ll scramble everywhere.

Speaking of the secondary, Donovan McMillon stepped up last week against Cincinnati. What do you like out of his game so far and do you expect him to do the same against West Virginia?
Narduzzi: I do. He’s had another good week. I think he just continues to get more confident in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. He’s practiced well, he’s fixed things that we wanted fixed since August started and really back to spring ball, so he’s just become more confident. And I’d like to say he’s a gamer, too; when he gets out there, he’s playing ball. He enjoys it and it’s really good to see.

Are you looking forward to Bostick’s pregame speech?
Narduzzi: I don’t know. I’ve heard some Bostick pregame speeches. I don’t know.

Nice vote of confidence.
Narduzzi: Bostick will do a great job. He’ll do a great job. I know how he is. He’s intense. I’m looking forward to it.