CINCINNATI — Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi met with the media following his team’s 28-27 win over Cincinnati. Here is a complete rundown of everything Narduzzi had to say.

Narduzzi: First off, thanks to Pittsburgh media for coming to today's game, I'm sure you enjoyed it, as much as our players did. It's a gutsy win by our guys. Couldn't be prouder of the effort they gave. You know, we came up with the fourth quarter and said they're going to win this thing. Broke down on ‘win.’

Again, our guys believed. Again, it shows your true character. You know, to comeback from being 21 down. Players made plays. We made plays in the second half on offense and defense. Eli had a much better second half than he did starting off. But you kind of see some of that coming. The first half, I don’t know what the time of possession was, but it was not good. But we lost that time of possession probably by 12 minutes or so. So they had to ball a lot. We just didn't stay on the field offensively. But we did in the second half, and it's a heck of a win. Got a happy football team in that locker room right now. And again, they believed. And again, it just shows true character.

Questions?

Pat, what went into the adjustments? You boasted that you guys were great at adjustments on Thursday. You guys backed it up with a 21-point comeback. What went into the adjustments on offense and defense?

Narduzzi: Yeah defense was just making the plays. I don't know if there was a ton of adjustments. I mean, they sat in there for a while at halftime and discussed a lot of things, what they liked, what they didn't like. And you kind of cleaned up your game plan based on what they're doing, what they're showing. And defensively, that's what we do. I don't know how many points we scored in the second half. But we make adjustments every series. We're trying to figure stuff out and take stuff away. But that's a good football team. I can tell you that. They were a lot better today than they looked against Morgan State last year. So I give them a lot of credit.Sorsby, he's a football player. He made some great throws out to the flats to the receivers. They did a nice job. They've got a good football team. But we have a better football team today.

What gave you the faith in Eli to stick with him even after the rough start?

Narduzzi: You know what? He showed in practice that he's our guy right now. And, again, we know Nate can do it too. We just felt like the scramble ability. And, he didn't waver at all. I mean, I think if you look in a kid's eyes and you see any, like, dizziness, I mean, he was locked in. And shoot, he apologized to me after the game, ‘that will never happen again.’

I mean, that's kind of who he is. So glad we stuck with him because I don't think it happens at the end with Konata Mumpfield, and Desmond Reed, kind of talked about him for a month now about what he is. You know, 100 yards receiving, 100 yards rushing. The guy's a football player. And credit goes to the players. Players make plays. You know, team win. Obviously, coaches did a nice job, but the players make plays.

What went into the two-point conversion decision at the beginning of the fourth quarter?

Narduzzi: Yeah, the recommendation, when we were down 21 was to go for two. And I didn't think momentum-wise that that was a smart decision. So, down 21 when we scored, to go down, I guess, 15, the recommendation was to go for it there. But I was like, no, momentum-wise, if you don't get it, you make things look good. But, all the analytics tell you you need to go for it.

And again, if we get one of those, you're possibly playing for the win at all. So we're not playing to tie, playing to win. We know we have a good kicker.We've got to get our defense stepped up and got this, the four-minute, get the ball back with that 2:38 or whatever it was on the clock, and our guys made plays.

What happened for you guys, being two-and-a-half quarters, and I was consistently doing about two-and-a-half quarters, was isolating the cornerbacks taking quick passes out. Did you guys just say, hey, clamp down, we've got to take those away? Or what was the adjustment?

Narduzzi: Clamp down. I mean, there were some major, you know, stiff-arm push-offs that we just got to play better. You know, we still got to get better in the corner right now. We've got to get a lot of young guys out there. But, you know, we'll look at the video tape. But, we played better in the second half. But, you know, Sorsby can make those throws out there. So if they’re running 10 yards come back, I mean, he was putting it right on the money for the most part. So, we got into some different stuff in the second half. And some of those sacks were big plays, great calls by Bates.

Desmond really had a big game today, what did you make of his performance?

Naruduzzi: You know, I already mentioned it. Desmond, he's a football player. You know, I can't say enough. I don’t know when someone last had 100 yards receiving, 100 yards rushing. But his performance, outstanding. I’m sure he'll be the player of the week in the ACC. If he's not, something's wrong. But he's a football player.

Do you feel like Eli just started to see the field better in the second half?

Narduzzi: You know, possibly. I mean, I told you, they're dropping eight. You got to be smart with football. And he did a better job even in the second half of scrambling and taking the yards they're going to give you. And if you don't feel good, take off and run. And he did that in the second half as well.

But he obviously saw the field better. There was a couple scramble throws that were good as well and can throw on the run and made some plays.

Obviously, Jason Collier started at left guard, but Ryan was in uniform. Was Ryan able to play today?

Narduzzi: Yeah, Ryan was unable to play today. Jason Collier did a heck of a job filling in. And then Jason kind of went down with a little injury. We didn't have him at the end of that second quarter. I'm not sure how much time in the second quarter. And then he got together. You know, I give Jason Collier a ton of credit. And then the guy came back and fought through it. And, you know, a little hamstring, I’ll throw it right out there to you. Jerry, where's Jerry at? He's not here. I'm sure he would have loved that. But he had a hamstring. And he came back in the second half. He had a hole maybe in the third quarter, but Jason did a heck of a job helping us win that football game.

Sauls hit that field goal at the end, but I think being the more important one at the end of the first half, what did you…

Narduzzi: The most important one was at the end of the game. I mean, that's a game-winner right there. That's a big-time play. I mean, we got a lot of faith in Ben Sauls. And he was over 90% during fall camp. He's money. And, you know, getting points are points, whether in the first half or second half. You can take the three when that's what you got and go with it.

You talked all week about how Cinci is going to drop eight and dropping, you saw a lot of times he had a second defender on a lot of you guys' primary targets. What went into Eli being able to settle down and sift through that and find the right guys?

Narduzzi: I think experience. I mean, you know, you come into a great atmosphere in Cincinnati. They've got a good game-day atmosphere. And, you know, just experience. I mean, you can't get that in practice. Just, you know, the experience is just going to make him a heck of a lot better as we move forward. He knows he's been there now. He's been on the road. And, you know, it'll make us better.

When you said Eli apologized to you, that's just for not playing the way he wanted to in the first half?

Narduzzi: Yeah. You know, it's just like, you know, the first thing he said to me after the game, it won't happen again. Yeah, just, you know, ‘sorry, Coach’ But, you know, hey, it wasn't just him. It was all of us. It was coaches and players, and it's not just on quarterback. He gets all the credit when things are going good, and sometimes he's going to get, you know, the minuses when he's not.

What's this do for a program, Pat? You don't see comebacks this size that often. What do you think it does for you guys?

Narduzzi: Well, I think it gives them belief. We talk about faith and belief all the time. And, you know, our guys believed. You know, there was never a time on the sidelines, and you talk about emotion and energy on the sidelines. There was never a time on the sidelines where our guys didn't think they could get it done. And I always talk about feeding off each other. You know, our offense scores and our defense, you know, our defense got stronger as our offense kept scoring. They got stronger. That's what we didn't have a year ago, where we are feeding off of each other. And the offense scores would go up, and then we'd get into victory defense and shut it down and win the game at the end.

So, I mean, it's like everything, you know, went into it. We had a four-minute stop. We had a two-minute, you know, at the end of the half. How about the two-minute at the end of the half in the field? What do you think that was important with :33 seconds left on the clock at the half? And we get in field goal range and kick a 53-yarder. I mean, that's, you know, you had a game-winner at the end of the half, and you had a game-winner, you know, at the end of the game.

It seemed like in the second half the defense really stepped up, just based on what the linebackers were able to do.

Narduzzi: Yeah, I don't know how many pressures we had. You know, we didn't get enough, but he got the ball out well.I mean, he did a nice job. But I don't know how many sacks we had today. But we didn't get enough.But he's good with the ball. He's a really good football player.

Your defense allowed seven yards in the fourth quarter. Who did you see being the leader, the leading voice out there to keep that team, keep their heads high and focused to make those kind of adjustments?

Narduzzi: You know, I don't know. I would say Brandon George would be one of them. But I think, you know, coaches and players, it better be more than one guy. You know, I think, you know, the coaches held it together and were positive on the sideline. And that's all you can be. You know, you coach stuff off the iPad, what you see, get things better. I snapped a couple times when I see some stuff on the iPad, you know, between series and that's not good. It's valuable to have those iPads out there just to know who you're attacking. You can't wait until Sunday to figure it out. But, you know, we played much better in the quarter position in the second half. And, again, we made some plays and made some good adjustments.

Pat, when you make a hire like you did with Kade and then you see an offense like this do this in the second half, what's due just for the belief of, like, hey, yeah, I think we did a good job getting this offense together.

Narduzzi: You know, we've had belief for a while. It wasn't just after last week or after this week. You know, I told our team last night, you know, I've got more confidence. I've been, you know, coming into the 10th season, I have more confidence in what our guys can do in that room. I told them last night before they went to bed that, you know, I couldn't be more confident about what we can do on, really all three phases. And we've made our mistakes, trust me. The penalties, we'll look at those. I mean, we started twice, you know, inside the 15-yard line. Again, it's hard for anybody to go down there. I think we started, at the six-yard line and took it 94 yards for a touchdown as well. But, we didn't have the winning. We did win, the time of possession, and we certainly did win the field position. Those are two critical things. And, special teams have got to get better. We've had two holdings on kickoff return this season so far. It's two and two. That's not good. And it puts our – we had some pretty good kickoff returns with Kenny Johnson, hitting it up in there. And they get called back for a hold. So we've got to clean that stuff up. I'm just going to get the guys off there, get it done and go with the guys that will.