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Pat Narduzzi met the media on Thursday to talk about Keyshon Camp, Ohio and more. Here’s a full rundown of what he said.
Narduzzi: Good week of practice. Finished practice today and feel good about where we are. We’ve got a tough, well-coached, disciplined team in Ohio coming in that will come in with a mindset that they can create an upset here at Heinz Field. So our guys have to be mentally locked in and ready to go and it’s going to be a football game. I’m glad we get to come back and play another one.
Does the 11 am start do anything? Do you like that it starts then?
Narduzzi: I don’t like it for the fans. I don’t like it for you guys. I listened to Larry last night, Larry said ‘Pregame starts at 9 am,’ you know? So I don’t like it for that reason, but for our football team and our kids, I actually like it better than a night game. I think our kids enjoy it. We’re a morning football team, really, when you think about it. We go to class at night and we sit on our tails and listen to professors. But in the morning, we play ball. Sometimes I think we play better in the mornings than we do at night. Maybe that’s all in my mind. But I like it. I just don’t like it for the fans and the stadium and our Panther Prowl walk we have in the morning won’t be as electric as it was at 7:30 at night.
Keyshon’s injury, given how well he had been doing in camp and against Virginia, how significant was it?
Narduzzi: Anytime we lose anybody in our two-deep, it’s significant because it’s a blow to our football team. We’ll become stronger from it, Keyshon will become stronger from it. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. It’s a shame. He planted it. It wasn’t - you know, if someone rolled into him, you’d feel one way, but when nobody rolls into you, you just plant your foot and something pops, you just go, wow. That happened to me back in 1985 and it’s part of the game, but you just feel for Keyshon because it’s not easy to tell him. Me and Coach Partridge had to sit in that office next door and tell him and it’s not easy. It’s hard. These kids have worked their tails off for eight months. He’s had some injury issues and you just feel bad for him.
He’ll be better for it and we’ll probably do the ‘Juan Price get a sixth-year deal. So he’ll be 32 years old when he plays his last game here at Pitt.
You’re confident that a medical redshirt could be an option?
Narduzzi: I think, for sure. Looking at the numbers, I think, for sure. But you can’t even apply for that until after he gets done playing his last year, so it’s a long way away.
Who are the guys you think will step up now?
Narduzzi: Well, obviously Amir Watts has been a guy - going into the season we felt really good with the depth of our defensive tackle spot. Not as much at the defensive end spot. But Twyman’s playing at a high level. Amir Watts is going to take on a bigger role there, not going to have to sub him as much. And then Devin Danielson has been playing really well, David Green has been playing well and Tyler Bentley. So those guys are the guys that you’re going to see in there. I can see all five of them playing tomorrow.
Those three redshirt freshmen, what did they show you in camp that gives you the confidence they can perform?
Narduzzi: Because that’s what we do: we coach and they’ve shown they can play. They’re playing with good technique at times, and it’s the experience that they don’t have. Sometimes I underestimate the experience, thinking it’s easy: You played out there for spring ball and did it all through camp and you’re good, but when the lights turn on, as I’ve always said, we’re going to find out who makes those plays. And I think that’s what you find out. So we’ll find out when they get more reps in there in the game.
Does Ohio’s run game try to attack the middle or are they trying to get more outside?
Narduzzi: They attack the middle. They’re run a lot of pistol and kind of a dive play. It’s running right down the middle, so they’re attacking the inside, both the three-technique and the nose tackle. It’s kind of one of their favorite plays, for sure, so we’ve worked hard on that all week with our D-line.
You’re coming off Virginia, Penn State’s next week; how do you avoid these guys maybe looking past a team like Ohio?
Narduzzi: Number one, we have respect for all of our opponents. The number-one thing is, put the tape on, okay? They’re a good football team, they’re well-coached, they’re disciplined. You can see it on tape. You know, watch their quarterback. If you’re a defensive player and you watch their quarterback, there’s no way you walk out of there saying, ‘Let’s think about next week.’ We’re not ready for next week; we’re ready for Ohio. That’s what we need to have our focus on or we’ll be miserable after the game, too.
When you see this many knee injuries happening, do you push those guys to wear knee braces? Or is that not feasible for a defensive lineman?
Narduzzi: It really doesn’t matter. In practice every day, if you watch out there, our O-line and D-line wear braces. On game day, our O-line continue to wear knee braces because more people fall into O-linemen’s knees. Usually the defense is running and keeping their feet. But our D-line practices in knee braces all the time and, you know, Weaver gets hurt with knee braces on and it didn’t matter. So I sit there and say, ‘Why do we spend all this money, a thousand dollars on knee braces and it doesn’t prevent what we want it to prevent?’
You know, Nolan Ulizio said, ‘Coach, can I take my knee brace off in the game?’ I said, ‘Yeah, as long as you can guarantee me you’re not going to get hurt.’ He was the first lineman since I’ve been here that asked if he could take those things off. He sees the D-linemen. Our D-linemen, we never ever made them use them in a game, but we make sure they wear them, just to keep people safe. But then you wear them in practice and it doesn’t keep them safe there, so I don’t know if we’re getting ripped off by the knee brace people or not. Getting taken.
On Monday, you talked about Paris Ford and how well he played, but it looked like he wasn’t part of the third-down package. What’s the reasoning behind that personnel move?
Narduzzi: Well, there’s just more. More defenses. You’ll see him out there on third down this week. It’s just a slow progress. As a football coach, I never want to put - and I’m not saying put him in bad situations - but I don’t ever want to put somebody in a bad position where it’s not his fault, it’s our fault. If I know he’s not going to execute as well in that, I just want to give him bits and pieces. It’s no different than Jordan Whitehead when he was playing safety and then the first couple weeks I’m not going to let him go play tailback. He played his first snap as a tailback at Notre Dame that week.
But it’s just slowly giving him more reins. And based on what Paris did last week in normal downs, he deserves to be able to take that next step, I think. So it’s a matter of practicing maturely and making sure you’re doing all the details right, because it just takes one guy to mess up everybody in that locker room. So I just want to make sure I don’t put him in that position where he’s out there - and that’s anybody. I’m not just talking about Paris: I don’t want to put anybody in a position where, if they don’t know what to do, it messes things up.
We had a couple critical third downs where we had one guy out of place. All it takes is one guy not doing their job and we’ve got a problem. So it’s hard. It’s offense and defense. There’s 11 guys that have to work together as a team, and if one guy doesn’t do his job - sometimes that’s why you see guys on the field that maybe aren’t as talented as other guys, but they’re sound and will do the right thing.
After the game, Kenny mentioned that the timing between him and his receivers was a big thing. Have you seen that improve in practice this week?
Narduzzi: Yeah, and again, here’s the difference: the lights go on at Heinz Field and then the timing’s off. Are the receivers running faster? Are the receivers running faster on game day than they do in practice? Is he hyped up and ready to go and all of a sudden the ball goes a little further? So those are all things that happen on game day, and when we go practice at Heinz Field, hopefully your motors get going a little bit more, which we haven’t since the spring game prior to the opener. But things change a little bit, as far as timing goes, when you get into the show.
Is that something you’ll do this season, practice at Heinz?
Narduzzi: No. It’s kind of hard to do that, unfortunately. We wish.
Last year, there was a point where your offense became significantly more focused on the running game, where you made a change that that was what was working and you were going to go with it. How long do you have to give something before you’re willing to make that kind of big-picture change?
Narduzzi: That’s a good question. You tell me when. It’s how patient I can be, I guess. But we want to be two-dimensional and certainly have to run the ball better than we did last week but we also have to give it a chance. We also have to have several plays in a row; you can’t go three-and-out, as I’ve mentioned. But I have faith in our passing game that it will get right. We can throw the ball. I have faith in Kenny and those receivers. And we have to protect the quarterback as well. So there are a lot of things that go into throwing the football well. And there’s a lot of things that go into running the ball well. Can you do both effectively? That’s the key. And that’s what we want to get to.
Frank Solich said how much you worked with their defensive staff. When you watch their defense, does it look very familiar?
Narduzzi: It looks familiar, for sure. Obviously there are slight similarities like they’re doing that we don’t do and you wonder why. There are some things that we see on tape that we recognize with what we do. There’s a lot of that around the country.
When you have two important guys go down, what do you have to do with the guys that are left to play as far as encouraging them and not letting them get down?
Narduzzi: The guys coming in? Everybody wants to play. Today’s society, everybody wants to go. So everybody’s been ready. Everybody was ready last week. If they got one rep, they were ready for 41 reps. So they’re all ready to go. I don’t think we have to do anything for those young guys. It’s their opportunity to go and we have faith in them and they have faith in themselves. They’ve been begging for these opportunities, so now the opportunities are there and then we’ll see what they have when the lights turn on.
You mentioned some missed receivers open against Virginia -
Narduzzi: You saw it; I didn’t have to mention it, did I?
There were a couple of times where it looked like Maurice was used in a unique way. One was a pull-back read-option from Kenny and flip it outside to a screen, and there was a tunnel screen that was just barely tipped. Were you encouraged by those little wrinkles that Mark implemented to try to get Maurice the ball?
Narduzzi: No doubt about it. The one ball that gets tipped, if that thing gets completed, there is nobody there. We’ve got three linemen and maybe one guy to block, and that might go to the house. Sometimes you’re a hair away from being where you want to be. But nice play by that guy.
Yeah, I’m encouraged by everything we do on offense. When you watch the videotape, you kind of - I mean, you didn’t feel real good Saturday night, but when you watch the tape, like I said, it’s not really what they did, it’s what we did and we can fix a lot of things like that.
