Narduzzi on Drake Maye, transfer QBs, Pitt beating itself and more

Pat Narduzzi covered a lot of ground when he met the media Thursday afternoon, talking about UNC quarterback Drake Maye, the Impact of transfer quarterbacks, how Pitt has beat Itself this season and a lot more.

Here's the full rundown of everything he said.

Narduzzi: Another week. Headed down to play a great Carolina team. I think our kids had a great attitude all week and my message to them after the game was, you know, the Pitt standard is just going out and playing football the way it’s supposed to be played. We’ve played some good football at times; we have not played our best game yet. And we’re going to have to play our best game to get a victory down there on the road in Chapel Hill. It’s a really good football team, Maye is a really good quarterback, he’s got weapons everywhere, they’re talented, defensively we’re going to have to play really good and we’re going to have to score points and keep that offense off the field.

What does Drake Maye do so well that’s got this offense going? He’s a young quarterback, and oftentimes, it can be tough to identify if there is one thing they do right or if it’s the beginning of finding it out. What have you seen from him?
Narduzzi: You know what? The guy is - the first thing I’ll say is, he’s a first-round quarterback. You can mark that down now. Redshirt freshman. He will be a first-round quarterback. I have no doubt about it. He’s got the size, he’s got the athletic ability, he’s got great vision, he’s calm in the pocket. I mean, he just goes from here and then over there and it’s like, did he even look over there? He’s just really talented. He’s a natural quarterback, in my opinion. He can scramble, he can run, he can do it all.

Malik Cunningham was a great athlete last week. He threw it well against us on a couple fade balls. But he was not quite the quarterback. When I watch last year, as good as their quarterback was, if he didn’t feel good, he would just tuck it and run or get hit and sacked. This guy is not like that; he’s elusive, he’s really smooth in the pocket. There’s time when he’s just shuffling to the left away from it and he feels the pressure well. He’s as good a quarterback - we were talking as a defensive staff, we were discussing, like, who is this guy like? He’s like a Trevor Lawrence, is what I think he is. He can throw every ball, he’s not afraid to put it out there. He is talented.

How do you combat a guy who combines athleticism with the ability to process the field?
Narduzzi: Well, the NCAA will not let us play with 12 guys, so we’ll have to go play football.

We have to go do what we do. I think he’s talented. I made a mistake back in 2002, I was at Northern Illinois, we had to play this quarterback, number seven, Ben Roethlisberger. I may have told you this story: he threw for 525 yards, the most yards he ever threw. We had to change the coverage up - I wasn’t the coordinator, thank God - but we changed the coverage up so many times. We said, ‘We can’t defend this guy. He’s too good, we’re going to have to confuse him.’ All we did was confuse ourselves.

I took the job seven days before spring ball in 2003 and I was like, ‘Am I going to confuse him in spring ball or am I going to bite the bullet and our kids will have no confidence?’ So we went out and played our base defense against him and played really, really good against him in spring ball every day to the point where the head coach at the time wasn’t very happy.

That’s an old-school story: just keep it simple. We have to do what we do. We have some tweaks here and there, for who their guys are. Josh Downs is a good football player and their tight ends are athletic. They’ve got good football players.

He’s a redshirt freshman and a first-year starter. Have you noticed any uncertainties for kids that age? He’s only 19 years old.
Narduzzi: I just think he’s - I think he’s really good. Do I notice what?

Have you noticed any uncertainties?
Narduzzi: The guy has thrown 24 TD’s and three interceptions. There’s not a whole lot of uncertainty there. He’s making good decisions. 24-to-3?

He’s playing beyond his years, then?
Narduzzi: Oh yeah. I think he got held back a couple years. I don’t know. I don’t know how old he is.

You mentioned Monday that one of your receivers went down with something before Saturday’s game. How have you seen the reserve receivers respond to opportunities this week in practice with less depth?
Narduzzi: Good. Good. We just have to keep it simple for them. That’s the problem. You have less depth at that position; we have to keep it simple. It’s not good, but it’s the cards we’ve been dealt and we’ll find a way to get through it, you know?

We hung in long enough - we had a chance a week ago with 3:41 or whatever was left in the game, we had a chance. We got that far, so we’ll be even more prepared this week, just because we can practice. We didn’t practice anything else. We were stuck. We were stuck at the half with an issue, we were stuck in pre-game with an issue that we thought would get resolved before the game started but it didn’t.

You brought up Josh Downs; their second receiver, Antoine Green, is also averaging over 90 yards a game. What makes him so effective?
Narduzzi: He’s their deep-ball guy. Again, last year, it was like, we focused on Josh Downs, he was getting the ball. Now he’s spreading the ball out. It’s all over the place. And Green is - jersey number three, he’s someone to keep an eye on. You have to cover them all. You can’t just double this guy, because they’ve got weapons everywhere.

Will we see some of Barden and Thomson in this game?
Narduzzi: You will see - yes. Yes, for sure. Barden will start.

Will Cam Guess be starting at punter again for you guys?
Narduzzi: Yes.

What kind of improvements or what have you seen from Barden?
Narduzzi: He’s had a good week. He’s had a really good week. I think I told you, we’ve got to keep it - he’s got to play one position. We can’t ask him to play two or three. It’s like I tell our coaches all the time: these guys, they come down here for a two-hour practice and an hour meeting, three hours a day. We’re here from 6:30 to 10:30, okay? They come for three hours and we think it’s easy. It’s not easy. There’s a lot of details. It’s not just, ‘Run a post if you’re this position.’ There’s converting routes, there’s different coverages and all of these different things that have to be done perfectly. So it’s not just knowing the position and what the route is; it’s, how do you convert routes? And again, he didn’t get to practice it last week. We put him in a bad position and it was our fault as coaches, but we didn’t have any options. I guess the option was to put Gavin in there, which is what we did. But we were trying to put the best football player on the field, which was obviously Jaylon Barden.

When did football become this complicated?
Narduzzi: Anytime, I guess, you went with more receivers on the field. Back in the day when there were two tight ends and three backs and you ran the veer like Georgia Tech a couple years ago - it’s always been complicated. Even back then it was just more complicated for the offensive linemen. The game has always been complicated. We should have one of you just sit in a meeting and be with us the entire week to see what goes into the preparation. It would be a great story, just to see behind the scenes. You couldn’t even get it in a week. You’d have to say, ‘Okay, I want O-line this week, next week’ - you’d have to spend a season. Have you come write a book.

We’ve always heard when Kenny was here, all the things he would do, not just on the field but behind the scenes, talking to guys, leading team meetings, doing extra things to help his teammates get better. Have you seen Kedon do things behind the scenes?
Narduzzi: Yeah. I’m not in those meetings with the team. I let the captains take care of those meetings. The captains meet three times a week - as a matter of fact, they get them after practice today, all the captains out there. And we do have another captain this week, Marcus Minor. Since Carter Warren is out, last week we had Jared Wayne on the field, he went out there for the coin toss, so Jared Wayne was our captain last week and we’ll have game captains, just to try to get more leadership on offense. So Marcus Minor will be our game captain this week as we head down to Chapel Hill.

But to go back to your question, they’ll do their stuff. That’s for them to talk to the team. But he works his tail off. He’s in here all day. Kenny was the same way and quarterbacks have to be - they spend an awful lot of time in this building. Not as much as a coach, but way more than a lot of players do.

You said something interesting on Monday comparing what Kedon’s doing and what Kenny’s going through next door as a first-year starter. The difference there is, Kenny’s got a four-year contract with an option for five for the Steelers; you’ve got Kedon for two years. When you take a grad transfer, an older transfer, and ask him to start right away, you’re not building for two years down the road; you’re building for now. So what’s the thought process and risk/reward?
Narduzzi: Yeah, you’re looking for great players, and everybody picks it up a little bit different, and all of that. It’s not easy for anybody. It wasn’t easy for Nathan Peterman either. Nathan Peterman was a good take and he’s still playing in the league. It’s better to have a guy that can make the plays and make the throws and develop, and that’s what you want. You’d rather always take a player over a guy that maybe - ‘When we develop him he’s gonna get good.’ You guys would go crazy in here, right? But I would do it all over again. I think he’s very, very talented and he’s got another year; I would imagine, in another year he’s going to be a heck of a lot better than he is this year.

Do you worry about him - I’m sure he’s even more worried than you about how much time he has left before he has a chance to go to the next level, so do you worry about him pressing?
Narduzzi: Maybe. I’ve never really thought about it, but you hope not. You’ve got to play within the system and don’t, you know - I think he’s a cautious guy, and maybe last week he said, ‘I’m done behind cautious’ and went to take a shot, which sometimes happens. You’ve got to learn from those mistakes. That sometimes happens. They all do it. They all want to make plays. And I want a guy who wants to make plays. We appreciate the work and effort he puts into it, because he’s detailed.

But with the way that this is going, do you fear that if you get a freshman quarterback, the odds that this guy is going to be in the program in four years are worse than ever?
Narduzzi: Yes, I feared that a few years ago. That’s what we’re into right now. When I first got here and we got Nathan Peterman, I think we had one scholarship quarterback. In the quarterback room, there was nothing on the board. Every other position had guys on the board, and I’m like, ‘What are we doing here?’ We had Chad Voytik and that was it.

But I worry about that, for sure, because everybody’s recruiting transfers. Why go get a freshman quarterback when you can go - I still want to recruit high school football players and then fill the void with what you need at other positions. I think Nate Yarnell is going to be a really good player. We’ve got guys that we think are going to be good football players.

Building off that, I wanted to ask more about the process of evaluating transfers. Has that forced you guys to either add staff or retrain people on your staff to assess guys in the transfer portal? I know basketball added some staff members to help with that.
Narduzzi: We haven’t added anybody numbers-wise. We didn’t have to retrain them, because you have an eye for what a player looks like. Graham and Adam do a great job leading that thing, Karlo, just the organization and knowing who they are. But it’s looking for football players but looking for the right ones. We did a thing last week, just because we were talking about it, we’ve hit pretty good. I want to say over 78% of our transfers have come in and been starters, when you look at it. And the numbers have increased every year. I got the stats sitting on my stat, each guy that has been a player or a bust. I won’t talk about the busts; there’s always going to be a couple. But that’s a pretty high percentage. You guys can probably go back through it and put your own thing together and go, okay that’s a good player, whether it’s a DJ Turner or whatever.

But the most important thing is we’ve been very picky with who we’ve taken, because whether it’s a starting quarterback for two years or - you want to bring guys that are good program guys. You look at the guys we’ve brought in, not only the player but we haven’t missed on the character guys in the locker room. That’s number one. You get a great player that’s a problem, that’s a problem.

Is quarterback different, though, because there’s only one of those on the field at one time?
Narduzzi: It’s always a problem. That’s always the problem. It’s the same thing at running back, a little bit, because there’s the dude - and we’ve got a few dudes - but it’s always a problem, like, you know, who is the guy? There’s only one quarterback. There’s usually only one tailback. We’ve done a good job trying to utilize the guys we have, too.

I know your philosophy is always, go 1-0 this week, focus on just this week. Is there an extra emphasis - you guys are facing North Carolina, they’re at the top of your division, if you lose this game, you’re practically four games behind them and that kind of kills ACC Coastal hope; has there been a different message this week?
Narduzzi: We still want to be 1-0. We don’t want to be 0-1. That could be the wrong message. But they know what’s there. I don’t have to spell it out for them. I don’t have to write it on a piece of paper. They know how critical another game is.

Nobody has beat us. We have beat ourselves. That’s been the message. You can say Tennessee beat us, but if we were healthy at quarterback, even with our backup quarterback, I believe we win that football game, too. We have beat ourselves. Nobody has beat us. We’re undefeated, really. That’s how I look at it. We are. And I’ll leave it at that.

Did you read about the interim coach at Nebraska? Apparently they got a verbal commitment from the number-one kid in Nebraska and somebody asked the coach in a news conference about that and mentioned the kid’s name. The coach repeated the kid’s name, ‘Yeah, we got so-and-so.’ Then I guess they told compliance and all of that.

I understand it’s an NCAA violation, but my question is, what’s the harm? If you or any coach were to say or tweet out, ‘Welcome so-and-so,’ what’s the harm?
Narduzzi: We tweet it out anyway. We just can’t comment on it. We’re not allowed to say anything, but we can tweet it out.

I know why can’t you say but -
Narduzzi: You know what, if I was in charge of the NCAA, I could really tell you. Maybe someday when I’m - no, I don’t even want that. I want nothing to do with it. But it’s the same in a lot of different professions. It’s one of those NCAA rules that you can’t do it and you shouldn’t do it, and that poor guy - an interim head coach, did they slap his wrist, slap his hand? What’s he going to get for that? Are they going to penalize him?

Is there any harm to it? Does the kid feel any undue pressure because the coach says, ‘Welcome so-and-so’?
Narduzzi: I don’t know. It’s a dumb rule.

Do you expect that rule to change?
Narduzzi: I think there’s going to be a lot of things changing. A lot of things. You’re allowed to pay him but you can’t say his name? You’re allowed to tweet about him but you can’t say, ‘Glad to have you’? That’s a violation? It’s crazy. The NCAA rulebook is this thick. There’s a lot of rules that you - that’s an easy one.

Do you think careers like Kenny’s are going to be the exception and not the rule going forward, in terms of quarterbacks, in terms of guys who are only there for three or four years?
Narduzzi: I do, unfortunately. I could really see Maye after next year, he’s in his third year, if he has another year like he’s having this year, and be gone in three years. Which is bad for college football, because then every three years instead of every five years, you guys are in here saying, ‘Who’s this new quarterback? What’s he doing wrong? Why’s he doing this?’ You know what I’m saying? You’d like five years of it. Even though we got it Kenny’s junior year and his sophomore year, you guys, you know, ‘He stunk.’ In your opinion.

Kenny was a great player, and you wish - there’s going to be less boundaries, put it that way. Are they going to be in college for three years? I think it’s going to go down to two. It might - I could see things changing where they don’t even have to go to college; they just go right to the NFL. Which I know the NFL doesn’t want, but you’re holding these kids back from going to the league, like they want to.

Have you seen a high school player able to go into the NFL right after graduating high school?
Narduzzi: It’s going to take him a couple years, but - obviously it’s never happened, but I could see it happening. I could see it happen if these GM’s want to take that chance. He’s undeveloped but…

Now the NFL scouts have to recruit all the guys - they’re not only worried about college; they have to go down to the high school level. It’s not like basketball, where there’s five guys playing. There’s a lot of guys playing. The personnel departments in the NFL are going to have to get really big to go scour the country and find out who those top guys are. That will be a mess. They probably don’t like that either.

Were there any guys you saw when you were recruiting that you thought, ‘This guy can play in the league right now?’
Narduzzi: I’d say no. It’s a hard game. There’s guys that I’ve thought - I would never say it, like, when you get a class of 20, ‘That’s the dude.’ That dude, a lot of times, is not the guy. You’re like, ‘That’s the best guy in our class.’ Then all of a sudden he gets here and two years later you’re like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ It’s risky for the NFL in the same way. You better go out and do it. It’s not like basketball. It’s a different sport.

But it’s going to go to that. There’s no question. I don’t know when, but it’s coming.

Who’s been the biggest surprise that’s the opposite of that?
Narduzzi: Gavin Bartholomew. No question about it. You guys have heard that story. The beard story. You know, not very good football, but when I saw his beard, I was like, ‘We’re taking that guy.’

You got Rodney Hammond back last week. Pretty solid performance, all things considered. Your overall thoughts on him coming back?
Narduzzi: It’s good to have two guys in there. That’s for sure. I’m not talking two at a time, but just to be able to have Rodney back - he’s a good player. We haven’t seen him since the opener. He was strong and physical, and I think he’s going to get better every week. We have to keep him healthy, but it gives you a chance to keep Izzy healthy as well.

I’ll tell you what: Vince has done a nice job as well. He didn’t have a great game against Georgia Tech, cost us in that game. And C’Bo, I love C’Bo, too. He works his tail off. He’s a good player, too. So I feel really good with that running back position.

We talked to Tylar Wiltz the other day. Is he always that positive?
Narduzzi: He’s a great kid. He’s a great kid. Sometimes these guys come from different places. Sometimes when you come from high school and you come to Pitt or you go somewhere else, you don’t know how good you have it until - but he’s been through different programs where he was treated differently, fed differently or not fed at all, just the whole culture. One day out there in the summer he stood out there and he goes, ‘Coach, I don’t know how you do it. These guys took me in so far.’

He’s a positive guy. He’s a great kid. You talk about, you can get a good linebacker from the FCS, but character-wise, that guy fits in our locker room. He’s a good dude. And he can be a great player, run around and make tackles, but if you’re not enjoying coaching these guys, it’s a mistake. Sometimes you don’t enjoy coaching them and it’s not fun and a guy gives you chest pains as a coach or he’s a coach-killer. We don’t have those, and that’s what makes this job easy.