Narduzzi on Duke, a 2-5 start and more

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Pat Narduzzi met the media Thursday to discuss Pitt's 2-5 start, this week's Duke game and a lot more. Here's a rundown of what he said.

Narduzzi: Again, got another practice in and another week, Week Eight. The hay’s in the barn and we’ve had good energy all three days. Last week, I would have said two days; I would have excluded, I think, Tuesday, as far as an energy day last week. But I think preparation is going well and we’re looking forward to traveling down to Duke.

We talked to Seun yesterday and he was talking about positivity and how approaching things with a positive mindset can be beneficial. How do you take on that as the head coach?
Narduzzi: You know, I’ve always been a positive guy. If you look at things in a negative - is it half-empty or half-full? That philosophy is just, it is what it is, and you just have to keep going every day. We can’t do anything if I just come in here and bury these guys. And you can do that if you wanted to; some people have that philosophy. But I love our players. That’s the first thing, is you better have a love and love these kids as people. If you don’t love them as people, then it’s easy to come in and bury them. I think when you have relationships with these kids and their families, that’s the last thing you want to do so it comes natural to me. And then hopefully I filter that to our staff as well, that we all become and maintain our positive approach. Because when things aren’t going well, it’s easy just to go the other way. But we’re not going to do that. That’s just not where I’ve ever been from.

We will overcome this. Is it going to be overcoming it this week? The next week? Next season? We’ll overcome it. But the whole way you overcome it is to be positive all the time.

Are you looking at the same kind of plan as last week?
Narduzzi: Every week is a different plan. It depends on the defense, it depends on how things are going. But there will be a different plan this week. I’ll let you know after the game. Our quarterbacks have been communicated to what the plan is, and we’ll go from there. How’s that?

Based on the competition - the other team?
Narduzzi: What they do well, are they blitzing? Do they not blitz? What do they have? What’s our tools? I think everything is matchups and where we feel we can get something done.

What are the biggest areas where you’re seeing improvement from Ben as he keeps getting starts under his belt?
Narduzzi: First of all is his confidence. You never know what a kid’s thinking in his head. Some kids appear to be confident, but what do they really think? Today after practice, I said, ‘So how you doing? How do you feel preparation?’ He said, ‘Coach, I’m more confident.’ I was like, ‘Man, I can sleep good tonight.’ He’s just spitting that out; he didn’t say confidence last week, but he’s confident this week. Those are all things that take time to develop. It doesn’t happen overnight. I think you’re going to see a much more improved from Georgia Tech to last week to this week; that’s what we do as coaches, and I think it goes with confidence and getting those game reps. And seeing someone else go in there kind of makes you go out and do more - ‘I don’t want that to happen.’ We’re talking about confidence, but if you don’t have anybody pushing on your tail - someone writes a better article than you do, then shoot, you’re out. That’s what happened to Lance, I heard. I heard you had to get moved over because someone else was writing better articles than you. That’s what I heard. I heard he was doing unbelievable work and they said they had to get a new Pitt guy in here. So good luck to you. Maybe we’ll bring you back someday if it’s better.

Coach Powell noted that Hines’ punt return was the second time in 30 years someone has broken a big one on him. What did you see on that play now that you’ve gotten to look at it? And how slim of a margin for error does your special teams unit have right now given the inconsistency on offense?
Narduzzi: You know, just like our quarterback can’t have the weight of our entire offense on their shoulders, special teams can’t have the entire weight of the offense or defense. They have to do their job. They can’t do too much. You talk about burden, that’s when some kids feel like, ‘Oh, I have to take over.’ That’s when you get into major problems, because someone tries to do somebody else’s job, or, “I’m going to go make that big play there,’ and then they abort what they were supposed to do, and they, in turn, give up the big play.

So special teams, we have to look at their effort going down the field, which I think they play with great effort. And they have to pay attention in the fundamentals that we’re teaching them to do. On the punt return, we talk about folding and cutting. Everybody talks about, ‘We want to bring everybody down;’ well, it never happens where everybody covers like this together. That’d be in a perfect world. Because people get held up, they get held, they get flipped, twisted and thrown to the ground. Stuff happens.

(Narduzzi demonstrates the punt return)

We don’t coach ‘lanes.’ We coach ‘cutting and folding.’ He’s cutting the field and he’s folding inside, and that’s what we didn’t see on that play. We had three contain guys; that’s a problem. We’re not all going down, squeezing and cupping the ball like that. That’s old school and that’s what I love about Coach Powell. That’s what we coach and it’s smart.

If someone gets knocked out of a lane, all of a sudden you’ve got a hole. We don’t give up big returns. In three years, two and a half years now, we’ve given up one on the kickoff team a year ago and one on the punt team, and that’s unusual. I think our guys have gotten a lot better every year. I think we’ve given up less return yards this year than last year, even with that. We’ll keep getting better at it and getting the right guys on there.

When it comes to building a program, how encouraged are you to see the progress that young guys on the defense have made, especially the corners like Dane and even Damarri and Jason?
Narduzzi: I’m happy with the corner play. Our front seven’s got to get better. I’m not happy at all with our run game stoppage right now. It might be the worst that I’ve been around, as far as just being what we want, what we expect. I mean, we’ve got to stop the run. Duke can run the football. They have great tailbacks. They know what they’re doing on offense. They scheme you up pretty good. And all they need to do is find a little lane for those little guys to get through.

I like what Duke does offensively, and we have to be in the right place at the right time, or you’re going to be in trouble. They understand - they don’t run so many formations and backfield sets and plays that they don’t know, if they do this, we’re going to do this. They do some things that stress a defense, whether it’s a zone read where the tailback cuts it back and the quarterback runs it out there. It’s some good stuff, because they know what they’re doing. They don’t junk it up on offense. So I have a lot of respect for what Zac Roper does as a coordinator, and I’m sure Coach Cutcliffe’s got his hands in there as well.

Is that issue - stopping the run - guys getting out of their lanes trying to make a play?
Narduzzi: Sometimes, it’s that. It’s several things. Number one, it’s youth. I mean, you’ve got Saleem Brightwell, who’s really supposed to be the starting Money linebacker, but he’s filling in for Quintin Wirginis at the Mike linebacker spot, because he would have been our starting Mike, period, as I think we all know. Then you look at where he would have been on third down.

Seun Idowu’s been a mainstay for us. And then Elijah playing the boundary for the first time; it’s his first start this year. And then being really young up front. I mean, you look at the guys we played with up front, Shakir Soto and Tyrique Jarrett, ‘Juan Price, those are guys that had a lot of reps and had been coached for two years ago and you got them where you wanted them. This is a young group. Keyshon Camp and Amir Watts, Shane Roy is playing his first football. All the D-ends are all playing their first year. Dewayne Hendrix to Weaver. Allen Edwards, I guess, played a year ago, but not much. He didn’t start for us.

So those are all new guys. Folston’s been an on-and-off guy. But they’re backups right now. Really, they’re the two’s right now.

So it’s a little bit of everything. And last week, on the 83-yard run, as I think I said already, we had two young linebackers that were lined up wrong. I could pop that tape on and you’d be like, ‘I see what you’re saying, Coach.’ So sometimes it’s alignments, out of our linemen, whether it be a D-end or a D-tackle, and sometimes it’s a linebacker.

It’s got to get better and it will, which is why we coach.

You said they’re coaching it well, but what makes Duke’s defense so good, personnel-wise? They lead the ACC in picks but they’re also stopping the run.
Narduzzi: They’re making plays. That’s what it comes down to, whether it’s the run game - and I can throw on some explosive runs and passes, and you’d said they’re not looking so good either, because they’ve giving up probably at least - I won’t even get into numbers, because then people will know the breakdown.

But they’ve had their chances. They’re aggressive. Sometimes it’s an all-or-none deal. They bring all three linebackers at times and play man coverage behind it. They’re aggressive and sometimes you force people into making bad decisions. That’s what we can’t do on Saturday is make bad decisions.

They’re aggressive defensively, they want to run the ball first offensively; are they maybe the most similar program to you guys in the ACC, philosophically?
Narduzzi: I mean, they’re different than us structurally, defensively, I think a little bit with what they do and how they do it. I don’t know. I can’t answer that. It’s hard for me to say. They’re a good football team and I respect their schemes on both sides.

You spoke about David Cutcliffe; outside of Spurrier, he’s really the only guy that’s won consistently at Duke since World War II. What is it offensively as well as his overall coaching acumen that he does so well?
Narduzzi: I think he keeps it simple, he knows what his players can do and he teaches the scheme. He’s not just calling plays on offense or running plays. They don’t run plays; they have a system and they keep it simple with the quarterback and what his reads are. They just do a nice job. I’d say their passing game is very similar to what we try to do.

When you look at the conference at large, scoring is down. You guys, obviously, but Clemson’s is down and last year there were five teams averaging more than 35; this year, there’s two and one of them has the returning Heisman Trophy winner. Are defenses starting to catch up, or when you lose guys like James and Nate and Deshaun Watson -
Narduzzi: Trubisky, Switzer. I think I told you - a year ago, we got sliced up a little bit but are we much better or are the offenses not as good? I think a year ago - and I think our talent is still great in the ACC. I think you look at guys like Hines in this conference and Samuels, just from last week, I still feel them on my neck. There’s good players, but those quarterbacks, I don’t know that we have the league of quarterbacks that we had a year ago. But that Dungey’s a heck of a football player; you look at that guy, he was underrated. No one thought about him last year when it was Watson and Trubisky and Peterman and all of that, but he was a good player a year ago. Of course, he got hurt, but we had a lot of respect for him.

As a defensive guy, though, do you see any in-roads being made on the spread stuff?
Narduzzi: Not really, because they change it up all the time. There’s new stuff that they do every week and every year. There’s new stuff. I don’t see it changing. I see defense taking more chances and doing different stuff that’s un-sound and you might get away with it one play, but you’re going to get burned on the next play. But then you don’t see it in other conferences; I’d look at the overall landscape. That’s something to study in the offseason.

You mentioned all those first-year players; no coach in America is content with being 2-5, but the fact that you’re 2-5 with young guys, young quarterbacks, does that give you a sense of relief for the future, as opposed to if you were 2-5 with a group of seniors?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I guess. If you put it that way. I mean, to me, we live week by week as coaches. Whether you win or lose, you’re living for the next week. We won’t look to the future until January. So we’re not prepared for the past. You can sit back in your chair one day and go, ‘Oh, we’re young, we’re going to be okay next year,’ but it doesn’t make you feel any better because it’s all about this current week right now.

So part of you says that, but a very small part of your head thinks about that, because you’re just worried about the next week. You’re not sitting there preparing for next year.

I don’t think you’ve been 2-5 too many times in your career. How are you handing yourself personally and has it changed you at all?
Narduzzi: My hair is getting whiter. I’m losing it. No, I’m fine. Hey, this is football. Whether you did it in high school - at some point in your life, you haven’t had good records and I think everybody takes it personally. We don’t sit there and look at the overall record. Every week we’re trying to be 1-0. We don’t sit in team meetings and go, ‘Hey guys, we’re 2-5, do you realize that?’ I mean, it doesn’t matter what happened last week. It does not. If you’re focusing on last week, just like if you’re playing basketball and you’re worried about the last foul and you run down and try to make a play, you’ll foul out really quick in that game. So we’re not worried about the last play, the last game, we’re worried about the next game and moving forward. It doesn’t matter.

But you’re judged by your overall record eventually.
Narduzzi: Yes, we are. I am, I guess, right? That doesn’t matter. We’ll worry about that at the end. At the end of the year, after 12 games, then you’ll look back and go, ‘Golly.’ That’s when you sit back and re-evaluate everything that we’re doing with the program and try to fix it.

So you can still resurrect this thing?
Narduzzi: What’s that? Resurrect what?

The season.
Narduzzi: Yeah. It starts this week. That’s our attitude.

Do you get a sense from watching tape of practice that any one of your tailbacks is close to grabbing the reins and breaking out?
Narduzzi: No. Not yet. I’ll tell you on Saturday. I think we have talented guys back there. I’m not going to say it’s lack of talent. I think we need to move people up front. I think we need to hit the holes sometimes the right way. Again, it’s not just the running backs; it’s a combination of a lot of different things. We have to be on with our checks Saturday with our quarterback. That’s something you’ll never see. You might see him throw a completion, you might see him scramble and get a first down, but the thing you’ll never see is what we do with our run checks and where the ball goes and was it supposed to go there? Those are the things that, as many armchairs as we’ve got in that room, you’ll never know, because you don’t know the call in the huddle. And it’s so critical that we put our offensive line in position to make that play.

If they have six guys over there and they have three over here, where do you guys want to run? At the three guys, okay? But if they have five and all of a sudden, they run over here late, we’ve got to get there. So we’ve got to put our linemen in - people look good when you’re blocking only three guys as opposed to six, and then you’re going, ‘What the heck happened?’ So we’ve got to get the thing going the right way and our tailbacks have to go and the offensive line has to pick some people up.

For you as a coach, what’s been the most frustrating aspect of this season?
Narduzzi: The most frustrating thing, I mean, every day there’s something that frustrates you as a coach, whether it’s an off the field issue - guys going to class. You guys think it’s just football over here. I mean, I’m sick and tired of telling guys not to miss class. How about that?

From a football standpoint, what’s most frustrating?
Narduzzi: From a football standpoint - and again, it’s really 3-percent when I talk about the class thing. Our guys do a pretty good job but we’re on them and we have a lot of class checks because it’s important to get your degree and there’s a lot of money that’s involved in that.

Football-wise, I guess you can’t put your finger on one thing. I get spread out because I’m trying to help the defense over here and then all of a sudden the offense isn’t going, so I go spend time over there and then all of a sudden it’s something over here and you go back over here and I’m popping from room to room. I don’t have a room I can hang out in.

Last year, I could spend a lot of time in the defensive room; our offense was clicking and going. That’s probably the most frustrating, is I feel like I’m getting pulled. My wingspan is longer right now than it was at the beginning of the year.