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Narduzzi on mistakes and more after the loss to PSU

Pat Narduzzi talked about the mistakes, the penalties and more in the aftermath of Pitt’s loss to PSU, and here’s a full rundown of what he said.

Narduzzi: The first thing I want to do is, you know, apologize to the Pitt nation out there. That was not Pitt football right there. Even it being down eight points at the halftime, I walked in and said, ‘Guys, we didn’t do anything right.’ I mean, missed extra points, missed field goals, obviously had a holder issue with injury. But ultimately everything lays right on my chest. I’ll take it all. We obviously didn’t have them ready to go in any capacity, offensively, defensively or special teams. I thought field position was major. I’ve never seen so many penalties in one game. It starts with my 15-yarder. But 14 penalties, you know, embarrassing, and there were some good calls, too; I’m not saying the officiating was bad. WE just had some stuff that just snowballed on us and it starts with me.

How much did the mistakes in the first half contribute to the mindset in the second half?
Narduzzi:
I don’t think anything. I mean, golly, you make all those mistakes in the first half and you still have a chance at halftime? I mean, it’s an eight-point game. And the second half, we went and I think five straight three-and-outs. We got field position that was just no good with our return game, penalties or muff, whatever it may be. We’re right in the game. We’ve got a third down and whatever, five, we go for it on fourth-and-3, the kids want to go, I want to go, I want to score touchdowns, we’re playing to win, and probably the biggest turning point was that play right there. I don’t know if we got a yard.

But we just didn’t make plays. We didn’t block them good enough. Give them credit, they’re a good football team, but we didn’t execute like we needed to.

Why don’t you think you were able to get the passing game going?
Narduzzi:
We’ll look at the tape, but first of all, I think when you get into a passing game in this weather, you’re probably going to have a problem. I don’t think - Kenny didn’t look like himself back there in the pocket, in my opinion, but it’s something we’ll have to look at. Did the receivers have the timing? Were we getting off the press, whatever it may be? Were the guys in position? We’ll look at the tape and have a better idea for you on Monday, as far as what it looked like. But it certainly wasn’t good enough and it’s certainly not just Kenny’s fault. Like I said, it starts with me and it starts with Shawn Watson and it starts with Kenny and it goes right down the line. Every coach on offense and every coach on defense.

Did he get out of the pocket too quickly?
Narduzzi:
It’s easy for us to sit here on the sidelines and say that. We gave up four sacks, so he obviously felt something in there. Even the first half, that guy was scrambling and making plays, but we still weren’t throwing the ball; he was making it all with his feet. But he wasn’t able to get the ball down the field. We’re throwing t-swings and check-down routes instead of getting the ball to our receivers.

You said you guys obviously weren’t ready to play; after what you said throughout the week and how good you felt about it in preparation, can you point to why that is?
Narduzzi:
I don’t know. I mean, no, you don’t know. Sometimes you just don’t know. We had two great practices. Our Tuesday and Wednesday practices were darn good. The kids were locked in. I don’t know if I’ve ever see a fired-up - I mean, our football leam came out cranked up. They were ready to go. But you make too many mistakes and it doesn’t matter how ready you are to go. We just didn’t - you know, it’s just one thing after another. It’s one of those days.

What happened on the 15-yard penalty? They gave you a warning and they gave you a flag.
Narduzzi
: I didn’t get a warning.

They announced -
Narduzzi:
Yeah, I’m on the field. I got a 15-yard because I’m on the field complaining about a substitution error that I don’t think they got right. But I’m not going to talk about the officials; I just know that they subbed and we tried to sub and couldn’t get our sub on the field. They’re supposed to give us three seconds; we got no seconds. And they didn’t stand over the ball. So I’m done with talking about those guys.

Did you have a problem with their last touchdown?
Narduzzi:
Hey, you know what? I coach Pitt football. I don’t coach for anybody else. That’s on them. You’ve got to sleep at night, you know? It’s just - it’s just where we are right now. And we’ll have another shot. We’ll have another shot. It ain’t over.

The fourth-and-3 attempt, was it more about changing the momentum and feeling or was it a loss of confidence in the kicking game?
Narduzzi:
A little bit of both. A little bit of both. We muffed an extra point, we bobbled a field goal and you know what, we need to score touchdowns. We can’t get down there and just settle for field goals. And again, sloppy field conditions. It was a sloppy mess out there, the field was soggy and not a good surface to kick in anyway.

When did you know that Jake (Scarton) wasn’t going to be able to go and how much work has Christdoulou had as a holder since he’s been here?
Narduzzi:
Kirk was a holder in the spring. Not something we want to put that much pressure - he doesn’t need that pressure on him as well. But he was the next best guy. We knew Tuesday, so we worked it all week that we had an injury there. It was Kirk’s and Kessman felt good with him; we’ll just keep digging there. But I doubt he’s going to have both duties next week. He needs to punt. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one kid to be the punter and also be the holder. I know Ryan Winslow did it for years and you’d like to have a kicker be the holder because they sit over there all day on the field and snap and hold and kick and all that. But we’ll have to make a change there.

You were able to lean on the running game in the first half, but after the break, did they adjust anything?
Narduzzi:
I didn’t hear from the box about that. Ollison had a first half that you’d love to have again in the second half, and it wasn’t there. So either they changed something and cranked it up or we didn’t block them, one or the other, I don’t know what it is, but we’ll get to the bottom of it and find out what it was.

Why was Ffrench so tentative to return kicks late in the game?
Narduzzi:
I don’t know if he was tentative, but obviously we did a poor job coaching him up and letting him know what to do. But last week we had one returned for a touchdown and we had one that we got out to less than the 20-yard line. New rule, you can fair catch it; it’s a brand new rule and you don’t get many opportunities to practice it. But taking the ball at the 25-yard line is not a bad thing, based on the field position we had. I bet you we lost the field position way by 400 yards today. I’m shocked when I look at the stats and it says we had 300 yards of offense and they had 390. That’s like - it’s because they had a short field the entire day. That’s a tribute to our kicking game.

You started off with an apology; is this loss more frustrating, humbling - how would you describe it in your words?
Narduzzi:
You can probably use any adjective you want, really. It’s frustrating. I’m humble as it is, so I’m not worried - it’s not humbling. It’s life. It’s the game of football. It’s adversity that you go through. The key is going to be how we rebound from this adversity. That’s going to be the key. I trust and love those kids in that locker room and I have no doubt that they’ll come back next week ready to go, period.

You mentioned Scarton; is he injured? Is that why he wasn’t holding?
Narduzzi:
Yes.

When did he get hurt?
Narduzzi:
He got hurt last week.

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