Narduzzi on preparing for North Carolina

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With Pitt about to go on the road for the first time this season, Pat Narduzzi talked about preparing for North Carolina and more on Thursday. Here’s the full rundown of what he said.

Narduzzi: Had another good week of practice. Ready for game four. First away trip. First ACC game on the road. I think our guys are locked in. Like I said, a good week of practice, I feel good where we are today on Thursday. We’ll jump on an airplane tomorrow and head down to North Carolina.

When you made the decision last week to make some changes to your defense, do some different things as far as the front, how much of that decision is based on how you feel your players are going to be able to mentally take - ‘We’re going to do something different that is not the thing we’ve practiced every single day for the last four years’ - how much is that sort of the thing you’re thinking about when you decide whether or not to do something like that?
Narduzzi: I’m not sure I understand the question, but you’re talking about just what we did defensively last week.

That was different. You played with some odd that you hadn’t done before. When you make a change like that, how much of -
Narduzzi: Well, it’s not something we did - we didn’t just start talking about it on Tuesday. Put it that way. It was something we worked back in the summer. We talked about it in the spring. We talked - you know, we spent probably three days on Georgia Tech in the summer, spring, post-recruiting, just studying that film, odd film, what do we want to do? We brought in a guy that was a guru option guy to help us out. Whatever it takes; it doesn’t matter if we have to go to Hawaii to figure something out; we’ll go wherever it may be to, just staff development, as far as getting something better. What’s the next thing we have to do?

So we’re going to do whatever it takes to be better, but it’s not going to be a - ‘Hey, let’s do this; I thought about it last night, let’s do it.’ We’re not going to do that.

Is that a sign of some mental growth from your guys that you felt confident they could do that?
Narduzzi: You know, sometimes it is. I think we felt like it but we also - you know, your kids have to be able to do it but your coaches have to know what they’re doing, too. You better know what you’re doing. I think that’s a key. There’s a lot of answers. I’ve been around different defensive staffs where you don’t have an answer out of your base so you have to go somewhere else to do it; then you don’t know it very well and it ends up getting you fired. That’s not what we’re going to do. If we’re going to change something and we’re going to do something - it’s so hard for our kids and it’s so hard for every kid, it’s like, they know what they know and to throw something different at them and not have answers, that’s when you will fail.

But to me, we have a base, we know what we’re doing against a Georgia Tech-type offense - which, we’re playing North Carolina this week; I spent a lot of time on last week - but we better know what we’re doing, we better know the ins and outs of it before we put something in, because there’s a lot that can go wrong. And then what if they do this? What’s your answer? You better have the answer.

Is that the first time you’ve brought in an outsider to consult with Georgia Tech?
Narduzzi: No. Every year we’ll bring somebody in or we’ll go somewhere and talk, different stuff. You know, it’s professional development. What do we need? You kind of evaluate where you are.

The sad thing about it is it’s getting less and less. I mean, 10 years ago, we got more of it. You might go two places. The nice thing is, we’ve got these guys next door; if you wanted to go, ‘Hey, we need some two-point plays.’ You know, what do you need? Where do you go? We’ve been out to Colorado. We’ve made some trips. But this recruiting is getting out of control. It’s ruining football and our development. I can tell you that.

It kind of stinks. Now you’ve got official visits in the summer; it’s like, where do you spend your time? All these summer camps. So you kind of get less professional development and somehow we need to find a time to do that. Maybe we start doing it in January. That’s kind of what I’ve thought about.

It’s just a time problem? You feel like you have too much?
Narduzzi: Yeah, June gets to be too much. It’s like, by the time you get off the road, you’re recruiting and then spring ball and there’s no time. It’s almost like, you better know what you want and maybe do it in January sometime because the signing period’s earlier now. So our periods have changed; we’ve just got to figure out when to do some of those things.

How much less time do you spend coaching and working on player development now compared to what you did maybe at the start of your career?
Narduzzi: You’re talking during the season?

During the season, yeah.
Narduzzi: During the season hasn’t changed. During the season really hasn’t changed. It’s football. That’s all we do. It’s really - it’s like, when it’s not football season, what are you doing? It seems like when we get to December and January, it’s all recruiting, because you have to. But now with the December period and all these early commitments, you kind of - the schedule’s got to change a little bit. The NCAA’s changing different things and we need to start to change our schedules if it’s going to stay consistent. As soon as we change it, then they’ll change it back to something else, then we’ll be all messed up, so…

North Carolina’s pretty freaking good. I can tell you that.

As far as North Carolina, what have you learned about this matchup through the last three years? I’m sure every year you play a team from the ACC, you learn something different about them. What have you learned about UNC in the way Larry wants to attack you guys and things you can do better against them?
Narduzzi: Number-one thing is, they do a good job. You learn something new about everybody every year. We have to do a good job protecting ourselves on the sideline, as far as making sure our signals are going to our guys and only our guys. We just talked about it as a staff: we’ve got to do a good job there. We’ve changed up who our signal-callers are. We’ll have three different guys that will be live this week, so we’ll have different stuff there. So you learn some of those things that you go through, who’s stealing, who’s not.

You know, they’re a good football team. Larry does a great job of - and I know he doesn’t call it, but he does a good job of really game-planning you. So you learn what they like to do every year against you. Going into year four, they do a good job of scheming you up, I think. I would say Duke and North Carolina of probably just kind of having a play off a play - ‘Oh, you stopped that, then we’ve got this, and if you stop that, they got that.’ So they know what they’re doing schematically. I think they do a terrific job.

How irritated are some of your guys for the way - you guys could have won every game the last few years. Motley was talking about that earlier in the week; I don’t know if you use that as a motivational thing or the players think, ‘Man, we’ve got to beat these guys.’
Narduzzi: I’m not looking at two years ago, three years ago, five years ago; it’s about this week. It’s all that matters. We have to go down there and play the best game. There’s no excuses. They’re good. They really are. They’re going to look good. You’re going to walk on the field and go, ‘Wow, they have some great looking players.’ They play good. We have to do the same. We have to go down and play football. We have to go down and play our best game of the year.

Is it weird to think that if things would have gone a little bit differently there, Kenny Pickett would have been over on their sideline this week instead of yours?
Narduzzi: I never thought about it. They tried to come at him late and it didn’t happen, so…

What do you expect to see from North Carolina, because obviously they didn’t play last week and their game got cancelled? In your experience, what typically happens with those bye weeks, even this early in the season? Is there rust? Or do you typically see opponents as more refreshed?
Narduzzi: I can’t rub the crystal ball and look in there. I mean, last week Jerry thought we were going to get our tails kicked in. So it’s like, what are we going to get? I don’t know. He bet on the game and said we were going to lose because of what happened the other two times.

But when you look at what happens after - who knows what happens? I mean, Larry’s a good football coach. He’s going to have his guys ready to go, he’s going to get them motivated, they’re going to come back. They had a tough loss in the state but they’re a good football team. You go back and watch that tape and they’re down in the red zone, they’re kicking field goals. They go for it twice on fourth-and-1, they don’t get either one of them. Give East Carolina credit.

They’re going to be pissed off and they’re going to be ready to go, is the way I’m looking at it. They’re going to be ready to go. So that’s what we’re expecting to have an angry Tar Heel down there when we get there.

What about an angry Pitt team that hasn’t beaten North Carolina in five tries?
Narduzzi: I expect to have that, too. Pat Narduzzi better have their tails ready to go, right? Larry’s going to have his guys going, I gotta have our troops ready to roll.

Have you used that as a talking point, a motivation in your talks to the guys this week?
Narduzzi: Not right now. It’s about us not beating ourselves in the second half. It’s about us doing the details right, execution and game-planning. But we better be ready to go, too. I don’t like getting beat.

Do you worry at all about your guys dwelling on those close losses and maybe sort of a mental block?
Narduzzi: Not unless they’re listening to you guys, no. And I hope they’re not listening to you. I hope they’re not reading what you guys are talking about, what you’re saying now. We’re locked in. This is a different football team than last year’s. It’s like, you try to piece what happened in the past; we have to focus on this game right now, 2018. You get one opportunity to play these guys and they aren’t going to give you another chance.

Elliott has four interceptions and just one touchdown; are you seeing something there that’s able to be taken advantage of if you play your defense the right way?
Narduzzi: Not really. I mean, Larry Fedora is a good football coach. He’s going to get him right. That’s what I’m expecting. I hope he doesn’t, but we’re expecting to see a sharp Elliott. He’s a good football player. He’s talking about, ‘I didn’t play good,’ so what’s he going to do? He’s going to come back and play good. He played good against us last year. Maybe he’s thinking and Larry’s saying, ‘Listen, this is your game, you played great last year, we’ll get you right back to that’ and he’s watching tape of last year going, ‘Look how you did this.’ If I’m Larry Fedora, that’s what I’m coaching up. He gets paid good money to coach that football team and he’ll have his guys ready to go. We have to be ready to go. We have to be ready and expect to face the best Nathan Elliott that’s out there. I don’t care about those picks; different game, maybe it’s his first road start, I don’t know what it is, but we have our problems, we’ll worry about Pitt and let them worry about them.

Considering your roster at the time, when you were recruiting Pickett, did you see him stepping in as a starter as a sophomore, maybe because your depth wasn’t that great at the moment?
Narduzzi: We always expect it when we recruit a guy. Just like Nick Patti: we expect Nick Patti to be ready next year. I told him last week, ‘We’re going to get you down on the scout field this week,’ so he got extensive scout team reps this week, Nick Patti did, because Jeff George is eligible, just to let you know. As you’re talking quarterbacks, I’ll give you that. So he is eligible. We’re happy. He has done a nice job the last couple weeks. He’s been eligible for a couple weeks; I just kind of didn’t tell you guys. I meant to tell you, but...

I told Nick, ‘Hey, be ready, you might be coming up here pretty soon, who knows?’ You know, you knock on wood and we stay healthy, we don’t have to, but I said, ‘Listen, you go down there but still focus on the game plan and what we’re doing; don’t forget how we do stuff here.’ Because we did the same thing with Kenny last year and all of a sudden he was up the next week, or the next four weeks afterward.

Last week, you got the deep ball to Taysir; how important for the development of the offense is it to get a few of those deep balls just to stretch the defense?
Narduzzi: It’s really important. We’ve talked about it: it’s got to be at the right time, the right moment, but we’d like to run the football, too. Running the ball is important. Making those big plays is, too. If you waste a down throwing it down the field and you don’t catch it, it’s like, ‘Oh, now it’s second-and-10.’ Now you have to get at least five on that down just to get to a third-and-5. Now it’s second-and-10, you throw it, now you’re in third-and-10. Now you’re behind the sticks. So there’s good things, bad things; it’s how conservative the head coach wants to be: Do I want to turn them loose or not?

These guys have some great corners. I mean, KJ Sails is a player. You better pick your times and you don’t want to be - it can’t be a 10% ball. If it’s 50/50, I’m good with taking 50/50 chances. But it better be the right time and the right place.

Alex Officer posted his GoFundMe page Tuesday night; I wanted to ask you when you found out about that and what you might have said to him or the guys since you learned of that situation?
Narduzzi: Yeah, tough deal. I’ve known since back on at least I believe August 23, really, is what I found out. I didn’t know where it was going to go; I knew there was testing going on. But he had come back from Kansas City and wasn’t feeling good so our doctors - taking care of our players as they do, even when they’re not playing for us anymore - got him down to get him an MRI and they’re looking at, ‘Why is he getting hurt?’ and they said, ‘Something’s wrong, what’s going on?’ So they did an MRI and found out there was more in there than just a ligament or a meniscus; they found out there was something growing in there that was bad.

So our hearts and prayers are with that family, with AO. He knows that. We’ve had multiple conversations and text messages and we’re trying to help him along this process, because he’s forever Panther with us. He’s always with us, all the time. It’s just one of those deals that - I think I mentioned it, maybe at the Kickoff Luncheon, just we’re thinking about our players in the past and that’s the guy I was thinking about at that time when I said that, because those guys - he’s on our mind, all our guys are, I don’t care if it’s Nathan Peterman up in Buffalo, how he’s doing right now in his situation. Those guys are all guys we care about. You watch Tyler Boyd tear it up one Thursday night or Sunday night, whatever it was; he had a great game his last outing. Those guys are Panthers forever and we care about them when it’s good and when it’s bad. They’re our guys. We’re going to try to help them out.

In those conversations that you had with Alex, how did he seem to be holding up or processing everything that’s going on?
Narduzzi: AO’s quiet. He’s tough. He’s a tough quiet. He grew up in a tough - he doesn’t have any insurance. You think about college students, when you guys were college students, you get done playing, you hope you’re going to make it, you’re looking for a job. When you get a job, you get insurance. When you don’t have a job, you have no insurance. So that’s why that GoFundMe page is so important. He doesn’t really have insurance. So all the help that he can get right now is going to be important for him to help pay some bills. I know he’s trying to raise some money. It’s important.

Talking about your ‘forever Panthers,’ you’ve got a couple that might meet each other on Monday night. If you’ve got Conner and Whitehead meeting in the hole, who do you like?
Narduzzi: I don’t know. It depends on what the run play is, but those are two great ones. Monday night, geez, I’ll have to DVR that game. I might go home and drink a cup of coffee and see if I can stay up for that one. That will be huge. It’s a big game. I love those two guys. It sounds like they’re both doing well. I wish I could watch NFL football.

Do you ever talk football with the guys next door? Advice, suggestions, anything like that?
Narduzzi: You know, you really don’t. You do in the offseason. I talk to Coach Tomlin anytime I get a chance over there, but there’s just no time. There’s just not as much time as you’d like. I know our offensive staff has probably spent more time over there talking offensive stuff when they can, and some of them are neighbors and live near each other and can get more than you can. But it’s just recruiting in college football; there’s not much time to do that.

I got a nice call from Coach Tomlin last week that I won’t share. I’ll get you guys in the offseason about it but…interesting call. No reason to talk about it now. Some things he noticed that that I didn’t notice and he wouldn’t have noticed either if he wasn’t with his players. But we’ll talk about that some other day.