Published Oct 23, 2022
Narduzzi on the 'disappointing loss,' Slovis staying at QB and more
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Chris Peak  •  Pitt Sports News
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After Pitt's 24-10 loss at Louisville Saturday night, Pat Narduzzi met the media and talked about the decision to stick with Kedon Slovis, among other topics.

Here's the full rundown of what he said.

Narduzzi: As I told our team afterward, disappointing loss. You have a 7-7 ball game at half with three turnovers in the first half, we’re lucky it was 7-7. We moved the ball. I thought we outplayed them in the first half, except for the turnovers. Again, good job on their part getting turnovers. Obviously, give credit to Louisville. They played a good football game and they’ve got a good team. Coach Satterfield does a great job. But we didn’t make enough plays overall offensively. We got more yards than they got by whatever, 10, 12, 15 yards, but you put the ball on the ground - we had, I think, in the first half, three turnovers in their territory, which just can’t happen. So we’ve got to protect the ball better and you’re not going to win many ball games being minus-three again. That’s what it is.

Was it considered at halftime or any time in the second half changing quarterback?
Narduzzi:
No.

How would you rate Kedon’s performance today?
Narduzzi:
You know what? It takes 11 guys. When you win, Kedon does a great job. When you lose, everybody wants to point the finger at the quarterback. We don’t point fingers in our locker room. You guys can point fingers all you want when you talk in the media. But he needs some help. At the end, we have a cadence problem and they get seven points off of that. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was a cadence problem and Gabe Houy’s still in his stance. I think he’s still out there in his stance. You don’t give the quarterback a chance. No one blocked the right end off the edge.

Again, he gets too much credit when we win and no credit when you lose. There’s no finger-pointing. It’s not one guy; it’s everybody. There’s 11 guys out there on offense and a bunch of coaches, too, that have to get it done.

So is Slovis the guy for you moving forward?
Narduzzi:
Yes.

It seemed like, in the second half in particular, they got more pressure on Slovis and that affected the way you played.
Narduzzi:
We’ll look at it. It seemed like they blitzed more than we expected, but they’ve obviously had a lot of sacks throughout the year and I think they had seven a week ago at Virginia, so they do a good job pressuring you. You shouldn’t put yourself in that position where you’re a pass-only offense trying to play catchup.

How would you evaluate the Wildcat? It looked like it was going good for a little bit and then the turnover derailed it?
Narduzzi:
Yeah, it looked good for awhile and we got some mileage out of it. Then Rodney got banged up a little bit and it really hurt us when Daniel Carter didn’t come back in the second half. He’s pretty critical in a lot of different personnel groupings that we didn’t really have, and I think that got us out of rhythm as well.

What can you do to get momentum on offense going forward?
Narduzzi:
You have to go out and execute. You have to go out and make plays. We have to make plays. That how you change the momentum. I thought the defense played, really, pretty good for the most part, except for that throwback to Malik Cunningham, who’s a great player. Give them credit.

Did you get a good look at that play that was called a first down and reviewed and changed?
Narduzzi:
Are you talking about Louisville’s long pass down the sideline?

Yeah.
Narduzzi:
Again, players play, coaches coach, officials officiate. There’s a lot of holding going on out there, but I thought he was out of bounds and I’ll just try to coach our football team.

How would you evaluate your defense this evening?
Narduzzi:
I just said it about 32 seconds ago. I thought they played solid. I mean, seven-point ball game. Usually when you give up 17 points, you have a chance to win. Defense gave up 17 points today, and again, seven of it was on a trick play that they threw down the sideline.

Do you think they’re getting worn out late in games based on the three-and-outs and turnovers?
Narduzzi:
I think that certainly happens, but that’s no excuse, you know? It’s no excuse. I think they played hard and I think they played hard to the end.

Cam Guess did the punting today?
Narduzzi:
Yeah, we were thinking about making a change to begin with at that spot. We haven’t been happy with our net punting all season and I think Cam did a little bit better today. I think he had one short one. But we’ll continue to work on that phase of our game.