Narduzzi on the DL, backup QBs and more

Pat Narduzzi met the media after Pitt's practice on Thursday, and here's a full rundown of everything he said.

Narduzzi: Practice four is in the books, and again, another good day. Probably the most impressive thing is how our kids practiced, just tempo-wise. We talk about how the Steelers practice and how we practice. You know, the Steelers practice so smart, not falling on the ground, and our guys are starting to figure it out. I see a lot of smart decisions as far as not taking cheap shots. So that’s the first thing because you can’t play this game without guys on the field and you want to try to keep the best 11, 12, 13 guys on the field, so healthy is obviously important, especially in the spring where you don’t have as many bodies, when you have all those guys from Pro Day yesterday that aren’t in the mix.

But overall, good day, physical. The kids played hard again, cleaned up details from Tuesday and we continue to install new things, so we had some third down stuff in, we had red zone offense and defense in so we got some looks at that.

You said the other day that you feel like the defensive line is obviously ahead of the offensive line at this point. What are you looking for from those guys on the defensive line? If you know that they’re going to be ahead of the guys they’re going against all the time, what do you still want to see out of them?
Narduzzi: You know what, when you say that and then you go today and the offense comes back, so they’re punching back and forth. There’s times when the offense is running the ball some. I mean, when you talk ‘ahead,’ it’s not like you’re saying the D-line’s here and the O-line’s way down here. It’s a back-and-forth thing. There’s time when the offense got the best of the defense, too, so it goes back and forth. But when you look at overall, just with the youth that we have on the O-line, you’ve got to say the defense is ahead. We have a lot of mature guys; everybody on the defensive line played last year. There’s not a guy up there that hasn’t played. So that’s when you say that they’re ahead, just when you look at the big picture. But the O-line’s doing some nice things and the quarterbacks are doing a good job getting the ball out and that makes everybody’s job a lot easier.

When you did your offseason evaluation and Charlie did his and Randy did his, did you get what you needed out of the defensive line last season?
Narduzzi: No, you never do. We went through every play and maybe half of the plays, we went through twice, just to look at it a different way. Sometimes we’ll look at a front or a coverage and a blitz and sometimes we’ll go back and watch a formation where you’re seeing those same plays over and over, we’re looking at situations. You’re constantly trying to get better. Nobody’s good enough and I think you continually are - even if you think you’re good, then you’re trying to get better, and I think that’s what we try to take out of those winter studies.

Have you seen Patrick Jones seizing on some of that momentum he generated in the bowl game?
Narduzzi: You know what? Not yet. He lost a couple pounds, he had a little sickness, not that that matters. So he’s been maybe not as good as you want to; he’s over there with mom right now, giving her a hug. So he’s had a little stomach virus or whatever, so we’re just trying to get him back from that. But he will. I guarantee you that. He’s been locked in and ready to go.

The middle of the defensive line is an interesting spot where you might not always get big production numbers out of it. What do you look for from the tackles? Do you just evaluate those guys on numbers? Is there more than that?
Narduzzi: Yeah, it’s a lot more than numbers. D-tackles aren’t making a ton of tackles and sacks and TFL’s, but obviously they want to try to stay in their gap. We want those guys to be gap-sound and doing the right thing, and it comes down to executing and doing the right things. As long as they’re doing the right thing and in the right spot, even if they get reached or doubled a little bit, our linebackers will fit off them. But they have to at least make the linebackers understand where they are, and I think that’s the key for those guys.

Are those young guys, Twyman and Danielson, are they pushing Watts and Camp?
Narduzzi: You know, Watts and Camp are veterans that can move pretty good, but we’re going to play four guys in there so Devin, Tyler Bentley - don’t count that guy out, that guy’s looking good, too - they all have a chance.

First spring here for the quarterbacks other than Kenny. What have you learned about Nick, Davis and even Jeff?
Narduzzi: Obviously, Jeff’s a seasoned guy. You know, every day’s a different day. Davis is the puppy in camp. But they’re all doing a great job. We talk every day about our personnel and Coach Whipple’s excited about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. But Nick’s shown some things. They’ve have some opportunities to each alternate and get in those two minutes, so I think each day they get better and, really, they’re all freshmen really, when you look at a new quarterback coach, Coach Whipple, our new offensive coordinator, so it’s all fresh and they’re all starting from square one.

How do you straddle the line of, ‘Obviously, we have a guy who started every game last year at that spot,’ but still wanting those young guys to push him and have a chance?
Narduzzi: You give them reps and you give them opportunities to keep getting better. We want to get three or four guys ready to go because you never know. I might have mentioned this in the past, I had seven quarterbacks one year - we were playing with our seventh guy. So we’ve got to make everybody the best they can, I don’t care if it’s on the D-line or the receiver position.