Narduzzi on the final day of camp, the spring game and a lot more

Pat Narduzzi held his final press briefing of spring camp on Thursday and talked about the quarterbacks, tofu hot dogs, coaches hitting trash cans with their heads and a lot more. Here's video and a full rundown of his remarks.

Narduzzi: I was all the way down in my office - you guys know where that corner is - and all of a sudden I heard an explosion down the hallway. I’m like, what? We had a Blue-Gold meeting in here, but the Blue was going nuts. And it was so loud, I heard it in my office. Honest to God, I heard it all the way down there. So that’s where I would say the excitement is when they get to a draft. It’s just different. Last year, you didn’t have that. Coat Bro was over here, someone said he banged his head on the trash can. I don’t know if he’s got a concussion or not, probably going to protocol. Might not be the head coach on Saturday. I’m just kidding. No injuries, from what I can gather. But you guys can ask him post game if they lose, that might have been part of it. If they win, maybe that was the reason why they won. But there was a lot of noise and it was a little quiet over on the gold squad, so I don’t know. But we’ll find out.

You’ve looked at the rosters, who’s the favorite?
Narduzzi: I was going to ask you guys that, personally. I haven’t really looked at the rosters. I made one change; we moved Lapi over. I just kind of looked and said we had enough guys each and wanted to get the best 11 on the field that we can. We moved Lapi over. Nick Lapi moved over from the gold to the blue, so there’s one roster change that we moved. And Isaiah Neal will play on both teams, part of the trade. It was a late night trade. So that’s probably the only difference there.

But I was going to ask you guys. You guys ask me a lot of questions, like, ‘Who do you got?’

Gold.
Narduzzi: You got the gold. Why?

The offensive line.
Narduzzi: Okay. Okay. Who do you have?

I’m going blue because I think it’s an interesting group of quarterbacks on that side.
Narduzzi: Who’s the quarterbacks? I couldn’t even tell you.

You have Nate and Christian and Julian on that side.
Narduzzi: So you’re going blue. The one thing I’d say about the blue - I watched seven-on-seven today, I think Nate’s got the number-two offensive line so he’s got a younger group up front and he’s got a younger X. I look at the boundary receiver and I see Monteiro vs. Kenny Johnson. Kenny’s kind of dangerous.

And the other observation, you saw how late the quarterbacks were picked, right? Why were the quarterbacks picked so late? Nobody really knows? We’ve done this for nine years. If they feel like, hey, the number one and number two is even, they want to go find the biggest difference. Wherever there’s a drop-off like - who was the first pick? Overall, Kenny was the first pick. They opened up that position, the X position, and it’s Kenny and then who was the backup? Monteiro. He’s the other guy at X. So that gives you a little bit of an idea of why. There’s strategy up here. These guys aren’t knuckleheads. They know what’s up and they know - Gavin said after to me, ‘We got every pick we wanted.’ They had a good draft process. He said, ‘We got every pick we wanted except we didn’t get the quarterback we wanted.’ They waited too long. They figured it might go longer. So there’s always give and take with that. But that’s why. That tells you, you’ve got two good quarterbacks right there, at least the one and two’s that were picked. That’s what the kids believe. I think that’s something to take from it. And you can take that from every position.

To me, it’s where the timing of positions that opened up matters.

When the gold team had to take a quarterback, they took Eli. What has Eli shown you guys in his first spring ball?
Narduzzi: It’s a good question. It’s a good question for the players when they come in here because they made the choice. But Eli is like this every day - I think you get the same guy every day. He has protected the ball. He’s probably got the least turnovers, I think. Between him and Nate, I would say those are the two guys who have turned it over the least.

You talk about those lack of turnovers from Nate. What’s the biggest step he’s made this spring?
Narduzzi: Nate’s a little bit of a gambler. He knows when it’s practice and he knows when it’s game. He knows when he can take chances and when he can’t. I just looked at him today like, ‘Dude, you’re locked in today.’ He’s like, ‘Coach, it’s a game. There’s going to be fans there.’ Sometimes you’re going to make a play and sometimes you pick, ‘Hey, I want to throw it to Kenny or I want to throw it here.’ But he was locked in today. I noticed, just his throws, he threw a couple dimes out there. He just seemed a little different today. You always like a guy that’s a game day guy, right? I hate those guys that are great in practice and they go out there on game day when the lights turn on and kind of fall apart. I think we know what he does on game day. But I’ve been happy with how he’s picked up the practicing. He likes to take chances, but he knows when you can take chances in practice and maybe when you can’t.

What kind of steps has Christian made this spring?
Narduzzi: Christian’s done a nice job. Totally new offense - he’s been in three offenses now, but he’s done a nice job as well and we’ll find out Saturday what he gets to do.

Are you going to be able to get enough snaps for all of your scholarship quarterbacks?
Narduzzi: Yeah, it’s hard but everybody will get snaps, for sure.

I assume the quarterbacks won’t be live, but is Eli the kind of guy that you’re interested to see what he does when it is live?
Narduzzi: Not right now. Eli hates knee braces. I told Eli I was going to put him I double knee braces, right and left; he didn’t like that too much. But they won’t be live and I’m really not interested in seeing in a spring game what Eli has going without knee braces. But they can scramble and run; we’re just going to blow the whistle and they’re not going to get hit. Maybe in the fall we’ll get them hit.

Kenny going first overall, does that track with what you’ve seen from him this spring?
Narduzzi: Again, I think it’s a product of that position and the depth at that position. They just went through it and said, ‘Where are the biggest differences?’ You saw the D-tackles were eighth, ninth, tenth round - it was because there was a lot of probables on there and it’s like, we don’t know what we’re going to get there and let’s not go. It’s just like the draft: what’s the best available at that position?

Kenny’s had a heck of a spring. Kenny’s a football player, he’s gotten better as a wide receiver, he’s a team guy, he's always got a great attitude. I love the smile on his face every day. That’s the best thing. If he wasn’t a great player and he comes in with a smile on his face every day, that’s what I love about Kenny and that’s a fact. He happens to have a smile on his face and be really, really good and just keeps getting better.

You talked about Nate’s willingness to take risks; how much of that is his own vs. what Coach Bell is throwing at him and designing for him?
Narduzzi: I think it’s more of what Nate tries to do sometimes, a little gunslinger a little bit, which I like. But Coach Bell wants him to take that completion and move the sticks. He gets it. He understands. Nate gets it.

What are the stakes this year?
Narduzzi: The winners get steak. The losers get, I guess, tofu hot dogs. The hot dogs here, the guys go, ‘The hot dogs are awesome so we want the hot dogs.’ So we had to make it worse.

Tofu hot dogs?
Narduzzi: Oh yeah, I’m serious. Make it bad as we can make it.

The baked beans are still good
Narduzzi: The baked beans are ridiculous. I eat both.

Who came up with that?
Narduzzi: Me.

There was a great article that popped up on my phone. Nick Saban at Alabama, we do things very similar to them, but it was an article that talked about how players at Alabama said, ‘These are things that we do that are non-negotiable, keep the tradition.’ One of them was, the spring game, eating steak and hot dogs. I guess they still give them hot dogs, but their hot dogs aren’t as good as they are here in Pittsburgh.

Considering all the changes you made in the offseason, is this maybe your most important year and spring?
Narduzzi: That’s a serious question. I would say this. I told the kids last week, last week’s scrimmage was a hell of a lot more important than this week’s. What did I tell them out there today? I said, this scrimmage Saturday is the most important scrimmage of the spring because it’s the next one. I’m not worried about what happened in the past, changes, it doesn’t matter. They’re all important. We need to get better as a football team on offense, defense and special teams, there’s development, there’s teaching, there’s learning every day and every day is important, every spring is important and every spring game is important. The most important thing is we come out of there with a healthy football team. And I want them to play their tails off and play hard, and it will be slimmed-down game plans as far as what we do, but I want to make sure they come out healthy. I say it every year - that is the number-one thing. I want to be able to play hard, play fast and come out of there with our guys and not have anybody that’s not going to start August football together.

How have the players adapted to the communication system with the headsets and getting signals that way?
Narduzzi: Like my fear was when we went to this system - I think I mentioned to you, the defense has been using them all spring. My fear was that the offense would be faster with headsets compared to the defense, and the first thing Coach Bell said Tuesday after practice was, ‘Coach, this is a disadvantage for the defense. People can go faster.’ There’s no question about it. That’s kind of why I voted it down. But I want it in a way. I just think, give one microphone to the offense and give us three on defense. It’s just different that way. It will make offenses faster around the country, I think, and that was Coach Bell’s first impression. I think we got 29 plays in inside in 10 minutes the other day. It was pretty fast. He was just rolling them off. Before the play is over, he can already be talking to him to get him the next play, as soon as the ball is down, I guess they’ll turn it on. Practice might be a little easier with just a microphone as opposed to when they turn it on in a game.

Isaiah Neal playing on both sides -
Narduzzi: He’s been a little bit banged up during the spring and we wanted to make sure we’ve got enough guys - he might be a guy that will have two different jerseys on. We’ll probably have about four or five guys that will have another jersey in case we need them. Nigel Maynard will be another guy, just if something happens on the side, we can get him over there and we’re not looking like a ragtag football team out there with different color jerseys. But we’re going to give Isaiah more reps because he didn’t have as many as we’d like to this spring. He’s a good football player. It’s the last hurrah for him and he’s a good football player. In the last two days, he’s been good. We try to take care of our guys and make sure we don’t bring them back too early from a little injury, so we want to get him as many reps as we can. He’ll do it on both sides, so you’ll see that. And I think we’re going to put Rodney Hammond in a red jersey as well to get him - you know, you can’t get tackled, but at least get him involved a little bit so he’s not bored on the sideline.

You mentioned Coach Bronowski being fired up. Is that the kind of energy you want to see from the coaches?
Narduzzi: I do. I didn’t tell them how to act or what to do, but we’ve had some pretty fiery special teams meetings, too. It’s something I’ve seen and I love.

Past this weekend, what happens next? You’re still somewhere in the 90’s with scholarships; assuming you have to get down to 85, what will the next few weeks look like?
Narduzzi: We’ll find out. You don’t know what’s on the horizon with college football. I don’t know if we’re five over, but we’re certainly a couple over and we’ll see how it goes. I know this: the portal, I think, is harder in the spring. I think there’s better players in the portal in December and January than there are at this time of year. Last year, we couldn’t find anybody we liked so we chose to get them on the front end and not sit there on the back end and wait for a good one to go in that we want. So that’s kind of the way we looked at it, but we’ll see how it all shakes out and we’ll be okay one way or another.

Will you be meeting with players or will they come to you?
Narduzzi: Yeah, like I do every spring. They’ll meet with their position coach, the coordinators and the head coach. I meet with every player for 30, 40 minutes, sometimes 50 minutes. I try to keep it to 30, but I’m never going to shut a kid down. We talk. Those are the greatest meetings ever. Period. I love it. I get to talk to every kid for 30 minutes. It’s exhausting. After the day’s over, I’m shot. But you know what? It’s those relationships that I talk about all the time and you have to have them. It’s part of what we do and I love it. I wish there was more time in a day.

Does it take you about a week?
Narduzzi: Week and a half, maybe two weeks. Some of them I’ll catch on the back end when they come back for summer; it depends on who I get. Sometimes they’re sitting out in the lobby for an hour waiting on me, but I’m not going to get out of those meetings early, I’m not going to cut a kid off. We’re going to have our discussions. And it’s not all business. A lot of it’s not business. It’s just talking. It’s talking about family, talking about different things. That’s my one opportunity I get to really get everybody on the team.