Narduzzi on the final week of camp, the spring game and more

Pat Narduzzi met the media after Pitt's practice on Tuesday and talked about the final week of spring camp, the draft for the Blue-Gold Game and a lot more. Here's video and a full rundown of his remarks.

Narduzzi: We had practice number 13 today. I think our guys are starting to get a little exhausted. I always talk about the emotion and energy of practice one and two, they’re all juiced up; now we’re getting to practice 14 and they’re like, ‘Ugh.’ Obviously, the spring game coming up this weekend, we’ve got to get them freshened up. We’ve had a tough - as a matter of fact, I had a high school coach in today who played at Maryland and played for Ralph Friedgen, he goes, ‘That was like a Ralph Friedgen type practice.’ Which is a good thing. To me, that’s a compliment. Ralph’s a heck of a coach. But it’s a compliment because it kind of goes back to the old school. We’ve had a physical, physical spring. We’ve had physical winter workouts. Our guys got bigger, faster, stronger, as we talked about when spring ball started. But we’ve had a lot of good practices, we got a lot of plays in, we got a lot of work done throughout the entire spring. That’s what I’m fired up about. Not as healthy as I’d like to be. We’ll be a lot healthier in the fall, for sure. But I’m happy about the work we got in; that’s the most important thing, is that we got a lot of plays in and I think we have a tougher football team right now than we had last fall. That makes me feel better and sleep at night.

So, spring game is coming up. We’ve got the draft tomorrow, I believe. Live and in-person. We will split up the seniors and try to figure all that out tonight, just split up the staff. Got a lot of work to do here as I walk out of here to get ready and we’ll be ready for the spring game on Saturday.

You mentioned the toughness; was that one of the big goals that you came into this camp with?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I just, you know, I think every year you talk about toughness and I think you think you’re tough sometimes and maybe you get talked out of things as a head coach sometimes. Maybe, ‘We’re doing too much of this or too much of that.’ But it comes down to playing the game of football the way it’s supposed to be played. We can avoid stuff and try to - sometimes you worry about staying healthy. Like, we have to play football, and we have to play football the way it’s supposed to be played. We’ve go too try to do it as smart as we possibly can, but you have to play the game, and that was obviously a goal coming in - to be even tougher than we’ve been. Because I think you have to be to win this conference.

What kinds of things have you seen from the field that makes you believe this is a tougher team?

Narduzzi: You just watch the physicalness of a drill, the physicalness of a team period, guys getting after it, not just taking care of guys on the field. We’ve gotten after each other. It’s been a physical battle every day and there’s competition going on everyday. I’d say this: there’s more of it. You had it in the past and maybe you pulled back a little bit as a head coach, just to make sure we’re okay, ‘You’ve got to protect them’ and all of that stuff. We haven’t really pulled back; we’ve put the foot down and we’ve kind of just said, ‘Hey, we’re going to keep going,’ or at least I said I was going to keep going and then everybody’s saying, ‘Okay, let’s keep going,’ and that’s kind of what we’ve done.

Have there been any guys who have been driving forces behind that?
Narduzzi: Great question. I’d say they’d better all be. Last week, we sat in here, and a lot of times I don’t put up the whole practice schedule on a scrimmage day, but I said, ‘Put the whole thing up there’ and they looked at it and they were like, ‘Ohhhh, looks really long.’ I was like, ‘Hey, have I ever brought you out to practice and it’s been too long?’ They’re like, ‘No.’ We’re not going to do too much, we’re not going to do too little; we’re going to do just enough to give them the right medicine to be a good football team and win a championship. That’s what we need to do to become a better football team. So I think it’s everybody. They’ve all got to be in and it’s important.

Desmond talked about the scrimmage and said he felt like this was the closest the offense has been to winning a scrimmage. What did you see from the offense as far as steps forward in the scrimmage?
Narduzzi: Yeah, great question again. Desmond’s - first of all, I wasn’t excited about him in the first scrimmage. He kind of loafed a couple times. It wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t - during the play, it wasn’t like, you know, a weird play like protect your quarterback and do those things. But he’s a tough son of a gun, let me just tell you. He’s one of the toughest players on our football team, I think. I have a lot of respect for him as a football player, he’s a great human being and he makes us better.

But to go back to the scrimmage and why it was closer by the offense - and again, the defense won. I tell them every week, it’s going to be the turnovers, and our defense has worked on getting takeaways and did a nice job but our offense gave them. It’s called giveaways, too. It’s learning the offense and still some of that stuff. But I think Nate threw for 254 yards; put it that way. There were some explosive plays. We ran the ball well when we ran it. Those things, and again there’s the RPO’s and all the different stuff that you might not necessarily see on Saturday that you’d like to see. But there was just more explosion. There were some drive-killers with turnovers which, the game’s not even close if we don’t turn it over. So I liked the plays we made. I saw a lot of good stuff that way. And there was good stuff on both sides of the ball that you liked. But there was bad stuff on both sides of the ball that we have to eliminate from our game.

Is Sincere Edwards pushing for some playing time in the fall?
Narduzzi: He is. He is definitely pushing for it. He’s still learning the defense, too. He still gets confused at times. But for a freshman, he is a different level guy right now. He’s got a motor, he’s physical. If you guys all stood in a line here, he’s going to run through you and not care. He’s just going after you. He’ll probably watch out for Jerry. But he’s reckless. That’s what he is. He’s reckless. Some guys in, they’re freshmen, they’re cautious, they’re looking around like, ‘Am I allowed to do this?’ The dude’s reckless. He plays reckless. He practices reckless. And I can’t wait to see him in a game.

Last year you had the spring game as offense vs. defense, this year you went back to the Blue-Gold format. What made you go back to it?
Narduzzi: I really didn’t want to do it a year ago. I don’t want to say I got talked into it; sometimes you get talked into it. ‘We have to do it this way, it’s better’ - all that baloney. Okay. And that’s the first year I’ve done it like that; maybe it’s a soft way of doing it, I guess. Maybe that’s all part of the toughness: the drafting is harder. It makes it harder on the offense, defense. Maybe it’s not as clean a scrimmage as you’d like it to be, because of maybe some things are mixed up. But we’ll have our own little flavor this year to make it better. We’ll show you that tomorrow. But we’re going to have a draft, we’re going to draft the coaches out today, this afternoon, and it will be done the right way. Again, I just didn’t like it last year. I guess it’s just another day of practice; I guess that’s one of the reasons. I was going to do a draft anyway, but it was nice in the last two weeks, the kids started thinking about it like, ‘Coach, we’re doing a draft, right?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, we’re doing a draft.’ They want it, too, but I’m not doing what they want; I’m doing what we think is best for the team and I think that’s absolutely the best for the team.

Will you try to keep the offensive line units together?
Narduzzi: I don’t know. I’ll tell you tomorrow. What, do you have inside info or something?

It just doesn’t make sense.
Narduzzi: It doesn’t make sense. We’ve done it for years that way and you could do it either way, but that might be one of the changes. I feel like you’ve got a microphone in the staff room or something.

Do you feel like you’ve had more turnovers this spring?
Narduzzi: That’s a good question. I doubt it. I doubt it. Probably about the same. We’ve had turnovers back when Kirk Cousins was the quarterback; he turned it over in spring ball. I can’t say it’s more. I’d have to go back and really look at it. I probably could pull out spring ball stats from a year ago. But I would say it’s probably about the same. Maybe a couple more, but not that many more. I’d say this: we’ve had certainly less fumbles this year than last year, I would say. But maybe more interceptions.

Nate Matlack and Sincere talked about stopping the run and how that comes before the sacks and all of that. How has the defensive line done on that?
Narduzzi: They’ve done a good job. It’s day by day. Did they do as good a job as they needed to Saturday? No. Our goal is to hold people to three yards; I think overall with the one’s and two’s out there, I don’t think we got our run goal on Saturday, which is good for the offense, bad for the defense. So, who was on the field? Who made the mistakes? Those are all things - they all won’t be on the field, right? We’ll get our best 11 out there, our best 15, 18, 22 guys, but we’re trying to get everybody reps and sometimes that happens. So it’s a work in progress.

Will there be a lot of ones vs ones reps on Saturday?
Narduzzi: We’re drafting, so there won’t be any ones vs. ones.

That’s why I said, Saturday’s scrimmage was the best scrimmage. But this will be drafted, so it’s going to be a mixture of ones, twos and threes. So you’re not going to see the whole thing together.

Is that to avoid injury, maybe?
Narduzzi: No. No. Not at all. It’s just to have some fun, competition, split it up. There’s some adversity. If I’m in the right guard, I have to work next to the left tackle or the quarterback’s got to work with a different center maybe than he’s had during the spring. You never know. But it’s a way to have fun. It’s not just another day of practice. I think if I give them another day of practice, they’d be like, ‘Uhh. It’s ones vs. ones again? Is it thud or live, Coach?’ I think that gets old after awhile. But it’s 15 days of spring ball or 15 days of camp, it gets old. So it will be the draft, so it will be more ones, twos and threes vs. ones, twos and threes.

Does that allow for maybe more guys to jump out?
Narduzzi: It should. It gives everybody an opportunity, right? It gives a backup right guard who maybe plays with a left tackle or it gives a defensive end working with a D-tackle or a safety that’s working with a different corner that he doesn’t normally work with and he’s got to start leading that guy. It gives guys opportunity to practice with somebody else, play in a game with somebody else and maybe learn something from him.

Now that we’ve reached almost the end of practice, how has Nate Yarnell handled all of the aspects that go into it?
Narduzzi: I think he’s not really worried about leadership right now. I think our seniors and our leadership council have to lead, and he’s on both of those. Or, I should say he’s on the leadership council. But I just want him to pick up the offense right now. I want him to be the best quarterback that he can be. I’d give him a B right now. I’d give him a B grade after 13 practices. He needs to get better, just like everybody else in this room. He’s got a ways to go. He can be better, for sure, and he will be better. He’s 13 days into a new offense that’s totally different than what we’ve done in the past.

When we talked about Sincere, he said one thing about Dayon was Dayon having him sit in the front of the classroom; what other things have you seen from Dayon as far as like maturity and things that are different from last year?
Narduzzi: I’m not sitting in that D-line meeting room at all, so I hope Dayon’s leading in little ways like that. But we still have a long way to go as far as leadership in this room across the board. I always say this, good football teams are led by the team. If I’ve got to lead them every step of the way and I’ve got to put a collar around their neck and walk around with a leash, we’re going to have problems. Those guys have to lead, so I hope they’re leading in the classroom, I hope they’re leading off the field and I hope they’re leading in this room and this building when they’re here. But we’ll find out in December how well they led. You can talk and do whatever you want to do right now, but what’s going to happen in the summer when the coaches go on the road in July? That’s when I want leadership. That’s when we’ll find out. Because right now, coaches are leading and they might lead in little ways, but hopefully they take the reins and go.

What position group has impressed you so far throughout practice and scrimmages as well?
Narduzzi: That’s a darn good question. A great question. You know the group that’s impressed me, to be honest with you, is a group that’s kind of banged up, that we’re down numbers, is the linebacker group. The linebacking group, just guys that are functional to play the game, I mean, Luke DelGaudio - I’m just talking from the top, Kyle Louis has had a heck of a spring, Brandon George has had a heck of a spring, down to the bottom of Dylan Bennett and Abe and just those guys, Luke DelGaudio, I mean, those guys have just stepped up. You put them in there and - like, last spring, you’d be like, ‘Uhh,’ like, when they go in, it’s not good. Now you look at it like, these guys have grown up and done some great things. To me, I’d have to look at it as a whole, with the injuries we’ve had at that spot here in the spring, that they’ve stepped up and I don’t go, ‘We can’t go inside today with the twos because we’re practicing coaching, that’s it.’ That group has done a nice job this spring, I’d say. And again, there’s others, but you ask me to think about that and that’s my answer. I’m sticking with it.