Narduzzi on the loss, the defense and more

Narduzzi: Obviously, it’s a good football team. They didn’t win 16 games in a row coming into this football game by accident. It’s hard for anybody to do that. I told you guys that Thursday. The quarterback’s an amazing football player. He’s got my vote for the Heisman. I don’t know how many times we had him back there and he scrambled out and made plays. He’s a heck of a football player. And not only did he scramble and elude himself from getting a sack - he throws a completion as well. It’s hard to win football games if you can’t get off the field on third down.

I think our kids played hard. Obviously, we didn’t do a whole lot on offense today. It was a little disappointing. We scored seven points on the long Ffrench run at the end; the only action we really had in the first half was Rafael Lopes on the return.

It’s what it is. Good football team. Our kids tried and it wasn’t enough to beat a good football team.

What do you think is wrong with the offense and wasn’t working for you, didn’t allow you to move the ball?
Narduzzi: We’ll look at the tape. It’s hard to tell. You’ve to plays to be made. I mean, the penalties again continue to - I’ve never seen - the last two years, we’ve been one of the least-penalized football teams in the country. Okay? I think the least-penalized in the ACC. All of a sudden, we’re one of the highest. It just doesn’t - it just doesn’t - it doesn’t calculate with me. It’s not what we teach. It’s not what we normally get. I don’t understand that. I don’t have an answer for that. It bothers me. That’s the worst thing. It’s been some second-half penalties and today - I don’t have an answer for it. I’ll get it. It should be a two-way go and it ain’t, but I just don’t understand. I wish I had an answer for you there.

You tweaked some things defensively with the five defensive backs. Now that it’s over, do you wish you would have changed things even more or was it just a matter of, there’s no way to keep up with them.
Narduzzi: No, it’s pick your poison, really, with what they do. I wouldn’t change a thing with what we do. They’re good football players. They made plays. The quarterback puts the ball and he scrambles out of trouble. They know what they’re doing in that offense. It’s a tempo thing. You can’t do a whole lot more. You watch tape and watch anybody else who defends them, they do similar things. I mean, you can’t get your personnel out there that you’d like. Even that last touchdown pass, you know, we’re in base and we’re not in nickel and they’re still throwing the ball in the fourth quarter and they beat Stocker in base. They’ve got good football players right now and they’re got a good system and they have a lot of confidence.

Obviously everybody gets disappointed when you lose, but games like this and Penn State when you’re losing by a lot, do you worry about or how do you guard against disappointment turning into something more or longer-lasting with the players?
Narduzzi: I’m not worried about the points; I’m worried about the losses. They all count as a win or a loss in the column, and the points don’t matter to me. As a matter of fact, last week was harder than this week when it’s a close one. So it’s a good football team, it will be a top-ten team at the end of the year, they won’t lose a game all year, I doubt, but we have a tough schedule. There’s no slouches on our schedule the rest of the way. So we’re going to have to buckle up and stop hurting ourselves and we have to do a better job coaching.

Do you feel like you guys have made progress in any areas since the opener, except maybe special teams?
Narduzzi: It’s hard to say. Each week, it’s something here or there, and we’re going to look at it again and say, ‘It’s one play, it’s one guy here.’ I mean, in the second half, they come out on the first play and motion over and run what we call a Superman play and the lead back comes out and goes right down the seam and the safety’s supposed to come off of it. Two out of three guys got their guy and one guy doesn’t. It’s been a year of that so far. We have to make plays and we have to get on the right guy. And they know what to do. That’s one of the plays that - our offense runs the same play, we cover it every day in skelly, then all of a sudden you get out there in the tempo and all of a sudden - and again, that’s all part of changing what you do as well, because Phil Campbell is to the field now, usually he’s to the boundary. Then you change and go nickel and you have to get him matched up the right way and that becomes an issue because usually he’s to the boundary. So the more you change, the more problems you have as well, sometimes.

What did you think of the way Kenny played, in general?
Narduzzi: I’m not going to sit here and talk about how he played until I watch the tape, but when you only put seven points on the board, it’s 11 guys out there; it ain’t one guy. But again, remember, he’s still a young kid. He’s going through his first year, his second road game, and there’s no substitute for experience. You look at a guy like McKenzie, he’s been there for a long time. You look at McSorley, been there a long time. It’s not their freshman year, and this is pretty much his freshman year. Let’s face it: that’s what it is. He hasn’t played a whole lot of football and he’s learning as we go.