MORE FROM THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING CAMP - Practice notes: OL lineups, new positions and more | Video: QBs and WRs on the first day | Video: Narduzzi talks after the first day of camp

Pat Narduzzi met the media Wednesday to talk about the offense, position moves, Paris Ford and a lot more. Here’s a full rundown of everything he said.

Narduzzi: It’s a nice warm day in Pittsburgh. Spring ball - might as well call it winter ball here the last two years. I think it was a solid day. Obviously, there are no pads on. Maybe a little rusty at different things. We’ll get to watch the tape, but I thought we had a good tempo overall. I just really look at practice mechanics and moving around, and there are some details we have to clean up, as far as that goes. We’ll just keep getting better every day in practice.

How different is the offense going to be this year?
Narduzzi: You know, there’s going to be some similarities. I’m not going to talk structurally as far as what we’re getting; obviously, you’ll see in the spring game. But we’re going to do what we did well a year ago and we’re going to fix what we didn’t do well. That’s simple. If you’re running the ball well, why change what you’re doing? And if you’re not throwing the ball, change and revamp that and let’s throw it the right way.

Two years ago there was an emphasis on carrying over a lot of the success you had on offense and trying to do the same things; are you maybe giving Mark more free reign?
Narduzzi: Mark has free reins, period. I mean, it’s his offense. But no coach is not smart enough to look at the tape and go, ‘Man, I really like that play, that looks good, let’s do that again.’ Then you look at that and you go, ‘That doesn’t look very good, let’s stop doing that.’ That’s what coaches do. Like everybody says: if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, and there’s obviously a lot of things that we can fix in all three phases of the game. That’s what we do in the offseason, that’s what we’ve been doing since we went off the road in February is evaluating what we’re doing offensively and defensively and special teams. We’ve got books this thick on just detailing out what we did on every single play. We evaluated every run, every pass on both sides of the ball, every special teams - we’ve got all kinds of stats. I could give you guys books of them.

So that’s what we did in the offseason. Now we’re out here to fix those things.

How does Wheeler look at guard?
Narduzzi: Wheeler looks good. He asked me down there during our field goal period like, ‘Hey Coach, how do I look?’ I was like, ‘Rashad, I have no idea; I didn’t just watch you.’ He was like, ‘I thought you might have caught a play.’ But Rashad’s excited. We’ll watch the tape; that’s what we’ll for the next three and a half hours is evaluate the tape and see what improvements he needs to make.

I said, ‘Ask Jimmy Morrissey; Jimmy will know.’ Jimmy’s like, ‘He did pretty good.’

Why do you think he can make the transition?
Narduzzi: Why do I think? Because he’s a good athlete. I think when you talk about just the evolution of - wherever I’ve been, I think the first six or seven years at Michigan State, the only drafted lineman we had was a kid named Dan France from North Royalton High School in the southern Cleveland area. He was the only drafted lineman we had in our first six or - you can go back and look at the documents there. But he was a defensive tackle that we recruited and he ended up being a guard there for the Bengals. That’s the first one I can remember that we had; then Conklin came after that.

But d-linemen, they’re big, athletic guys, they’ve got great hands and great feet. He runs around really well and it just adds to the athleticism. It’s no different than a Mike Herndon; it just adds to the athleticism of the offensive line. I think anytime you move a d-tackle over - we’ve had a lot of success through the years.

What do you like about Phil’s game to move to outside linebacker?
Narduzzi: You look at, Seun Idowu graduated and it was like - we’re always looking to see how we can get our best 11 players on the field. We had a couple safeties that we like and Phil can always go back and play safety, don’t get me wrong, but we wanted to see. He’s just a physical football player and he fits the mold. That position’s kind of a hybrid safety/outside linebacker, and it’s just really getting our best 11 on the field. We’ve got a lot of teaching to do with him, but I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for him to get a lot more reps.

Mark said he met with the quarterbacks and they were like, ‘What can we do to catch Clemson?’ You’re in a new year, you’ve taken the step of winning the Coastal, is that being talked about around the team, that they’ve gotten to Charlotte and what can they do now to finish the job?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I think that’s kind of what you do. We’re one step closer to where we want to be. There are a lot of teams that would have liked to be in that championship a year ago, but I think our guys kind of learned - you know, you hear little comments, not necessarily addressing it, but you’re hearing comments from our kids, ‘Coach, we’re taking it this year.’ Like, ‘We’re gonna go get it.’

It’s one thing to get there. It’s another thing to win it. But I think experience is everything. I think you’ve got to be there now. I think they’re a little bit hungrier to go take that next step.

It seems like, after Campbell, you’ve got a number of guys who feel like they can compete for a job at safety alongside Damar, whether it’s Stocker, Coleman, Garner, Ford. It feels like that’s a pretty deep position for you.
Narduzzi: That was one of the things that we looked at. And like I said, Phil could still go back there and be a safety. If we had to play tomorrow, I would say Phil would be the starting safety, because he’s got the most experience. But we have 15 days and we have all of August to get those guys right back there.

But Stocker’s continually shown improvement through the years. Paris Ford continues to get better. He’s got more confidence. I liked what I saw out of him today and it’s just going to keep getting better. Mentally, he’s really good in the classroom. We were going through a video test yesterday with him. So he’s worked hard at it and he’s just got to continue to work at it so he knows what to do but he’s a playmaker as well. And we know what Damar has done.

Along the line with Paris, have you seen a maturity light go off with him. He was telling us about how much more mature he is now. Have you seen that big growth in him?
Narduzzi: Yeah, and you see it on the field and off the field. And I’ll just point this out: a week ago - we have two-week blocks for study hall. Forget football, because if you don’t have this one down here and you’re not mature down here, you won’t be mature up on the hill. But I don’t want to throw out his study hall hours but he was short a couple hours. We give you two weeks to get your hours in, so if you were supposed to have eight hours in week one and eight hours in week two, how many does that equal? 16 total. So he’s got to get those hours in. Well, if he only gets six the first week, what’s he got to get the second week? 10. So not only did Paris get 10, he got 12 - he got two extra hours of study hall. That shows maturity right there. He wasn’t moaning about, ‘I have to get 10 this week;’ he went and got two more. That, to me, shows the maturity up there, which is going to translate on the field as well.

So he’s really grown up. I’m happy with where he is right now. And that’s what happens. Everybody takes a little bit longer. He’s a great football player. He’ll make a lot of plays. We just have to get him on the field.