Narduzzi on the OT win, the offensive slump and more

Pat Narduzzi met the media after Pitt's 28-21 win over YSU Saturday, and here's the full rundown of his comments.

NARDUZZI: I told you guys they were a good football team. Alright, obviously - at halftime, I told our guys, ‘Hey, this is too easy, let’s try to slow down a little bit, let’s have a little adversity in the game.’ And they listened to me, I guess.

You know, it couldn’t have been a better first half. At halftime, I’m like, whoa. We talked about making a statement, and the three offensive drives for touchdowns, the defense looked pretty solid - you felt pretty good about where you were. We talked about at halftime about making a 60-minute game and coming out - and again, Youngstown maybe made some little adjustments; we’ll watch the tape and find out. They did a nice job. Pelini’s a great coach. They have a championship football team. I mean, I expect to see them - as I told Coach Pelini - in the championship game again. I think we played a darn good football team. A good MAC school, is what I call them. That’s about what they are.

When you talk about adversity as we do all the time, it’s nice to have adversity, guys. You find out how your guys are going to react. It’s not easy. We lit fire when Jester catches that ball. Max to Jester Weah in the corner of the end zone - great catch. I guess we just have to throw it up to him a few more times a game. They did a nice job in coverage doubling Jester all day, but if they’re going to double him, just throw it to him anyway, I guess. Heck of a job by him.

Then we go out on defense. You see the offense pick up the defense and the defense is all cranked up now, and then they go out and finish the game with an interception. So you couldn’t have ended it in a better way. I’m glad it didn’t go two or three overtimes. In the end, it’s a win, as I’ve told you guys in the past, and we learned a lot from this football team. It’s a young football team; I think four or five true freshmen played, and besides that, four or five guys playing in their first game ever - forget true freshman or redshirt freshman.

As I told you on Thursday afternoon, the group that was there with me, we’re going to find out who they are. As a coach, you really don’t know what you’re going to have. My wife didn’t like me this week; she was like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I don’t know what we have. We found out what we’ve got and we’ll clean it up and get better.

IF THEY DOUBLED JESTER, WHY WASN’T QUADREE MORE INVOLVED IN THE PASSING GAME?
NARDUZZI: We’ll look at the tape and find out. It’s the same thing as the run game: if they’re doubling out there, you would hope we’d have more run game. And I guess we rushed for 200 yards. But we just didn’t make plays when we needed to. You think about the two missed field goals. We block a punt and take it down to the 5-yard line and get no points. It was just some little things that you can’t let happen. Probably the worst thing we did in the first half was blow four timeouts - excuse me, three timeouts with personnel or substitution and just kind of running down the clock.

MOST OF YOUNGSTOWN STATE’S PASSING WAS TO TIGHT ENDS OR RUNNING BACKS. WOULD YOU SAY YOU’RE CONCERNED ABOUT THE LINEBACKERS IN PASS DEFENSE?
NARDUZZI: Maybe a little bit. But I guess that’s different than last year, right? You know, when you look at the positive side, you’d have to look at that. Dennis Briggs - his first start playing back on the hash. He’s never started out there. You look at Bricen Garner and Stocker - their first starts out there today and they’re playing a ton of football. So we’ll get better at it. I think the safeties lost their leverage a little bit on some of those tight end benders.

When you look at the positive, how about Dane Jackson? That guy made some nice big-time PBU’s out there and so did Avonte Maddox. So those are some of the positives which was a weakness a year ago, and all of a sudden, we make that a little bit better. And the competition is going to get better as we go on, so we need to continue to get better and not stay the same.

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE ISSUE WAS WITH THE OFFENSE IN THE SECOND HALF?
NARDUZZI: I don’t know. We’ll see. Did they start to feel good, like, this is easy? I don’t know. Who knows what’s in their mind? But we just didn’t - you know, we didn’t get it done.

DID YOU LIKE THE WAY MAX HANDLED IT OVERALL, MANAGING THE OFFENSE?
NARDUZZI: I’ll look at the tape. I didn’t think it was bad. I think he thinks he played pretty good, as I talked to him after the game. So we’ll look at all the details of it. I wish, at the end, he would have run for a first down near the end. But he hasn’t played for a long time either. It’s been over a year since he started a game, so, you know, you’re going to be a little rusty. There’s nothing like playing at Heinz Field and we got a great opportunity to get that done and start off 1 and 0.

LESS THAN 60 YARDS RUSHING IN THE SECOND HALF; WAS THERE SOMETHING THEY FOUND IN THE BOX THAT GAVE THEM MOMENTUM?
NARDUZZI: We’ll look at it, but we didn’t make a play. Then I’m watching in the fourth quarter and all of a sudden Qadree’s running a little bit faster. It’s like, okay, where was that a little bit ago. But they made some plays, they do some good things with some twists and stuff inside. But we’ll see the tape and probably have more answers for you on Monday.

WHEN YOU WERE ASKED ON MONDAY IF IT WAS GOING TO BE VANILLA, YOU SAID YOU WOULD DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO WIN. WAS IT A LITTLE TOO BASIC AT TIMES IN THE SECOND HALF?
NARDUZZI: I don’t know. We probably held a few things back. We held back a package, but like I said, we’re going to win it, so I wouldn’t say it’s too basic. We did some of the things that we wanted to do, and we held some stuff just to save it.

CAN YOU EXPAND ON THE GAME-WINNING INTERCEPTION?
NARDUZZI: I have to go back and watch the tape, but I can expand on - Bricen Garner made a big play. And that’s what you have to do back there. Obviously, the quarterback was scrambling and we didn’t get pressure - I can tell you I wasn’t happy with the pressure, four or five-man pressure today. But we didn’t get pressure on the quarterback, he stepped up and threw it and Bricen was in position to make a play.

ON THE FINAL DRIVE IN REGULATION, IT WAS THIRD-AND-14 AND MAX RAN FOR 13 YARDS, WAS THERE DEBATE ON TRYING TO GET ANOTHER PLAY OFF, CALLING A TIMEOUT, PUNTING THE BALL?
NARDUZZI: We were in field goal range; I think it was the 35 or 36-yard line and we felt like we had to get to the 38. We had a guy not get lined up as quickly as you need to. If we knew we were not going to get lined up quickly, we call a timeout. But we wanted to save that. We did not do a good job with our timeouts today in the first half and the second half.

DID YOU FEEL LIKE THAT CAUGHT UP WITH YOU AT THE END OF THE GAME, WHERE YOU MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET ANOTHER PLAY IN?
NARDUZZI: A little bit. Maybe. Maybe after Ffrench caught that nice ball out there, there was 13 seconds left or something like that. Maybe. But we’ll look at that.

HOW DO YOU EVALUATE THE DOWN LINEMEN? IT DIDN’T SEEM LIKE YOU GOT MUCH PASS RUSH WITH FOUR GUYS AND YOU GAVE UP 100 YARDS RUSHING?
NARDUZZI: Not obviously happy with that. In the third quarter, I think they started to hit us on some jet sweeps, which we’ve seen every day in practice. Like I said, they did a nice job of mixing it up and we didn’t make plays we needed to.

WHAT DID YOU SAY TO KESSMAN AFTER A GAME LIKE THAT?
NARDUZZI: He was in the shower; I didn’t get a chance to say it. But you know what? Another true freshman out there. With a true freshman long-snapper. He did a great job on those extra points. I’m glad he didn’t have to go in there and have to kick a field goal in overtime to tie it up or to get it done. But he’s a freshman. He’s learning, too. He’ll be so much better. He’s a tough kid and I don’t worry about him at all. He put one off the upright and I don’t know how far off the other one - you couldn’t tell how far off it was.

THERE WAS ABOUT A 35-MINUTE STRETCH WHERE QUADREE HENDERSON DIDN’T GET ANY OFFENSIVE TOUCHES. FROM A COACHING STAFF STANPOINT, WAS THAT JUST A MATTER OF YOU GUYS TRYING TO MOVE THE BALL AROUND?
NARDUZZI: Trying to move it around a little bit and some other guys get the ball. But there are some things they’re doing defensively that we see that they’re taking him away. Even when we ran it late, they had about 12 guys there - and I think they only had 11 on the field at that time. So it’s, what are they giving you? And we’ll have to go back and look and see what they did and what they did to us and find out what our next answer is.

YOU USED FOUR RUNNING BACKS AND ONE OF THEM WASN’T MOSS - ANY REASON?
NARDUZZI: You know I don’t talk about that stuff. Moss will be - we believe he’ll be back this week.

HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SPEND ENJOYING THIS ONE BEFORE YOU LOOK AT THE GAME NEXT WEEK AGAINST THE OTHER TEAM IN THE STATE?
NARDUZZI: Not much - not much time at all. As soon as I walk through that door, we’re on it.