Pat Narduzzi met the media before Thursday's practice and talked about the development of Pitt's safeties, how defensive communication is evolving and a lot more.
Here's video and a full rundown of everything he said.
Narduzzi: Beautiful day out today. We’ve got a little rain today, which is perfect for a little wet ball drills, just get ready for wet games; you never know when you’re going to go through that adversity and today’s a perfect day. No lightning, that’s a good thing. There’s no way you want to go out there when there’s any lightning - we know we don't want our kids to get struck, but just to have to move it in and get the cameras in, it’s chaos, so it’s nice to have a nice day like today.
Do they wear different shoes on a day like today?
Narduzzi: I have some gray shoes on today. I’m glad you checked out the style. I didn’t want to get my white ones too muddy. But we’ll do most of our work on the field turf out there, which is one of the reasons we have that, just so we don’t tear up that field too bad. But our cleats are no different. You’re only allowed to have such long cleats; I don’t know what it is, but there’s some extra long ones that you can’t wear.
How do you feel your guys handled the first day in pads and have handled things since?
Narduzzi: You know what, first of all, tempo-wise, I was excited with it. I think you guys saw the first six plays of team, but I was excited just with the way they handled themselves. I think this team is a little bit more mature than others. They practice with the right tempos. The day before, they were worse; we put the pads on, they got better. We coached the heck out of it, I guess, just trying to keep each other safe and making sure we’re smart. But they did a nice job of putting on pads. We didn’t do a ton of live; maybe three team periods of live, but we got probably 25 plays in. I thought it was good. We saw some good things on both sides of the ball.
What about the lines, in particular, what stood out to you - O-line and D-line?
Narduzzi: The usual. I can’t tell you there was anything that stood out about what they did. I think our penalties are down - knock on wood; as soon as I say that, we’ll have a hundred of them today. But our penalties are down, and I think last spring we had a lot of false starts on the offensive line, so that’s one thing that stands out to me right now is we’ve been a lot more disciplined with a lot more different cadences than normal people have, so I think that’s been a positive with our focus there.
Where does Solomon DeShields fit into that competition at linebacker?
Narduzzi: He’s right there at the top. He’s a guy competing. He can play both to the field and the boundary and he’s been running with the one’s and people are trying to unseat him there.
I’m sure you stick your head into the offensive huddle from time to time, but how do you get a sense of how the quarterback is commanding the huddle?
Narduzzi: I’m in the huddle a lot. There’s some long - whether they’re reading it from their wrist or they have to get it from the sideline, it’s a real call. I’m glad I’m not a quarterback, I can tell you that. I’m not good at memorizing lines. I’d be a bad guy in the movies, like, ‘Hey, you didn’t get your line.’ I’m not memorizing those lines. Those quarterback do a heck of a job in the huddle. There’s always some hiccups in the huddle. I almost wish we had a mic in the huddle so everybody can hear - on the offense, at least. The defense would love to hear, but they’re not allowed. But just to hear how that huddle’s commanded.
But all three of the guys that are getting the majority of the reps are doing a nice job in there. But it’s always an issue of getting out of the huddle and delay of games and all of those. It’s something we talk a lot about.
Speaking of communicating on the defensive side of the ball, a lot of that last year was SirVocea and the safeties. This year, who has stepped up in that role?
Narduzzi: I’ll start with Javon McIntyre; I mean, he’s been the guy. I told you back maybe four days ago, five days ago, about how he’s done a good job communicating and people talked about him being the guy right now. He does the best job. Corners feel comfortable with him because he’s giving them the call fast. He knows exactly what he’s doing, he’s studying it. The other guys are a work in progress but I think they’ve all gotten way better than they were in the spring.
And then Shayne Simon’s a guy, Brandon George, we have a lot of guys who can call it.
When we asked you about Javon in the spring, you and Randy both would say, ‘Yeah, he made those picks but there were a lot of mistakes in those last few games.’ Is he improving that side of it, the details?
Narduzzi: No question about it, or he wouldn’t be a starter. Theres’s no question about it. That was first-game jitters and he left Erick Hallett in the bowl game hanging out in the middle of the field. Hallett’s sitting on his butt going, ‘Where’s my middle of the field player?’ Everybody thinks Erick got beat, everybody’s probably on Twitter and social media saying, ‘What is he doing?’ Ironically, he’s doing a heck of a job down in Jacksonville as well, from what I hear.
But he’s gotten much better that way. The M.A.’s are down or nonexistent right now. But we have more install to do, and that’s what we try to press them. Today we’ll have a two-minute at the end of the game when things are rolling - you know, we had some missed assignments in the UCLA game that we have to make sure we clean up. We were awful in the two-minute situation against UCLA. Stuff that we’ll clean up today and again, there were a lot of young guys on that defense that day so he was new and playing the Star position in Delta and he had a lot of stuff on his plate that day.
Is he still doing both field and boundary?
Narduzzi: Oh, yeah. Field, boundary, the nickel-backs, he’s doing it all.
What about P.J. on the other side?
Narduzzi: P.J., again, has gotten a lot better back there. He wasn’t where we needed him to be in the spring. Sometimes he likes his calls. It’s like, ‘No, you can’t just like your calls; you have to do the ones that everybody likes that help us.’ So he’s learning. But he’s funny. He’s like, ‘I done’t want to get beat deep.’ It’s like, ‘Hold on a second now.’ We need him to do what we need him to do. He’s come a long way.
What about Donovan, because he’s new to the system?
Narduzzi: Yeah, he’s new to the system, but he’s - all of those safeties are much better. Javon was here, as far as play-calling; the rest of them were down here. And they are all - without beating a dead horse here, they’re all a lot better. Donovan is picking it up. He looks more comfortable, he appears more comfortable out there and I think they’re just getting better every day.
With wet ball drills and the punter competition, how does a day like today function into that competition?
Narduzzi: Yeah, it’s the same thing. Can you catch the ball in the wet? And we’ve already worked wet ball drills before this day. We did them the other day in the indoor. As a matter of fact, you guys were there early. We didn’t know we were going to get a day today in the rain. But we work that every week. But it’s nice to have natural ones where you don’t have to get a bucket of water to produce that.
