Narduzzi on the scrimmage, defensive standouts, the OL and more

Pat Narduzzi met the media Tuesday to talk about Pitt's most recent scrimmage, the standout players on defense, the development of the offensive line and a lot more.

Here's the full video and transcript of his remarks.

Narduzzi: Really good Saturday, I think. It’s never as clean as you want. I think we had 106 plays offense and defense, 24 special teams reps, so 130 overall, which is obviously a little bit less than we had last week. But we came out of it pretty healthy, for the most part, got a lot of work done. Every day, you’re getting something done. There’s good, there’s bad every day. I think we had two turnovers offensively which, out of 106 plays, probably not bad. Some nice plays on defense. Defense won the scrimmage. I don’t know if you guys knew that or not. It was tight but it came down to the two-minute end of the game.

And then we had a great practice today. I challenged them today, just Tuesday practice - last Tuesday, I thought we were not very good. They came out lots of energy and I liked the energy at practice today.

Who’s been the leader so far of the defense with the first two scrimmages, both on the field and also off the field?
Narduzzi: It’s hard to tell. It’s hard to tell. You hope you have more than one. If I have just one, then we have problems. I can’t tell you there’s one clear-cut one. I think there’s probably one at each position that tries to lead. But we’re not where we need to leadership-wise. We’ll eventually get there, but you’re just trying to play right now.

Is the defense ahead of the offense right now?
Narduzzi: It’s hard to say that. We do so much on defense. Coach Cignetti is not game-planning. He’s not trying to - I remember a year ago, he ran four plays of the same play four in a row and I’m listening to him on the headset and he’s like, ‘I want to get this on tape versus four different defenses.’ I’m like, ‘We’re trying to win the scrimmage here; don’t call four tosses in a row.’ But he wants to get plays in, which I get. He’s not into game-planning at this point, so he’s not really worried about that. So we didn’t - there were high winds the other day as well, so we didn’t throw it as much. We kind of ran it a little bit more than we’ve been throwing it. I wouldn’t say anybody’s ahead of anybody. I think it depends on what play, what day.

That being said, what do you like about what the defense - what has stood out to you?
Narduzzi: What’s stood out is, guys are making plays. There’s the positives - guys making plays. But sometimes they’re not doing it the right way. You can make a play, but if you’re doing it the wrong way - a lot of the details need cleaned up. After 10 - Saturday I looked at it and I watched the tape and I’m like, ‘Yeah, you made a play, but…if they had done a little bit better, they didn’t block you because -‘ you know, footwork, safety, whatever it is, just a lot of the details that you don’t see on the field until you watch it on videotape. So those are all things we’re trying to clean up on both sides of the ball.

That said, what allowed the defense to separate from the offense on Saturday?
Narduzzi: It’s always going to be turnovers. And one of them probably wasn’t a turnover; it was a center-quarterback exchange and I think everybody jumped offsides except the center so the ball wasn’t really snapped and they probably would have blown it dead but, you know, the officials Saturday didn’t blow it dead so they called it a fumble. Turnovers, anytime you turn the ball over, you’re going to lose the scrimmage, because you can’t make that up.

You have a lot of young defensive linemen you’re going to rely on this year and you’ve got a lot of veteran offensive linemen; how are the young guys on defense doing against some of those old guys on offense?
Narduzzi: It’s a battle. You win a battle, you lose a battle. It’s a battle every day. Today, our focus going into practice today was, ‘Adversity and success.’ You don’t get better without having some failures or losing; you have to lose and get punched in the mouth once in awhile to come back. So it’s a little bit of back and forth, which is what you want. If the defense is dominating the defense or offense is killing the defense and nobody’s fighting back the adversity, you’ve got a problem.

The young guys are doing their own. When you talk about Sammy O is doing a great job, Jimmy Scott’s doing a great job, just hanging in there, getting 11 practices in. They haven’t missed a practice yet. We do a thing called ’15-of-15,’ seeing who’s tough enough to make all 15. They get a nice sweatshirt after and maybe I’ll share that with you this year: who didn’t miss a practice.

You’d love that, Jerry, wouldn’t you? It would be like your injury report. I’ll give you all the guys that got it, okay? 15-of-15.

But it’s a battle every single day out there. Sammy, Jimmy, the Ghost, who’s doing a nice job. But then on the other side of the ball, you look at, Ryan Baer’s doing a good job. He’s gotten a ton of snaps at left tackle, right guard, left guard. I’m trying to think of who are the other younger guys up front. Not as many young guys on the offensive line.

BJ?
Narduzzi: BJ. BJ. BJ, I don’t think I’ve mentioned BJ. BJ’s done an unbelievable job. BJ’s going to be a great player here. He’s getting snaps with the two’s. We moved Terrence Moore a little over to play some tackle stuff as well, just because BJ’s done a nice job, like, ‘Hey, let’s see BJ.’ We know we can cross-train Terrence Moore to get some other stuff in. So he’s done an outstanding job and he’s hanging right in with anybody, with the one’s and the two’s.

Looking at the highlights that are posted on social media, it looks like Bangally Kamara is making a lot of plays. Is it safe to say he’s had one of the better springs on this team?
Narduzzi: Bangally, he’s scary. Like, I’m standing behind the offense and I feel that guy. If there’s a linebacker I felt Saturday, it was number 11. Now, I’ll watch the videotape and it’s not as pretty and, like, ‘What are you doing?’ So he did some stuff that you aren’t going to get away with, too. So I let him know that. But you feel him out there.

Is it more like hero-ball type of thing to come out of his responsibility?
Narduzzi: Yeah, a little bit, yeah. It’s fine and ‘atta boy’ and tap him on the back. I liked it out on the field. Then I watch the tape and I’m going, ‘We’re going to get our butts kicked if he keeps doing this a lot.’

Four weeks in, how would you evaluate what you’ve seen from your quarterbacks?
Narduzzi: We’ve got Phil stepping him up here today. He’s been outstanding, like we thought. He got maybe 25 snaps the last two scrimmages. We’ve seen a lot of good things from practice that, you know, just got to keep him safe and find out what we’ve got. I think right now Christian and my man Nate, they’re in a battle right now. And Ty’s done some really nice things. So they’re in a battle for that number-two spot and we’ll keep evaluating and it will be something that goes into the summer.

The kicking situation, let’s go to the kicker. We have two good punters. We never talk about those guys. You guys never ask me questions. But Junko is doing a nice job, Jeff’s doing a nice job as well. There’s a battle going on there. Ben Sauls, up to today - and I think he was 100% today - he’s hit 88% of his field goals. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. He hit a 60-yarder the other day, and it was good from about 65. I’m like, ‘Holy cow.’ And even Franco today - we didn’t have any extra conditioning after practice because he hit a 46-yarder. We pulled him out of the dorm room; I think he was up in Sutherland Hall and we yanked him out, so Franco’s done a nice job, too.

What about the offensive line, as far as how they’ve been able to gel? Some of these guys you’ve been around, but playing together is always a tough thing.
Narduzzi: Well, Branson Taylor missed a couple days, but I think we’re going to be fine up front…they’re doing a nice job. We do so many things on defense. The things that we do on defense, they won’t see all year. I think that’s one of the things, and our offense is getting prepared for just about anything they’d ever see. They’re never going to see the six-man pressure that we get every day. They’re getting 35, 40% of different stuff, which you test all your protections, that’s for sure. But you never have to deal with it during the season, thank God. I think they’ve done a nice job. It’s a day-by-day - it’s a slow process on the offensive line, as always.

How about your young wide receivers?
Narduzzi: Izzy Polk has done a nice job. DaeDae Reynolds has really stepped up. We’re happy with where he is as a new guy coming in. You watch videotape and like him, but he’s really stepped up and helped us out there. Seymore was out for a couple days, but both of those guys show a lot of promise. It will be fun to watch them in the spring.

How about Myles?
Narduzzi: Myles Alston has done a great job. Myles is a guy that, you can count on him, you know what he’s going to do. He’s gotten faster, he’s gotten tougher. Just like you hope, he makes some progress and you develop some guys. He was a developmental guy when he got here, just like Seymore will be and Polk will be and you hope he gets even better in the fall.