Narduzzi on Virginia Tech, the bye week, and more

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi met with the media one final time ahead of his team’s game with Virginia Tech this weekend. Here is a complete rundown of everything he had to say.

Narduzzi: The guys are ready for the battle in Blacksburg. It will be a battle, they’ll come ready to play. They’re 1-0 in the ACC and we’re 1-0 in the ACC. Again, a good football team, talented, and probably angry after their tough loss last week to a good Notre Dame team. So we’ll have our hands full on the road again.

Questions.

You said you are expecting to see Burmeister and Fuente said he is good to go. Do you still prepare to see someone else?

Narduzzi: There’s no question. I mean you always do. We prepared for really three quarterbacks this week. You assume you’ve got a wildcat guy, a guy that was on the scout team last week and I could still see them wanting to do that. They’ve got to prepare for the future and with the other wildcat quarterback being out they’d like to get him in there. So they like quarterback runs. So we’ve prepared for all the quarterback runs, regardless of who it is at quarterback. It could be a tailback, who knows what it will be. It doesn’t matter who it is, it matters structurally. They put you in a bind when they’re blocking with a tailback, who is usually carrying the ball, and the quarterback watching it. It becomes a different ball game and they love that out of their run game and they love it against us as well.

Burmeister has been described as a gamer. What does it mean to you when you’re defending somebody like that?

Narduzzi: The first thing I think about as a gamer is if it’s game time, he’s going to feel good, OK. He’s a guy that loves to play in games, I would assume and he’s a tough guy. Everybody likes to play in games and in a quarterback that’s what you like, a guy that’s a gamer. The other thing I think of a gamer is that maybe he doesn’t practice as well as he plays in games, when you think about that, like ‘hey when the game starts he’ll be good.’ So we know he’s a tough football player. He came back and finished that Notre Dame game like a trooper and he will be ready to go. They’ve got doctors and trainers that take care of their players like we do. I don’t know if it’s like UPMC. So they’ll get him ready and get anybody else ready. He makes plays. He’s fast, legitimately fast and anybody I’ve talked to talks about his speed.

I know weeks off are good for health, but from your experience do teams get off to slow starts? Does it take a little while for guys to get back into games?

Narduzzi: It’s hard to say. I don’t know what my record is on open weeks.

4-2…

Narduzzi: 4-2, Jerry, Jerry. We had more than one last year. I thought we had two open weeks.

I had 7-2….

Narduzzi: Woah, woah woah. We can’t have 4-2 and 7-2

Well there was some Covid weeks last year…

Narduzzi: I don’t know.

I’m not counting them...

Narduzzi: It’s a week off…We’ve got to do our homework here. That’s the details I’m talking about, Jerry. If our guys had details like that, we’d have issues. I can’t have two different numbers. Regardless, it just comes down to how you prepare. We’ve got to get our guys ready. It does not matter. We can look at what the Steelers do after an open week: Do they start slow? Do they go three-and-out? If our kids are worried about that – that’s not the focus for us. The focus is we’re going to go out and play like we did last outing and try to get all their minds right. That would be the negative part like, ‘Oh guys let’s make sure we don’t start slow because we had a week off.’ I don’t ever want to plant that seed. I hope they’re off of Twitter and not even listen to this press conference because it’s just more bad information that doesn’t matter. We should be fresher. We should be healthier and be excited to go play. It doesn’t matter when you play.

How important is it for a start? You guys know what it’s like to come from behind in a hostile environment earlier this year at Tennessee. How important will it be?

Narduzzi: It’s real important. It always is important to start fast and get up early. First of all, it shuts down the crowd a little bit, it slows that down. Not that we’ve had crowd problems, but it’s nice to hush them and silence the crowd a little bit, but we want to start fast and get out to a quick start. W4e want to do that every week and it’s just as important on the road.

What have you seen from Dax Hollifield, their middle linebacker?

Narduzzi: He’s a really good football player. He’s got a ‘C’ on his jersey, he’s a captain. I think the best thing he does is lead his team. He’s an emotional player, he’s tough, physical and I would probably say by the amount of communication you see him do signal-wise that he’s their guy that makes that defense tik a little bit inside, at least gets them all lined up. If they have formation checks, backfield checks, if they’ve got any checks I’m guessing he does a lot for both of those outside linebackers and their front-four and tell them what to do. Just like our mike linebacker, the mike linebacker is the key to the defense and the backup has not had a lot of reps in there and they may move an outside backer in there, but again it’s something that they have, but Dax has taken a lot of the reps in there if you look throughout the games. So that’ll be a change for them, at least for the first half.

Burmeister has been sacked 11 or 12 times, I think 5 or 6 in the West Virginia game. Did they have more success rushing the front or with blitzing?

Narduzzi: A little bit of both. We don’t watch a ton of that game. We watched all the big plays in that game and some of the different stuff that they did in that game formationally , but because they are three-down it doesn’t relate to what we do at least until third down comes around. So they’ve got a little bit of both in that game. A little bit of three-man and they covered him up and sacked him and then they’ll bring some zone pressures.

You’ve got two or three running backs you like to use, six linebackers, and maybe three or four corners. What does it say about the state of the program?

Narduzzi: We just went through the depth chart and I’m kind of amazed how I can these guys are taking the first two series and maybe this guy is going to take the third. 2-1 or 3-1 ratio. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of recruiting, but you’re never as good as you want to be and then we’ve done a good job of coaching and developing, but we haven’t done anything yet. So it’s a lot of babies in there and guys that deserve an opportunity to get those reps and in practice some of them don’t deserve it. Some of them want it, but you’ve got to practice and make that happen. So there’s some guys there and some guys that aren’t as good and the guys out there starting.

Are Virginia and Virginia Tech two teams you know the personnel as well as anybody because you recruit so much in that area?

Narduzzi: We recruit in that area, but again they don’t have as many Virginia players on the team that we recruited. Tyjuan Garbutt No. 45, one of their ends, I think he starts to the field and a guy we recruited out of Virginia, but when (Chris) Beatty was here we got more guys out of Virginia than we got prior to that. So it’s not like…we’ve got a lot of the young Virginia guys. But we know the rosters just from watching them every year. We played Virginia Tech last year, didn’t get a chance to play Virginia, but it’s like when you play the ACC, we’ve got a five game breakdown on them. Not only do you know who their players are, you watch those five games you’re watching an accumulation of games and you kind of know what they do in those games. So I think that’s something that’s more important of the structurally of what they like to do against Pitt. Because it doesn’t matter what they do against Notre Dame. Their defense is different structurally, everybody’s got a different - West Virginia’s got a different structure defense. So we’re looking at the five games, what do they like to do three games in three games against Whipple.

The bye week is always just advantage from just a prep standpoint. For a guy like Kenny, how much even more does he look at film during a bye week and can you over watch?

Narduzzi: Sometimes you can overanalyze and sometimes you can over practice. Sometimes the thing with an open week is you don’t want to happen is that you are so far ahead they get bored with the game plan by Thursday. They’re like, ‘Oh yea here we go.’ You start to get bored with it and that’s something you deal with in the bowl practice when you’ve got three, four weeks to prepare of getting bored with the game plan. We know it, we know it and then they don’t play as fast. So there’s got to be some urgency to learn the game plan in a week and I think you like that. Like I said we’ve only had five practices so it’s not too much overanalyzing and I’m sure Kenny’s got a few more things to do than just watch video all day.

One of the stats that Pitt football tweeted out is that 15 guys have scored touchdowns this season. Do you feel like you have more weapons this year?

Narduzzi: Kenny definitely does. I mean it was the Jordan Addison show a year ago, now you’ve got Taysir Mack and Lucas Krull and Jared Wayne with Addison. You’ve got a little bit of a run game. We’ve started off pretty good I think. We finished with the run game a year ago, but I like where our run game is at this point, but you’ve got to keep getting better and take what they give you.

The last two weeks your team has gotten some national buzz since Georgia Tech. Have you felt that buzz sort of transfer into this building here?

Narduzzi: I sure hope not because they’ll get their butts kicked, I can tell you that. I sure hope not, but we talk about it all the time. Something interesting in our radio show last night before I got there Larry (Richert) was talking to Carter Warren, they got there early. Carter Warren was telling Larry Richert that a lot of our guys have deleted their Twitter account for the season, which I kind’ve said it’s a good idea to delete. You talk about Pitt Football tweets, I haven’t looked at tweets for a long time. I just don’t post stuff during the season. I don’t look at it, it doesn’t matter. Somebody does, but I don’t. MY man Karlo takes care of me and helps me out. So I hope not, because it doesn’t matter. They can feel good all they want, no one has got you in the national rankings. So that to me is when you’ve got to start worrying if they’re still hungry and I think it’s important.

Two of the stats that stick out about their defense is third down defense and red zone defense. What does that tell you about what you’re facing?

Narduzzi: We know their tough, well-coached, and they’ve got athletes on defense. We’ve got to go out and play. Every week there’s different strengths and weaknesses of teams, but when we get in the red zone we know where our issues were a year ago. I think we cleaned up some of those things and we’ve got to go out and execute. I trust our offense, I like how they’re playing. We just got to go out and execute. That’s what it comes down to.

Is Keyshon Camp good for this week?

Narduzzi: Keyson’s really good. Keyshon is not getting hurt this year. I’m trying to think what he went down with…

It might have been cramps…

Narduzzi: It might have been cramps. A lot of talks about cramps, tempo, and injuries. I don’t agree with James Franklin on a whole bunch, but James I’ve got your back. When you’re not playing a fast tempo offense, nobody goes down with a cramp. So that’s a bunch of baloney.

What did you make of what went down at Oklahoma this week with a student reporter watching practice from an undisclosed building?

Narduzzi: I saw Jerry up there on that building up there, but he was trying to figure out what my bye record was. I haven;’t heard a whole bunch about it, but I did hear he shut practice down I guess because of the quarterback situation. Student reporter just trying to get a story, I like it.

You’ve got to respect him for that…

Narduzzi: I respect him. If you guys we’re sneaking up there in the parking lot, hey all the power to you. Find a way or make one.

That building went up after this building…

Narduzzi: I think that’s why they’ve got those big tarps. It doesn’t look like it’s up there today.

A few of us talked about splitting an apartment up there…

Narduzzi: Those are expensive, those things go down deep.

Are you expecting big things from Deslin in the second half?

Narduzzi: I am, but Deslin has played good. Everybody wants to look at the stats and all that, but we’re happy with where Deslin is. Is he making the flashy plays? Is he going to get 10 sacks like Rashad and Patrick? Everybody would like to have them, but you’ve either got to make them or have an opportunity to make them. Des is fine, he’s playing good football. We’re not disappointed in Deslin at all, but I think he can continue to get better as the season goes on. That interception tipped ball was big-time and that was because of Deslin. That was a big play, you don’t need a sack. He came through clean and did his job. If they want to throw picks, I like picks too.

How good is Virginia Tech’s environment compared to some of the other ones?

Narduzzi: It’s a great atmosphere. Tennessee is a great atmosphere. Clemson is a great atmosphere. There’s a lot of great atmospheres out there. Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State - so there’s a ton of them out there, but once the game starts it really doesn’t matter. They are fun atmospheres to play in for sure.

Walking into practice the other day, Enter Sandman was playing. Why did you decide to play that?

Narduzzi: We do all the time. Every game away if they’ve got some type of music. We played Rocky Top that entire week, our kids were sick of it. We’ve got noise out there, I don’t know if you were there. Maybe we should let them stay for our noisy period. We’ll let you stand behind the offense so you can see what we deal with. But we play the music because that’s what you’re going to hear during the game. Just trying to give you the same atmosphere that you are going to have on game day. So getting used to hearing that song. Some kids get cranked up to it. Lucas Krull was like, ‘Coach, that’s my favorite song. We played that song in high school and I’ve never lost a game when we play that song.’ So they know what they are getting into, so once they enter that arena and they hear that song, they’re going to be like ‘OK, just like we practiced all week. Here it is.’ So those are all part of the mental part of it. If they come in here and say what is this? What is going on? What’s this music? I don’t want it to be foreign to them. We play their fight song, we play everybody’s fight song.

So it can work for the visitors too?

Narduzzi: Oh yea, I get cranked up too.

Are you a Metallica fan?

Narduzzi: Oh yea, back in the day. I enjoy that song.