Narduzzi reviews the Blue-Gold Game

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi met the media after Saturday’s spring game to talk offense, defense and more.

Narduzzi: Spring ball is concluded. I guess this is my fifth spring ball here. First of all, it’s nice to be here five years. I love Pittsburgh, I love these kids, I love all the families that came. We had a great breakfast this morning and the kids love having their families around. It’s great to come together as a Panther family to start off with.

Solid scrimmage. Kind of didn’t do as much - I told you guys the other day we probably wouldn’t do a whole lot. But obviously the passing game, I thought, looked good. The run game didn’t look as good, but we didn’t have as many things in, really; I guess we’ll see what the run game looks like in August.

Paris had the most improved player, a bunch of tackles, an interception; is he at the point where you feel like you can rely on him?
Narduzzi: Right now, Paris Ford’s a starter at boundary safety coming out of spring ball, period. He’s a football player. One of the major reasons he got that award - you know, he’s always been talented, he’s always been fast, he’s always been physical and he’s always been a playmaker; that interception is just what you see all the time. But now he’s figured out the knowledge part of it, which you guys see in our facility all the time is around. It’s part of the process and Paris has competed in the process and he’s a playmaker. He’s a good tackler. We’ll watch the tape and see how good he was; I’m sure he made some mistakes, just like everybody else did out there today. But he’s had a tremendous spring and obviously one of the most improved defensive players along with Phil Campbell.

Do you feel like anybody else cemented the way they played this spring with today?
Narduzz: You know, everybody cemented something. Now again, you have to get to the fall and you have to get to August 31st and continue to do that so there’s no stepping backwards and doing the wrong thing on or off the field. Those are all critical and we have one more week of classes, then we get into finals week. So probably the natural ones that you could look at and see, but he’s a football player.

You mentioned the running game didn’t do so well, and you had a bunch of sacks, too. How would you grade the offensive line’s performance?
Narduzzi: I’d say it’s probably a C+. Maybe it’s a flat C. But by being all split up, you don’t get to see Kenny Pickett behind the number-one offensive line, so that goes with it, period. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

Was it encouraging that there were several quarterbacks getting the ball down the field and not just one or two? It seemed intention to try to stretch, regardless of who was back there.
Narduzzi: Obviously, both offenses were taking shots. Aaron Mathews gets a great one at the end. It was great to see him make a play. I wish Maurice Ffrench would have caught a couple down the middle. But that’s what we’re going to do: take a few more shots. And I’ve been impressed all spring with Coach Whipple and Coach Beatty and what they’ve brought to the game. As you guys know, our intentions going into spring ball and coming out of spring ball was to improve our passing game.

I think we’re going to be able to run the football. Will we run it like we did last year? I don’t know. But we’ve got receivers making plays. You saw Shocky and you saw Taysir, obviously Tre Tipton, one of those most improved guys, he’s got two touchdown catches; that’s kind of what we saw during the spring and those guys are playing with a lot of confidence. And there are other quarterbacks making plays, too, so that’s good to see.

Talk about Campbell and how he earned the award as most improved player.
Narduzzi: Phil, we moved him from safety which, you know, he’s good enough to go play safety for us, too. But coming out of the spring or coming out of last season, out of the bowl game, we talked about it late in the year even. He wanted a shot to play the Star linebacker spot and then we find out he’s tough enough to play on the other side. He’s just got a knack. He’s a football player. He’s got a knack to find the ball. He doesn’t have to worry about covering receivers anymore; he can just pin his ears back and go play football. That’s what he’s really, really good at.

What improvements have you seen from Kenny this spring?
Narduzzi: Kenny, his feet are better in the pocket. There were some changes, you know, that Coach Whipple wanted to make, just as far as his fundamentals and what he does with his feet in the pocket. That’s something I know nothing about. And again, the ball’s coming out quicker out of his hand; I think that’s the most impressive thing. You saw some balls being thrown on time and receivers, before they’re out of their break, the ball’s coming. That’s something we wanted to see. That will make our offensive line better.

V’Lique Carter made an appearance on defense as well as offense; is that something you’ve been considering?
Narduzzi: Yeah, he’s good enough to play on defense - he was recruited as a DB - and then he’s electrifying on offense, so I guess ‘the Freak’ can play both. And you know in the past, whether it’s Jordan Whitehead - we’re going to play guys both sides of the ball. If we need him over there, we will. We still want to use him as an offensive weapon. I think he’s special when the ball’s in his hands. So we’ll continue to evaluate that. Obviously, in the spring game, when you don’t have that many corners, it’s easy to put him over there. But I’m not worried like he has to play corner to help us win a football game, because with J-Pinny and Dane Jackson didn’t play today but he could have played if he wanted to or if we wanted him to, we’re happy with where those guys are. And Damarri Mathis has had a really, really good spring as well. He could have been another one of those guys.

Is Carter one of those players who - you say, you don’t have a special package of plays for him and he has the same carries as everybody else has - is he a player you could envision having plays put in just for those abilities?
Narduzzi: No question about it. He’s able to line up now as a tailback and run our basic offense, run our entire offense; he knows the offense, he had some great protections out there where he’s cutting some people. He’s not the biggest guy in the world but he’s tough. And then we’ll have - again, we haven’t game-planned, so when we start to game-plan, there will be special plays for, really, everybody. I think that’s the thing about Whipple: he’s looking for matchups and we’re going to get our playmakers the ball.

You have one grad transfer coming in; do you anticipate adding any others this summer?
Narduzzi: I don’t know. We’ll find out. Right now, we don’t have another offensive lineman coming in.

Not lineman; overall.
Narduzzi: Maybe.

Did you think that once Beville settled in and got some more playing time that he made some of the big-time throws that you recruited him for?
Narduzzi: Yeah, I mean, Davis is a football player. It was great to see him have some success out there. He threw the ball well and he’s talented. He’s made improvements. That’s the advantage of coming in at midyear. He’s still a freshman quarterback; he’s way ahead of where the rest of the freshmen will be when they come in. I’d say we had probably 90% of our freshmen here today as well, so they had a chance to see their classmate make some plays today.

Did you reach your number-one goal today?
Narduzzi: Yes.

Nobody hurt.
Narduzzi: I think T-Sibs got a little sprained ankle. He’s fine. He wanted to go back in. We said no.

How much of the offense did you have installed this spring? How comfortable are the guys in it?
Narduzzi: I think they’ve got about - you didn’t see 90% of the offense, but without knowing exactly what they’ve got, I know what they installed and it was a heavy, heavy spring install. So we got a lot of stuff in that you obviously didn’t see today. There’s a lot more. They threw a ton out there, which was great for our defense to see so many different things in the passing game and the run game. There’s a lot in.

There’s some stuff in there that maybe they weren’t allowed to use today?
Narduzzi: And the defense same thing. The defense wasn’t able to do everything that we maybe normally would have done.

What did you think of the contributions of your defensive line today?
Narduzzi: I think the D-line’s been solid all spring. That’s probably the strength of our football team and I think Rashad Wheeler even went in and got a sack, he played a little defense, too. So there’s a two-way player that, like Mike Herndon, could play both ways. But the D-line is solid. Keyhon Camp, Weaver, Pat Jones, they’re all - I don’t want to miss anybody. Devin Danielson, I saw him make a lot of plays inside, too. Amir Watts. They’re pretty stout up inside and outside.