Partridge hits the Powerball

Charlie Partridge had a lot to smile about on Signing Day. Here's the full rundown of what Pitt's DL coach said Wednesday.

You have four guys coming in and I know you had a good bit to do with them getting here, but speaking purely from a defensive line coach standpoint, do you feel like you hit the jackpot today?
Partridge: Yeah, I couldn’t be more excited. I’ll tell you, this has been a long recruiting process, especially with the three local guys and I can’t tip my hat enough to Cory Sanders and the job he does recruiting this area, and it was a team effort.

From the beginning of the 2021 recruiting board, it was kind of understood that all decisions regarding D-linemen that we were going to recruit really worked through those three local players, to be honest with you, and they were all compared to those three. Obviously Naquan is a great player and we’re excited about the late addition of him, but you’re right: I do feel like I won the Power Ball. The only difference is, if I won the Power Ball, I may or may not be standing at this podium right now. But yeah, it’s a good day. I’m excited about the future of the D-line.

Do you see Naquan as a defensive lineman? I know he’s been listed as a D-end or outside linebacker.
Partridge: He’s certainly versatile. That’s where I do see him. He’s got all the abilities you want to be able to rush the passer, but he’s got some development to do physically, some weight to gain. He’s got the frame to do it. But you’ve seen the film, you can see how explosive he is. Some of our packages could allow him to be a linebacker that does some blitzing, does some dropping, as he continues to grow and gain strength and add weight.

When you have so many highly thought-of and sought-after players at that position, what are those moments leading up to today like? Is there anxiousness leading up until you know that they’ve signed?
Partridge: I’ve been doing this long enough where I am never comfortable until the DocuSign comes through - no longer the fax, right? It’s just the nature of recruiting. I think these kids were all - all four of them - highly sought-after and I’m going to be the same guy that checks in with players that I’ve had a relationship built with, and I’m sure that there were other coaches that were checking in with these guys all the way up to Signing Day. Give them a ton of credit: they have been strong, they’ve held strong and they’re excited to get here and be a part of what we’re doing on defense and certainly represent this great city, and like I said, bring in another great player from Virginia - I tip my hat to Chris Beatty. This is a great group.

But to answer your question, the short story is, yeah, I had anxiety until all four of those came in. That’s the nature of it, regardless.

Would you like things to get back to normal next year in the next recruiting cycle when you can actually go see these kids in the spring and summer?
Partridge: Yeah, there’s no question. I’ve had enough of Zoom. I’m looking forward to seeing you guys in person. It’s challenging, right? The good news is, if it’s going to happen on any given year, I do think, if you look across the country and certainly with regards to our class, while we did reach outside of our region for a handful, it is going to create some more regional recruiting and thankfully we had some great prospects within the reason and coaches that did an amazing job regionally. It played into our favor that way, because we were on some guys within the region that had been able to get here without the official visit.

Think about this: this entire class, none of them took an official visit. That’s a wild thing to contemplate and consider. Their official visits were via Zoom, whatever that means.

So yes, to answer your question, to get down and evaluate players in person and to build that relationship with them that way, I’m very much looking forward to that. Just like all of us are looking forward to taking (masks) off, right? And getting on with life as we know it. I’m excited for it to get that way, and hopefully by sometime in the summer, we’re all back to normal.

These past two years, you had a big hand in bringing up a lot of guys from Florida to visit Pittsburgh in June. You weren’t able to do that this year; was it harder to sell a Florida kid on Pittsburgh without bringing them here?
Partridge: Yeah, it’s hard to get someone to commit to somewhere without ever having seen it. Now, we’ve certainly done that with a few of these players and the guys did a great job, but it is challenging, and like you said, a lot of the kids that we have signed from south Florida were due to those official visits and what they felt. A lot of recruiting is what you feel when you’re there, and Pittsburgh is a special city, a special place with special people, and it’s hard to create that via Zoom. You do the best you can and again, you get creative, you create videos, you have Louis Riddick and you put one together that tries to get you a feel, but at the end of the day, getting kids here on campus at some point in their high school career is going to give you the best chance to get someone to come to your program.

You’re losing a bunch of key guys. Do you feel like you have the group to plug in those holes and keep rolling?
Partridge: Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been a part of a great player going to the NFL, and to sit here and say we’ve got a Weaver replacement, a Pat Jones replacement, is certainly a crazy thing to say. I’m really excited about the group we have coming up. Haba, John Morgan, Deslin, the tackles that got so much experience, obviously those guys are coming back. If you remember last year, we didn’t play with Weaver. This year we didn’t play with Jaylen Twyman. That’s college football. We can’t resign them to another contract or put a franchise tag on them. This is part of it and that’s a great question.

At the end of the day, if you have your position or your program built, you have a group of guys that are your starters, you have a group of guys that are rotating, you have a group of guys that are developing, and I think right now, you’re starting to see the D-line that has that. Let’s just take Dayon Hayes, who got maybe somewhere between 10 and 20 snaps this year and a couple sacks - he wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t mention that fact - but there’s a young man who’s developing that people don’t know a whole lot about other than local media and some of the recruitniks, so to speak. That’s a kid who’s developing along with those other guys that have been rotating in, and you just work your way into categories.

I know that’s a long story, but I feel really good about the future of the defensive line and where we’re going and the way we do things around here defensively puts them in a good position as well.

How much does that do for the whole process that you just talked about, when you have guys that come to your program who were not super-heralded high-star recruits, sure-thing guys, that end up leaving it as projected top Draft picks - how does that help the whole process that you just talked about there?
Partridge: I think what it does is, it gives the players in your room that are already there, that are in that development process, confidence that, ‘If I just stay the course, stick to it, I can do really, really good things if I do things the right way.’ It also gives recruits confidence that a coach and a system - ‘I can be developed by this coach and I can develop in this system and I have a chance to do really good things.’

There’s no doubt that when a young man like you said, to use your phrase, an unheralded, has less stars, maybe the kid who’s not a surefire top player coming in out of high school based on ratings but yet you develop him and he flies past some of those four and five-star kids - when you’re doing that and you’ve done it with more than one or two or you’ve had a chance to do it throughout your career, it gives your current room and hopefully your future room a lot of confidence about what can be done.

How happy are you to have a Donald back in your defensive scheme?
Partridge: I’ll tell you what, I wish I had a chance to coach Aaron Donald but I’ve been around him enough to get a feel for what he’s all about, and we all see what he does just about every Sunday.

You know, one of the challenges we actually had with Elliot, believe it or not - he loves his uncle and he’s proud of his uncle, but Elliot has a unique nature about him in that he wants to be his own story. That was a challenge that we had to get through at times, to be honest with you. And while he’s very proud of what his uncle is doing, I think Elliot is going to come in and play his game, do things his way and I think he’s got a really bright future ahead of him as long as he continues to work the way he does. And quite honestly, he’s addicted to work, which I love.

I heard Coach Narduzzi talk earlier about how he’s going to workout in his grandfather’s basement. I mean, I’ll call him on any given Saturday night - that’s one of the unique things, you talk about this recruiting, when it went to unlimited calls - kids don’t pick up phone calls. They pick up FaceTime, which is bizarre, and then when they pick up the FaceTime - and I’m sorry, I’m off on a tangent right now - but they pick their phone up - my kids will call their friends on FaceTime but sit the phone on their table and it’s looking at the ceiling. I don’t get it. It’s like a weird speakerphone thing.

But anyway, I’ll FaceTime Elliot and it will be a Saturday evening because unlimited calls, and he’s working out. He really loved - one of the things that he really enjoyed the most, was when we really got into film, when we really got into it. When we got past the chit-chat and we got past, you know, ‘How’s school going? How’s your girlfriend? How’s the family? Coach, can we watch the film?’ And I’m telling you, there were some hour, hour and a half sessions where we really got into it. For him to already be kind of addicted to watching film and learning that way, that’s a great sign.

To answer your original question, how could we not be happy to have another Donald in this program? Are you kidding me? It’s awesome. It’s great.

Being a Pitt man, did Aaron help you out with Elliot much?
Partridge: You know, obviously Aaron’s proud to be here. We never called on Aaron for that help. Once we understood that Elliot wanted to make his own decision, we kind of - and again, there’s only so much you can do within the rules in terms of that stuff anyway, but we focused on what we believed we could do for Elliot’s development outside of the fact that he’s related to Aaron. Aaron is a special, special player and he carries himself in a special way as a person. But honestly, we really focused on Elliot and Elliot’s future and Elliot’s potential to develop and kind of tried to draw a line in there that, ‘We’re going to help you be the best you.’

What was your reaction to Kenny deciding to come back and what does that mean for the program?
Partridge: I’m happy for Kenny. Obviously I was as excited as anybody last night when I got the news. We’re all thrilled. It says a lot for Kenny’s feelings toward this program, toward this city, toward what he believes he can continue to do here and to help him in his future endeavors beyond Pitt. I think he intends to come back here, have a special year and go on and have an amazing career beyond Pitt as a quarterback. I’m really, really happy for him. I think it was a good choice. I think he got some good advice.

One time I will remember in my career - the guys did a great job in practice of avoiding Kenny. So here’s the D-line coach’s perspective. I was at Wisconsin when Russell Wilson came in, and it didn’t take us long to figure out Russell was unique. And I didn’t have to say one time to the D-line, ‘Stay away from the quarterback.’ If they won their pass rush and they were getting close to Russell, they ran (away from the quarterback), and I foresee that same response happening in the future here with Kenny as we move forward.