Today the Pitt football team will turn its full attention to preparing for Saturday's game with Florida State. Last week, Pitt was focusing on a different team: themselves. The Panthers used last week as a time to get healthy, refocus, and self-evaluate how things are going for their own team.
The bye week came in the wake of Pitt’s 45-3 loss to Notre Dame back on October 24th. The team has now lost four straight games and they are sitting on a 3-4 record heading into the stretch run of the season. When Pitt’s schedule was released prior to the season, it was known that Pitt’s only true bye week would occur last week. The ACC built in two bye weeks into the schedule, but Pitt’s second bye week is technically after the team’s 11th game.
Pat Narduzzi addressed the media on Friday afternoon after a quiet week from his football program. He believed his team would handle playing seven straight games just fine prior to the season, but after living through the seven week stretch, he’s having second thoughts.
“To begin the year I thought seven games and a bye was OK, but when you get in the grind of it, it’s not OK it’s kind of rough and I didn’t know other people would have extra bye weeks with COVID and that’s kind of the way the whole thing worked,” he said.
Pitt had a lot of soul searching to do following the 42-point loss to Notre Dame. The Panthers only generated 162 yards of total offense against the Irish. Pitt was again without stating quarterback Kenny Pickett for the second straight game. Pickett’s status for Saturday’s game in Tallahassee is still unknown, but even with him, it’s been a struggle to score points for this offense.
Narduzzi was asked to evaluate his offensive coordinator Mark Whipple’s performance through his 20 game stretch of running Pitt’s offense. He did not want to commit to that line of questioning, but rather said the team is trying to regroup and find ways to get the offense back on track.
“I can sit here and evaluate, we can evaluate week by week and we can evaluate play by play,” said Narduzzi. “It ends up what we’re going to do at the end of the season. How are we recovering? What are we doing to try to get our playmakers the ball? And those are things we’ve addressed this week and we’re going to do and we’ll evaluate at the end of the year. Right now we just need to regroup and try to play together and put a better brand out there on the field.”
The bye week gives teams the opportunity to rest and refocus. Narduzzi believed last week was very helpful in that regard.
“It starts with, this week we worked on fundamentals and just making sure we’ve got to do our job regardless of what the coverage is, the front coverage is, the locking scheme up front or pass concept,” Narduzzi said. “So it comes down to, first of all, just getting back to basics and having more time to focus on that and I think that’s probably where it starts.”
The Pitt head coach wants to get his team healthy. Since the beginning of fall camp, Pitt has played the last two games down a total of six starters. The team only practiced twice last week, got some lifts in, and had multiple meetings in order to stay fresh and not overwork a team that has been hit hard with injuries.
Despite the seven straight games and missing some key players, nobody is feeling sorry for this team. Pitt entered this season with high hopes and the Notre Dame game really humbled everyone involved with this program. The talk surrounding this team and the coaches has really taken off in recent weeks. Narduzzi was asked if its is important to finish strong after the bye for the perception of his program.
“We’re going to play it one at a time and try to be 1-0, but every game is important,” he said. “We’re not worried about the perception outside, we’re worried about the perception inside here. I’m not worried about all the pundits out here, I’m worried about what our kids feel and what our coaches feel.”
Pitt begins its stretch run of the season today as the team sets its sights on a 2-4 Florida State team. Normal activities will resume on the field. In addition to practice, the team will get back on track with COVID testing after having the weekend off. Pitt has not had any players miss a game for COVID related reasons for five straight games, though the off weekend concerned Narduzzi.
“So they still have to deal with those and we're in a good place there right now and we give them the day off on Saturday and you hope they all come back healthy,” Narduzzi said in regards to his team getting tested again. “That’s obviously my concern and that’s my worry. They don’t play and I give them time off and I want them to be mentally fresh as well as physical freshness, which I think we’ve gotten to this week.”
The Panthers normally don’t practice on Monday’s, but the team is set to practice this morning. Pitt, along with other college football teams across the nation, will be off tomorrow due to Election Day and will resume its normal game week on Wednesday in preparation for Saturday’s 4:00 p.m. kickoff against the Seminoles.
