Ten Takeways: What stood out from Narduzzi's press conference?

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi met with the media on Monday for his usual weekly press conference. The Pitt head coach recapped last week’s loss to North Carolina, and also previewed Saturday’s game with Syracuse. Here are ten things that stood out the most in Narduzzi’s press conference.

“But again, I feel the same way I did after that game. North Carolina is a good football team. We'll start there. Mack Brown has done a nice job. The quarterback is really good. Josh Downs is really good. Had trouble stopping either one of those guys.”

I think if you made it Chapel Hill last week and saw Pitt’s 42-24 loss to North Carolina in-person you would have a very simple conclusion: North Carolina is just a better football team. Period. The Tar Heels are very talented and that advantage just stood out on Saturday.

Drake Maye is a very impressive quarterback as a redshirt freshman and I think the best quarterback Pitt has faced all season. He was just in total control throughout the game and it showed with a 388-yard 5-touchdown stat line. Maye did a nice job of stepping out of pressure and making plays with his feet. The UNC quarterback also put the ball where he wanted to throughout the game as he completed 77% of his passes, and his weapons made great plays also. Josh Downs and Antoine Green came up with multiple high difficulty catches.

In a lot of ways it was reminiscent of Pitt’s offense last season: a confident quarterback with mobility and players on the outside that can go get the ball. It was also a not-so-subtle reminder that Pitt just doesn’t have that this season.

“I thought Kancey's departure from that game was a turning point. I even heard their team after the targeting cheering saying, ‘Hey, we've got a chance now, we've got a chance now.’ That's something I heard from our guys on the field when that happened, which I thought was interesting, because they must have felt the same way.”

Calijah Kancey only recorded one tackle on Saturday night before being ejected with a targeting penalty in the second quarter. But sometimes with good pass rushers it’s not always about the stats, but about their presence. Pitt missed having its best defensive player on the field in the second half. It may not have been the turning point of the game, but Kancey is the type of player that teams game plan for, and when you take him out of the mix things get easier for North Carolina. Narduzzi was asked later in the press conference if the call was right. The Pitt head coach didn’t really disagree with the officials decision or anything, but did say that’s a tough play for both the player and also the officials.

“Like I told our team last night, we played three really good quarters, and we've got to find a way to finish it. I'm going to change some things up in practice this week. It's really two fourth quarters that we've let two of them get by the last few weeks.”

Pitt did not score a point in the fourth quarter on Saturday, and that is nothing new for this team. In Pitt’s four losses this season, the Panthers have been held scoreless in the fourth quarter twice. In those four games Pitt has scored just 34 second half points. At this point it’s not on accident, this team is just not performing well after halftime and it is costing the team games. You could really sense a shift in momentum on Saturday night when North Carolina scored a touchdown in the third quarter and cut the lead to 24-21. Pitt’s offense almost looked panicked in a way, and the final four drives resulted in 2 punts, a fumble, and a turnover on downs. There was certainly a path to remain competitive in that game, but Pitt didn’t look prepared for that kind of game for whatever reason, and that’s been a theme lately late in games.

“Dino is having a great year. Coach Babers is having a great year as far as what they've done this year. They started off with six straight wins and got up in the rankings pretty high…And Robert Anae, their new offensive coordinator -- you guys remember probably the Virginia game here at home. Robert Anae, the offensive coordinator for Virginia a year ago, who did such a great job with Brennan Armstrong, is their offensive coordinator there now, and you see a lot of similarities.”

The primary focus of Monday’s press conference seemed to be more geared towards what happened in the North Carolina game from over the weekend, but Narduzzi did touch on Saturday’s game with Syracuse in his opening statement. He was quick to praise the Orange for their 6-2 start to the season and said they lost two tough games in a row after losing to Clemson and Notre Dame in recent weeks. Narduzzi was also very complimentary of Syracuse first year offensive coordinator Robert Anae, who was with Virginia a season ago. Anae has done a nice job improving the Syracuse offense from a season ago. The Orange are ranked 43rd nationally in scoring this year with 32.6 points per game, nearly 50 spots higher from a season ago. And it’s important to remember his background from Virginia. Pitt beat the Cavaliers a year ago, but it was an offensive shootout between Kenny Pickett and Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong. So there are obviously some elements in his offense that gave Pitt trouble a season ago that they need to be mindful of this weekend.

“Obviously we didn't play a great fourth quarter. The turnover changes things. When you look at the last three drives of the game, I don't have the numbers, but I think it was a 48-yard line, the 35-yard line and the 44-yard line I think were the three last possessions our defense (faced).”

Narduzzi had touched on the poor fourth quarter and not finishing games thing already, but was asked specifically about the breakdowns with the Pitt defense on Saturday in the second half. The Panthers defense played a solid first half and allowed only 14 points to North Carolina. They also came up a stop on North Carolina’s first possession after halftime, but then yielded four straight touchdowns to the Tar Heels. There were some ugly moments in trying to stop North Carolina down the stretch, but on the final two scoring drives for the Tar Heels they started with the ball in Pitt territory. The offense was not winning the field position battle and in turn it made life harder on the defense. Overall the Pitt defense has been a disappointment relative to the expectations in the preseason in my opinion, but you can have the best defense in the world and if your offense can’t move the ball and you keep giving a talented quarterback Drake Maye good field position, you’re going to give up points. I can’t say the defense played well on Saturday, but also it's fair to say they weren’t put in great positions to succeed either.

“You know, I mean, your expectations are your expectations. You can say Konata played at Akron and not in a Power Five. Same thing with Bub playing down at Louisiana Tech. You can go back and look at the stats; it doesn't matter what they did in the past. What are they doing here, what are they doing now. It comes down to execution.”

Pat Narduzzi was asked about some of his offensive personnel. If you look at Pitt’s offensive starters individually, they all seemingly had fair amounts of success prior to this season. That counts for returning players and also the transfers they added to the roster. He brought up Konata Mumpfield and Bub Means specifically, two transfer wide receivers Pitt brought in from Akron and Louisiana Tech respectively. He hinted that there is an adjustment period coming from smaller schools to a power five team, and perhaps that's fair and even true. But the hype around the offense being good this year came from Pitt primarily. The talks from the players and coaches in the offseason really made it seem like Means and Mumpfield would be high impact players, but neither has shown that consistently through eight games. So when he said, “your expectations are your expectations” is kind of confusing, because a lot of those outside expectations came from Pitt.

“I hope that's what we're already doing. We try to go 1-0 every week, so I don't know if the mindset really changes, because my mindset hasn't changed. We're still trying to be 1-0 every week and not looking too far ahead to what could be.”

Narduzzi was asked what are the team goals now that winning the ACC is seemingly out of reach. He was actually asked a similar question last week, and gave pretty much the same answer, which is fine. Because there is nothing else Pitt can really do differently at this point. The hope for this team now is just to win as many games as possible and end the season on a high note. This is a senior heavy roster, so the team is going to look a lot different next year in many respects. For these seniors, it’s a final four game showcase to end their careers with some wins and also put their best foot forward if they have any pro aspirations. There are still things to play for, even with a title out of reach.

“He's a really good tailback. Actually we got him in the run game last year, but now you're going to deal with him in space this year in the passing game…He’s running wheel routes. He's running bubbles over there into the boundary. Shrader looks for him a lot.”

Syracuse features one of the nation’s top running backs in Sean Tucker. He has been the team’s best offensive threat for the past couple of seasons, and that really hasn’t changed much in 2022. The biggest difference, as Narduzzi noted, is that he has become a much bigger weapon in the passing game. Heck, Syracuse in general is throwing the ball more than they did a season ago, but Tucker’s involvement is noteworthy. The third-year back has more catches this season (32) than he had his previous two seasons combined (28), so it’s definitely something Pitt will need to be mindful of on Saturday. Pitt limited Tucker to a season-low 29 rushing yards last season, so they've had some success against him overall, but now that he's more of a receiving threat this season, it’s another way Pitt has to find a way to defend him. Tucker has over 2,800 career rushing yards and 600 receiving yards to go along with 27 total touchdowns. He’s a very good player, and if Pitt can shut him down again, then it makes this Syracuse team much easier to defend.

“Yes, I think we all go back to the Big East days. Is it one of those where we're going to go fight in the tunnel? I don't think so. But it's a rival game. But I don't know if it's to that extent.”

Pitt may be having a disappointing season overall, but Narduzzi has still dropped in some great one liners this season. He was asked if Pitt-Syracuse is a rivalry game, which has always sort of been an age old question, but he managed to throw some shade to the Michigan-Michigan State game, one he used to be part of as an assistant for the Spartans. There was an incident in that game over the weekend with a fight in the tunnel following the game, so Narduzzi mentioned that Pitt and Syracuse might not fight each other in the tunnel, but the game itself is still a rivalry.

I have never gotten the sense Pitt or Syracuse fans view this annual meeting as a rivalry, but to some extent it almost has to be. The two teams have played each other every season since 1955, and since joining the ACC at the same time, the league has sort of tied the two programs together. When the scheduling format of the ACC changes next year, Syracuse and Pitt will continue play each other every season. Pitt has won 17 of the past 20 meetings in this series, so perhaps the one-sidedness hasn’t helped the game from a rivalry standpoint. I agree with Narduzzi I don’t expect the two teams to trade blows off the field or anything, but the game does have some sense of a rivalry to it…I think.

“We’re preparing for both for them. We won't change our scout team quarterbacks for that matter, but they're both guys that are athletic. They both throw the ball well. I don't know if the offense changes a whole bunch based on who plays.”

Syracuse lost to Notre Dame last week by a score of 41-24. Starting quarterback Garrett Shrader left the game with an injury and he was replaced by Carlos Del Rio-Wilson. Judging from Shrader’s presence on the sideline for the remainder of the game, his injury did not appear to be serious and should be on track to play this weekend. Shrader is having a breakout season. He is completing 67% of his passes, up from 53% a season ago. He already has thrown for more yards and touchdowns in 2022 than he did in all of 2021. Narduzzi mentioned Robert Anae’s impact on the team and his biggest contribution may be helping Shrader emerge as a capable quarterback this season. He is a dual threat player and has been effectively running the Syracuse offense this season. As a replacement last week going against a pretty good Notre Dame defense, Del Rio-Wilson threw for 190 yards. He showed some mobility as well. So Narduzzi mentioned he didn't feel the offense changed too much when the backup quarterback was in the game, and that they will prepare for both players this weekend, but that preparation shouldn’t look too different from a style standpoint between the two Syracuse quarterbacks.