Pitt's Pat Narduzzi: Team 'locked in' for WVU after better practices this week

Pat Narduzzi is in a profession where he’s expected to speak his mind.

Actually, that’s probably how he got the job as Pitt’s head coach nearly nine years ago. It’s easy to see him going into the interview with university officials in December 2014, sure of himself, full of ideas, turning the spoken word into a tool.

It’s what coaches do.

But Narduzzi made an act of contrition Thursday when he met with reporters two days before the 106th Backyard Brawl with West Virginia.

Pat Narduzzi, on Pitt’s good week of practice — “better than last week.” pic.twitter.com/j6ve6N47Ka

— Jerry DiPaola (@JDiPaola_Trib) September 14, 2023

Narduzzi always starts off his more relaxed Thursday chats by remarking in a routine manner about how the players performed in practice. This week was good, he said. Last week was not, and at the end of it, Pitt lost to Cincinnati, 27-21.

“I saw some things in some periods I didn’t like and knew I didn’t like it and I didn’t say anything,” he said. “As a head coach, I try not to micro-manage. I try to let offense, defense do what they feel they need to do. Keep the guys healthy without getting guys banged up. You want to go into battle with your guys.”

But if coaches decide to take it easy on the players in practice to save them for the game, are they preparing them properly?

“It’s too early in the season to really (say), ‘Oh, we can’t get hurt. We have to make sure we have this guy,’ ” Narduzzi said. “Did we think we arrived after (defeating) Wofford and we’re just going to protect everybody? We didn’t do anything yet. I knew that, but I let it happen. I put it all on myself.

“You have to play the game of football, and I feel like we didn’t play the game of football last week. The game is fast, and you can’t go from Saturday playing a real game against fast people to playing tag football during the week and get to (the next) Saturday and expect it to be fast.”

So Narduzzi revealed his feelings to the staff Sunday.

“Whether that had anything to do with (the good week of practice), I have no idea,” he said. “We’ll find out. If practice is any indication, I think our guys are locked in and ready to roll.”

The game is a sellout, and there will be nearly 60,000 Mountaineers fans screaming at Narduzzi and his players. Pitt’s coach doesn’t believe his team will let the environment have a significant effect on the game.

“We have about a 50-yard walk to get into the locker room,” he said. “It’s not a big deal. Once the game starts, it’s over.

“(People) think we hear everything, we see everything. (Players) have got jobs to do. If they’re looking around, they got issues. They better be locked in to what they have to do, and that’s about it. I don’t hear anything that’s going on. I’m so lasered in.”

Actually, crowd noise can affect the snap count and, as a result, calls at the line of scrimmage, especially those to thwart blitzes, can go unheard. Pitt practiced amidst manufactured noise this week in hopes of preventing a repeat of what happened to quarterback Phil Jurkovec last week. He was sacked five times.

“You know what we do to take care of the pass protection problems?” Narduzzi said. “Run the ball. You know what we do to take care of the run the ball part of it? We don’t fall behind 20-7 (such as Pitt did at halftime of the Cincinnati game).”

The ground game, stopping the run and getting physical will be keys to victory.

“When you smack them in the mouth and you’re putting someone on their back, that’s what you need,” the coach said.

“It starts with stopping the run. We can’t let what happened last week happen.”

Cincinnati ran for 216 yards to win the time of possession and, ultimately, the game.

West Virginia was in a position to win last season’s Backyard Brawl at Acrisure Stadium, largely because the Mountaineers ran for 190 yards. Pitt recovered the following week to hold Tennessee to 90.

Still, Narduzzi said the Mountaineers will be “licking their chops, based on the way they ran it and what they saw last weekend.”

West Virginia has three dangerous weapons in its run game, back C.J. Donaldson (145 yards in two games), quarterback Garrett Greene and an experienced offensive line featuring NFL prospects Zach Frazier at center and tackles Doug Nester and Wyatt Milum. Narduzzi said the 5-foot-11 Greene is “like a running back who’s taking the snap.”

“I haven’t seen a lot of quarterbacks as nifty as he is in the called run game,” Narduzzi said.

On the other side of the ball, Narduzzi said, “I’d like to hand the ball off 50 times.”

That’s not necessarily an exaggeration and could lead to a larger workload for running back Rodney Hammond. The coach suggested 25 carries for Hammond, more than double his total touches in the first two games.

If that happens, “he’ll be exhausted after the night’s over.”