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UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 16, 2019

Pat Narduzzi

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

PAT NARDUZZI: Well, obviously a tough weekend, which that's the game of football. Sometimes you win them, sometimes you lose them. Sometimes if you just look at the wins and losses, you look at nothing else, you kind of lose track of really where you are and what you've done. But I think I did, at least I told our kids, I really think we made improvements from week 2 to week 3. As young as we are, that's really what we're looking for. I think we played a good football team.

Some of the positives that I take away from it, number one, I thought Kenny stood in that pocket strong, stepped up when he needed to, fired the ball. Again, we took what they gave us. They're pretty sturdy versus the run, and they wanted to take the run away, so we took what they gave us, and obviously I think we attacked their weakness, which was their secondary.

But I thought Kenny played really well at times. I just thought his eyes down the field, when you compare it to week 1 against Virginia when you saw those scrambles, what's that tell you; okay, he's a great scrambler, but it tells you he's looking at the rush and getting the heck out of there. He didn't trust his protection. And when you look at where he was from week 1 to week 3, it's totally different because Shock-a-Tony is coming off the edge still, but his eyes didn't leave, and he's making shots, and you look at our receivers making plays, man. I think we had four drops, and if they don't drop those four balls, I believe we win the game, period. It just keeps drives going.

Taysir Mack on another positive has 12 catches, playing outstanding. Had two key just flat plays where he just goes and gets the ball, and he did a great job.

When you look at the explosives in the game, and we chart explosives and we've got some stats where you say, hey, if you've got so many explosives you win the game. This whole thing messed all our stats up as far as what's going on. But we had 11 explosive gains, they had three. You can look at the run and the one quick out they ran, we don't tackle very well, we take poor angles, but they had three, we had 11. You don't lose many games when you do that.

You look at the other positive for at least our offense, we don't have any turnovers two weeks in a row. I mean, you look at those things, you can win a lot of football games. Unfortunately we're not getting them on the other end. Paris has got a great one we take back 50 yards, and probably a good call, and again, at least I'd say they were consistent because they got one on Ffrenchy where it was about the same thing.

And again, you look at defensively, I have a lot of faith in our defense. When you look at just overall, when you hold an explosive offense, which they've shown to be -- we'll see how that continues to go throughout the season. You hold an explosive offense to 17 points, there's some good things there.

On the negative side, you always look at, okay, now what do we need to do to get better. Those are all great things; let's keep getting better there. The negatives are our rushing game wasn't as good as we needed it to be, and we still -- I don't care what they're doing to the boxes, I told the offense, I don't care what they're doing to it. We saw that last year. And again, we've got to be who we are and what we are, but we'd like to run the ball better and we'd like to stop the run better. So I'm still not happy with some of the things, and again, I guess when you look at it overall defensively, if you take that 80-yarder out of there, you hold them under 100 yards and you're feeling pretty good about that.

You know, I'll talk about the 4th and 1 because I know it'll probably come up so I figured I'd address it first, but I'll go back and look at it, and you can toss and turn all night, and again, there's no coach in the country that feels 100 percent like, man, I should have done that because, you know what, if I would have done the other thing and we score, I'd be happy, too. So I'm not a guy that's going to put a square peg in a round hole.

But again, the thinking and the logic, guys, is I have no regrets with the call at all. I really don't. And I look back and we had two plays in that series -- my regret is that we didn't score in one of those three plays. That's the regret. And my regret is we didn't execute them properly, and our kids know, our coaches know. I mean, we can't have a film session here, but in your pocket you've got a game plan here, and you've got so many calls that you go -- it's going to work, and we had two that we really thought were going to work, and if I dissected them with you, you'd go, okay, I see what you're talking about. We didn't have a third one that we said was going to work like those other two, and if you didn't execute those properly, which it came down to execution, doesn't come down to -- I thought we had the plays, and we just didn't do it right.

And it comes down to that. And we had faith in our defense, so when you look at really what we did, you kick a field goal there, which again on the other negative we didn't make a 19-yard field goal, which is a problem, but when you look at it, we did what we wanted to do. We wanted to get three there. We wanted to go out and play defense again. Our defense had been playing good all day long except giving up a couple explosives, which three in this game of football today is probably on the low of Saturday afternoon across college football from the east to the west. But our defense was playing good, and our deal is we work it all the time is four-minute defense, four-minute offense, whatever it may be, we wanted to be in four-minute defense, and trusted our defense was going to get a stop. I was hoping we'd get a turnover, stop, whatever it may be. We got the ball back with a minute 50, whatever left, we expect our offense to do their two-minute and go down the field and score.

Enough of that, but it's what it is, and we can debate it for the next 10 years and maybe we will because we probably won't play them the next 10 years. I apologize to Panther Nation because we all wanted to win that game, and there's nobody that feels worse about that than the guys in this room.

But we're ready to go. We closed it last night. Central Florida, Coach Heupel, they've got a great football team. They haven't lost a regular season game since 2016, so if you think we're thinking about anything else except that, you're crazy. Again, 27 straight regular season games. They lost to LSU in a bowl game. They're explosive, they're fast, they're going to snap the ball within 7 to 12 seconds, a lot of them under 10 seconds.

As far as the defense goes, they're fast and athletic. They know what they're doing. Randy Shannon does a great job on defense, Heupel does a great job on offense with their entire staff, I guess, and there's a reason they've won 27 straight.

I would say they're kind of like the Georgia Tech offense; they do what they do. They have their system that's different than everybody else's, the way they run block, everything they do. They're well-coached. They've got a freshman quarterback in Gabriel that he's, again, a true freshman from Hawai'i and looks like Milton a lot, reminds you of him. Haven't seen him live, but he throws a deep ball. He comes from the Rainbow State. I don't know if they call it the Rainbow State, but he throws some rainbows up there. He's a great deep ball thrower. Their timing, as well, they're really good.

Receivers, Gabriel Davis, Tre Nixon are really good. The Killins kid in the backfield is really good. They're explosive, and there's a reason they've won. They're sitting in a hotbed of players down in the state of Florida. For all those voters out there, it's no fluke.

Q. I don't want to debate it for 10 years but just for two minutes, if you will --
PAT NARDUZZI: How about I already addressed it. I really have nothing else to say about it. I really don't. You can ask the question --

Q. Logically, you need a touchdown in either scenario. You guys haven't scored a second-half touchdown in the first two games, and you've had trouble last season. You're not going to get any closer than the 1-yard line. You said you liked your defense. If your defense gets a stop there, you still have to score a touchdown. The scenario is the same in terms of what you need to get into the end zone, so I'm sort of curious three feet out, why not?
PAT NARDUZZI: I explained why not, so I'll explain again, that's why not. That's why we did what we did, and I feel good about it. Again, you can talk about what we did in week 1 and week 2. This is week 3 and we're moving the football. Thanks for the question.

Q. What was Rashad Wheeler's status at fullback? Could he have helped on the goal line?
PAT NARDUZZI: Good question. That's a really excellent question. He didn't practice all -- Wheeler didn't practice all week, so I'll answer an injury question. He didn't practice all week. I didn't even think he was going to play. But that 4th down and 1 if you watch it, earlier in that drive, he almost limps out on the field. He can't limp on the field, but really we just had it set up. We wanted them to see our personnel go in there, we wanted them to say, oh, it's this, and that's exactly what they did. Like I said, we only had so many -- you've only got so many things that you can do but we kind of pranced him out there, they saw the personnel, and they got in the exact defense that we thought they would, and they ran exactly -- and that's when we hit Nakia on the vertical. That might have been his last play, but he didn't block anybody on that play, either, but he was just a decoy, an injured decoy, and it was really good, and it worked, so I appreciate him going out there for that one play. He might have gotten another one, but I think that was his one play. But that was what we intended to do, and it worked exactly -- that's why I said, but we had a 3rd and 1 call, it was the same thing, we thought it was going to be just like this and it was, but they lined up wrong on the 1st down. 2nd down we blocked the thing -- one guy blocked the thing wrong, and on 3rd down we didn't block it or at least do the right things.

Q. You said you liked two of the three plays. Which one didn't you like?
PAT NARDUZZI: I liked the 1st down play, too, except they didn't line up right, so it kind of messed us up. That's why I didn't like that one because they lined up wrong. You can't control everything. We should have put a card up for them.

Q. As a coach how much do you allow analytics to inform your decisions as a coach?
PAT NARDUZZI: Good question. They do all the time. Analytics are something that we look at. It's not a be-all, win-all as far as the decision because it all depends -- all the analytics are great. It depends on what you're doing. If we're not stopping anybody on defense, it's a totally different ballgame, guys. You can throw the game away in a pinch, but it all -- the analytics are great. We listen to them. I believe in them. But it depends on how you're playing. I mean, there's some analytics that said, on the 4th and 1 that we went for it, they said we should have gone for it on 4th and 8. It's like, that's crazy. I would never say, Whip, it says go for it on 4th and 8, he'd look at me like -- you look at those things, and there's things you're going to do and there's things you're not going to do.

Q. How much does emotion play into that decision?
PAT NARDUZZI: No, emotions don't play into it at all. Better not. If emotions just played into it, you'd go a long time -- we went three times, guys. I've been known to go for it on our 11-yard line in Virginia a year ago, on our own 11. So we'll go for it when we think it's proper. And again, we kind of know in here what we've got, what we're doing, who's in there. And again, you talk about personnel, you talk about two fullbacks are not in the game, you talk about a lot of different things, guys. There's a lot of different things that go into decisions.

Next question. Central Florida is a pretty good football team if you didn't know.

Q. You mentioned Kenny Pickett has taken a step from week 1 to week 3. What are the things you're seeing that have made him play well the past few weeks?
PAT NARDUZZI: Again, it goes with the offense. I think it's being comfortable with what we're doing and how we're doing it. We talked about the new offense, new plays, new formations, new concepts, new reads. It takes time to get all that stuff down. It doesn't happen overnight. We'd like it to get done in camp but it doesn't. It's like taking that first step. If you get to take the SAT over and over again, eventually you do better than you did the first time, and I think it's the same thing. It's a different test, you just can't circle in B all the time or you've got problems on that test.

I think it comes down to just him being comfortable and Coach Whipple and the offensive coaches just knocking it in his head that this is how we -- and he gets it now. Just slowly coming. And I wouldn't even say slowly, it's come faster than maybe you'd think it might come. So I think he's -- it's not slow.

Q. At times you take some criticisms from outside, and if you do, do you have a process do deal with that?
PAT NARDUZZI: No, I don't listen to them at all, which is why I can smile today. I'm fired up about that.

Q. Central Florida scores a lot. You guys have struggled -- you've gotten yards but you're having trouble finishing in those red areas.
PAT NARDUZZI: Well, it comes down to execution really when you get down there, and again, we got -- one time they get down there, we got a substitution there and we've got -- and it's going fast and they're down there, and they're fast tempoing it down there when they get down there, and we can't get a guy on the field. We've got 10 guys on the field. It's hard to stop anybody when you have less guys on the field. That becomes a problem.

But Central Florida is good, and they'll score from the 1-yard line, they'll score from 50 yards out. They're explosive.

Q. I meant you guys.
PAT NARDUZZI: Oh, us, I'm sorry. Same question again?

Q. You guys have gotten a pile of yards and in terms of finishing drives in the end zone instead of kicking it, that's what I was getting at.
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, just like anything, I think it's something that will come. You watch some of the offensive tape and you watch guys finishing or not finishing. It's just like AJ Davis's screen pass in that first series. It would be nice to score on that play. Some people score on that play. It's nice to go all the way down there, but you've got a late guy -- the guy that makes his tackles on the backside and we could have finished him up earlier. That guy didn't quit, we don't finish the block on the guy and he ends up making the tackle, AJ is going to score. So it's finishing it wherever it is and knowing that any play can break, whether it's a run or a pass, and you've got to be ready, you've got to be prepared for it to break. That comes, again, with a process of everybody doing the right thing, and again, the offense just gelling as we move on throughout the season.

Q. How did that 10-man thing happen?
PAT NARDUZZI: You know, we had a slight injury, I guess, whatever it is, banged-up guy comes off and the other guy didn't get back on, and you didn't know it in the chaos. So we've got to know it.

It's better to go down, but that's a whole different topic.

Q. In college football there's always talk about Power Five and Group of Five, and looking at the Central Florida program, how are they so good right now? How are they on this kind of run?
PAT NARDUZZI: It's called of state of Florida, okay, and it's one of the reasons we go down there and recruit. You look at a Vince Davis you can pull out of there, they've got a bunch of Vince Davises down there. They're in the backyard, they're all coming to camp. It's population. It's playing the sport year-round. It's an advantage down there. They can get guys to walk on that a lot of people are scholarshipping. They're just laying there. It's like, oh, look at that guy. It's an advantage.

It's a big school. It's got -- I don't know what the -- 80,000 people go to that school. It's one of those. It's going to continue to get bigger and eventually someone is going to get them in their conference.

Q. There was a couple times during the last two drives where you needed a big play in the passing game --
PAT NARDUZZI: Against Central Florida?

Q. No, last week. And you threw some -- it was like a jump ball and Matt came down with it. Are those the kind of plays that you'd rather not run early in the game because they're riskier, or is that something you can do when it's not 3rd and the game?
PAT NARDUZZI: You could. I think you can do it at any time during the game, and I think that's something we haven't done in the past. Again, it's our guys getting a feel for who their guys are and who's going to go make that play. Taysir can certainly make those plays, we know that.

Q. What kind of patience do you have -- your short yardage offense is a problem. Are you losing patience with your short yardage?
PAT NARDUZZI: No, not really. Again, it's a personnel issue at times. Again, things are different. It seems like every time we get into a short yardage there's some review going on. Even on that last drive, Taysir catches that and all of a sudden you can't tempo and get them into something you want to.

I'm not getting frustrated with the short yardage. I liked that 4th and 1. It's just getting the right looks and letting your guys execute. It comes down to execution, okay. Again, plays don't make plays, players make plays, and it comes down to doing it the right way, and it will come. It just takes time to get them to trust. And again, everybody is anxious out there. No coach was trying to make a mistake or player trying to make a mistake. It's going fast, whether it's a coach's fault for not getting 11 guys on the field or a guy that's so anxious to get that route run that he doesn't take care of the details. The guy did the right things, it's just the details have to be better. That's what it comes down. It's not like they didn't know where to go, just didn't get there properly at the right timing, and timing is everything. Those are the details.

Q. You talked last year a lot about how their tempo makes you be vanilla a lot on defense. How much does the fact that you were able to get a pass rush with four guys make that less of an impact because you don't have to make those calls?
PAT NARDUZZI: It's going to be hard again this week just looking at their protections. They're going to send three guys out on a route, they're going to max protect, they're going to what we call gap pro, they're going to have a tight end and a back on one side and their whole line just stands square and they've got it gapped, which is why we call it gap protection. So the four-man rush, that's why they do it. It's a good scheme, like I said. It's equivalent to a Georgia Tech triple option type, what they do. Their system is good, and it creates problems, and if you try to change up the front, then they gash you another way. It's which way do you want to take it.

We'll have a lot of different looks and try to change it up on them and do it with the tempo.

Q. In y'all's first three games of the season, offensively it's been a pretty drastic difference between what y'all have done in the second quarter as opposed to the rest of the game. What, if anything, do you feel like could potentially explain that?
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, if I knew that, if I knew that, I would -- I'd be running in the office telling everybody. You're talking really the second half compared to the first half?

Q. No, the second quarter compared to --
PAT NARDUZZI: Oh, I think it's -- sometimes you're just setting things up as you go, just trying to find out how they're going to react to different things. That might have a little bit to do with it. And again, has to do with your execution and maybe the opponent that's across from you. It's hard to tell what it is at this point, whether it's first quarter to second quarter or second quarter to the second half. If we had those answers, it would be easier.

Q. You talked about the importance of being in Florida or playing a Florida team. You guy, this is it with UCF for right now, right?
PAT NARDUZZI: I don't know. I know who we play this weekend.

Q. Is there any thought in the future of trying to find some sort of non-conference thing with a Florida team, whether it's them or somebody else, just to kind of keep that going?
PAT NARDUZZI: You know, I don't think with any Florida team, it's not a matter -- I'd rather do it with some local team, to be honest with you, and keep it in our backyard more than -- it's hard to -- I don't know how many people are coming up from Florida for the game, but I'd rather keep it where someone can drive and get to a game as opposed to going all the way down there.

Q. When you go and play down there, Florida kids watch you play football --
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, I think we've got a good enough name down there that you go down and play Miami, we're going to play Florida State next year, that probably would help you more than anything.

Q. They used last year a lot of running the ball in the red zone especially. They had nine rushing touchdowns. Do they do the same with Gabriel since he's not running as much maybe as Milton? Is that just because he's young?
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, I think it's because he's young. I think Wimbush is banged up a little bit. I think Milton obviously ran the ball maybe one too many times, unfortunately, and our thoughts are always with him and his leg because nobody in college football wants to see something like that happen. It's a sad deal. I'll never forget talking to him after last year's game.

But I just think it's maybe Josh being a little bit smarter with -- he's a good football player, and the quarterbacks have gotten a little bit banged up. There's some aggressive guys on defense that are going to get you.

Q. Saleem hadn't played much, came in injured. How did he do the rest of the game?
PAT NARDUZZI: Saleem played well. Saleem did a nice job in there, like we thought he would be. Again, we've been missing him for a couple weeks with a nagging injury, and it was great to get him back.

Q. Is Paris Ford giving you what Whitehead used to give you?
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, Paris is a continual work -- he had a great game. Obviously was very productive, locked in, energetic. I think he's just going to keep getting better every week. He had his best week of practice last week, and I've got to get him -- Coach Sanders and myself and Coach Bates, we've got to get him another great week of practice because his focus was outstanding, and when he focuses and practices like that, it's guaranteed to have another nice game. We're happy with where Paris is.

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