Walking off the field after practice at Pitt’s facility lately, you see more players in the cold tubs, more guys lounging in the ice baths with music playing.
It’s certainly been tougher to cool down these past couple days, with temperatures creeping up past the mid-80s and the sun glaring from 10 a.m. to noon while the Panthers grind through training camp. Coach Pat Narduzzi even has a word for this: “Melter.”
“We’ve got another beautiful day here,” he said Wednesday morning, with the sun beating down. “We’ve picked some great weather for camp. Yesterday and today, two really good, hot days — 87, 88 degrees out. Yesterday was a melter. We had a great practice yesterday, a tough practice.”
If the heat is any indication, Wednesday was another tough one. It’s cliche to call these “the dog days of camp,” but they are, and the players are doing their best to press on as they’re no longer so far from the season opener against Youngstown State, but also not exactly close to game week just yet.
“It’s a struggle, honestly,” linebacker Elijah Zeise admitted Wednesday after practice. “You just gotta keep coming back every day with the same mindset that we’re all here to get better — we don’t have to get miles better every day, it’s just little improvements each day, and by the end of camp, we’ll be much better than we were at the start.”
Sophomore running back Chawntez Moss — in a dead heat for carries — gave a less philosophical response to dealing with the hotter weather. And actually, he might like it a little more than Zeise.
“Ah man, it’s nice to get some hot ones, get a nice sweat going,” Moss said. “It’s right in the middle of camp, so you just really gotta push through it now. … It’s football. We’re built for it.”
Pitt sophomore Chawntez Moss talks about the backfield, where he stands and more after a hot practice in the middle of training camp pic.twitter.com/JDhoprk6H2
— Brian Batko (@BrianBatko) August 16, 2017
Bring on the Dukes (and RMU)?
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, he of the reigning national champions, made headlines Tuesday with his suggestion that college football should have preseason games, as the highest level of the sport does.
Narduzzi said he hadn’t heard Swinney’s idea, but he would be OK with it if the NCAA ever allowed teams to add a preseason scrimmage with a real opponent before the regular games kick off.
“You can bring Duquesne over here, you know, whoever — let’s bring Robert Morris over,” Narduzzi said. “I think it’d be great. It’s nice to have a preseason game like the NFL.”
Pitt holds its own intrasquad scrimmages, as the Panthers did Saturday at Heinz Field, but to his point, Narduzzi said it would be beneficial to “hit somebody different” before getting out there Sept. 2 against Youngstown State. And hey, maybe it would help break up the monotony of camp.
From a player’s perspective, Zeise gave it some thought and noted that he’d have to see a little more concrete evidence on what it would entail.
“I don’t know. I’m not really sure how that would work out,” he said. “I’d have to see, like, a prospectus or something.”
But wouldn’t it be pretty neat to play a crosstown team such as Duquesne, which plays a step below Pitt in the Football Championship Subdivision?
“That’d be kinda cool,” Zeise said. “It’d be like a ‘City Game,’ sort of. I enjoy going to the City basketball games.”
Iron sharpens iron (and most other things)
In addition to that old “dog days” cliche, another tried and true football axiom is that iron sharpens iron.
Your left tackle gets better from blocking your best defensive end. Two good quarterbacks competing against each other benefits both. And of course, a top receiver matching up with a top defensive back. With two tough-to-guard wideouts in Jester Weah and Quadree Henderson, plus a promising freshman cornerback in Damarri Mathis, Narduzzi talked about that idea before practice — but he’s not assigning one cornerback to one receiver or anything like that.
“No, they’ve gotta work against all kinds of different types,” Narduzzi said. “The one thing, if it’s one-on-one, we tell our guys, ‘Hey, don’t go in there if that guy’s not a challenge for you. Don’t go against him, let someone else jump in front of you.’ That’s about the only matchup [concept]. Otherwise, it’s just, ‘Go play football.’ You’re gonna have different guys you have to cover. Everybody’s got a little different release, you want to get a bunch of different types.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: August 16, 2017, 6:05 p.m.
