Getting Pat Narduzzi to dissect his team’s defensive shortcomings can be a chess match almost akin to the one opposing offenses play each week against the Pitt football team.
To suggest his scheme isn’t equipped to stop fast-paced passing offenses, is to suggest he switch to a formation that will fail to thwart the run. To suggest anything about the personnel being used on defense, especially in an oft-beaten secondary, is to suggest turning to players who haven’t left enough of an impression on the coaches who see them practice every day.
So with No. 23 Virginia next on the docket, as balanced as any team in the ACC Coastal between the run and the pass, Narduzzi was asked Monday at his weekly news conference on what his Panthers can do to play a nickel defense — with five defensive backs, more speed to cover yet another spread offense — and still hold a ground game in check. His answer was more than two minutes long, and seemed to get everything off his chest from a 54-45 comeback win against Duke that had to feel as hollow from a defensive standpoint as any Pitt victory since the 76-61 drag race with Syracuse in 2016.
“Here’s what it is,” Narduzzi said, then really got going after a rare Monday practice, due to the short week. “We talked a lot today just about being consistent. We’ve got a lot of players that are consistent, and I told them after practice today, I said, ‘Listen, come ask me. If you want to know if you’re consistent, I’ll tell you if you’re 100 percent consistent, if you’re 75, I’ll tell you. I know exactly where every one of you guys are. I can tell you where you are in practice, where you are in the game, and if you’re inconsistent in practice, you’re going to be inconsistent in the game.’ ”
Following an effort in which the Panthers allowed Duke to post 619 yards of offense, fifth most in Narduzzi’s tenure and highest total since Oklahoma State’s Pitt opponent-record 676 in Week 3 last season, no one came to the head coach with concerns about their consistency.
“So they probably know where they are, I guess, if they didn’t need to know,” Narduzzi said. “It comes down to consistency.”
He went on to say that Pitt can, in fact, contain a running game in its nickel formation or a sub-package outside of the 4-3 base defense. But rather than explain why he hasn’t used it more often, he gave an analysis that boiled down defensive football to three simple words used ad nauseam by just about any coach …
“It’s a matter of being consistent,” Narduzzi said, then with emphasis, “and doing your job. OK? When you watch the tape, looking at the negative part of it, it’s guys wanting to do somebody else’s job.”
On the third drive of Saturday’s game, when Pitt did finally go to five defensive backs after Duke quarterback Daniel Jones started the game 8 of 13 for 65 yards on 20 plays, Narduzzi immediately saw something he didn’t like: Jones faking a handoff to the outside, but keeping the ball and running for 20 yards right up the gut where there was a huge hole.
“We’ve got two guys, a middle linebacker and nose tackle, that want to stop the jet sweep. Well, ‘Mike’ linebacker and nose tackle have no business stopping the run there,” Narduzzi said of Elias Reynolds and Jaylen Twyman. “We lined them up right over the football; you might want to take care of over the football. When you have guys that want to make a play — they're hungry, God bless them, they want to make plays — you have to do it within the framework of the defense.”
Narduzzi pointed out that Jones did the same thing the very next play, and was stopped for no gain. But in a game when Duke scored six touchdowns and had nine pass plays of 15 yards or more, Narduzzi only counted one broken play in his secondary, the 74-yard touchdown pass to Deon Jackson out of the backfield.
“It's not a matter of the defense, the structure,” Narduzzi said initially. “Sometimes, it's structure. We really had one bust in the back end where it's poor communication on a big screen pass, to the tailback down their sideline. It's a total flat miscommunication, where 10 guys are doing the right thing, one guy makes the wrong call to a corner, and then you’ve got a big play. So there's a lot of little things that need to be done better and consistently.”
With four regular-season games left, Narduzzi is looking for the players who can figure out what their job is on a given play and hone in on doing. “It's called laser focus,” he said. “We have to have laser focus.”
For the third time in four years under Narduzzi, Pitt enters its final four-game stretch at or above .500 in ACC play. The Panthers were unable to run the table the previous two times, and finished in second place in their division as a result. Players and coaches alike insist this year can be different, but will it?
“Focus is hard,” Narduzzi said. “These kids lose focus, for whatever reason. Obviously, Saturday was not an easy day to focus on football, I don't think, for a lot of people. When you get out there, who knows what they're thinking about before, all that stuff.
“But different guys want to make plays. They want [reporters] to write about them in the newspaper, and write on Twitter, ‘Look how good he did, look what he did.’ They want to go make plays. Like I said, it's a good thing to want to make plays, but you’ve got to wait for your opportunity, and you’ve got to do your job. That’s why I think kids get anxious, to maybe get more favorites on Twitter, get ‘liked’ more if they make a play. Coaches don't ‘like’ them when they do that.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: October 29, 2018, 8:22 p.m.
