A holdout for ‘D’ in era of offense
Narduzzi works with young defense
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In an age of high-scoring offenses and rules that sometimes seem to favor that side of the ball, it’s fair to wonder whether a hardened defensive soul like Pat Narduzzi would make a switch and coach offense if presented with an opportunity to start over.
For the Pitt coach, it’s a hypothetical that’s a nonstarter.
“I’ll never change,” he said Monday. “I’m a defensive guy.”
Narduzzi played linebacker in college and looks like he could still line up at the position at age 51. Aside from a one-year stint as a wide receivers coach at Miami (Ohio), he has coached defense in some capacity for the entirety of his 27-year career. His overpowering defenses at Michigan State and his reputation as a defensive maestro is what allowed him to jump from coordinator to major-conference head coach.
At Pitt, however, the promise of what he could do on that side of the ball largely hasn’t materialized.
A week after an encouraging showing in a loss to Penn State, the Panthers’ defense flailed and flopped before a national television audience Saturday, surrendering 59 points and 676 yards in a 38point loss to Oklahoma State, totals that would have been even more unsightly had Cowboys coach Mike Gundy not pulled starting quarterback Mason Rudolph midway through the third quarter with his team up 42.
Those eye-popping offensive numbers were the latest and gaudiest in what has become a troubling trend for Pitt. In their past 13 games against teams from college football’s Power Five conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC — the Panthers are allowing an average of 39.7 points and 489.1 yards per game, as well as 6.5 yards per play. In only one of those 13 games, a 56-14 victory against Duke last season, did they allow fewer than 31 points.
It’s a problem of which Narduzzi is aware, one he hopes and believes will sort itself out at some point soon. To him, though, there’s also more to the equation.
“I don't look at all the stats, the points, the yards,” he said. “You'd like to look at the wins, and the wins are the only thing that matters to be honest with you, because I’ve given up a lot of yards and points and still won games in the past. It's where offenses are going. Look at the scoreboards. I mean, the spread offenses, the RPOs [run-pass options] when the linemen are running 5 yards down the field and no flags are being left out of the pockets, you're hanging out there a lot. You know, you can mix it up and they can rush for 400 yards, whatever it may be.
“But that's kind of where the game is going. You see it everywhere. You look at the scores, it's people scoring 60 points everywhere.”
Oklahoma State embodies the offensive explosion that has taken hold of the sport the past 10 years. The runpass option plays it employs in its spread offense have given Narduzzi and other defensive minds around the country fits.
Though it has become an increasingly popular wrinkle, the proliferation of spread offenses, even beyond the pass-happy Big 12, has contributed to those struggles. Nine of Pitt’s past 13 games against Power Five foes have been played against teams that run some iteration of the spread. At Michigan State, Narduzzi had mixed success against the scheme, as his teams allowed an average of 25.6 points and 377.3 yards per game in 24 contests against major-conference spread opponents, a stretch of games in which the Spartans went 15-9.
This season, he has had to combat the two spread offenses he has faced with a relatively young defense, one that has had 11 freshmen record a statistic through the first three games. That inexperience, though, provides only so much of an explanation.
“[Narduzzi] said he doesn’t wanna hear about how young we are all the time,” defensive coordinator Josh Conklin said. “We’re in Game 4, we’re in the ACC and, again, the thing for me as a coach — and I felt the same way Pat did, because he came in and we talked about it; he felt really encouraged when we watched the tape. I woke up in the middle of the night, I watched it — because you have to get it off your mind — and when you watch it, you feel better because you’re like, ‘Fellas, there’s some good there.’ ”
From an age and talent standpoint, the defense will get a considerable boost Saturday against Georgia Tech with the return of star safety Jordan Whitehead. Schematically, only so much will change, something Gundy and Rudolph echoed after the win Saturday, when they said the Pitt defense they played in 2017 was almost the same as it was in their 2016 meeting. The defense Narduzzi used to great success at Michigan State is the same one he’ll continue to try to get to stick with the Panthers.
In the meantime, they’ll work to improve the way most any team or unit does.
“We need to continue to recruit, and we need our guys to be coachable,” Narduzzi said.