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UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 14, 2016

Pat Narduzzi

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

PAT NARDUZZI: Monday again. We're closing down near the end of the season here. Getting tight. Got two to go. And I couldn't be happier for our football team, like I said after the game. They played their tails off. It was a statement win for the program, for the university. I don't think -- we have a lot of team meetings where you guys are siting today and I don't think there was anybody outsides the walls and doors of this room that believed that we could go down to Death Valley and get it done. But the kids in here believed and that's what we tell our guys all the time is, as long as we have belief in what we're doing, how we're doing it, don't lose faith in what we're doing on offense or defense or special teams, keep plugging away and good things happen. We were so close so many times this year to really get one of those top-25 knockoffs, and for whatever reason -- you guys can decide whatever the reason was -- but we didn't get it done. Couple things: Obviously we knocked off the No. 2 team in the country, became bowl eligible at the same time which is, I guess, a nice relief. We ended the nation's longest home winning streak of 21 down there. I don't think they had lost a home game until, since 2014, which is just one of those things that doesn't happen very often there. They got the fans behind them, they got the city behind them and the state and did a heck of a job there. Went in facing the No. 12 defense in the country that was giving up 15 points a game and put 43 up on them. I think that's a major accomplishment. You look at what our offense has done all year, you go against the top 15th ranked team in defense and do that to a team that hadn't given up a touchdown in the first quarter, we got two of them in the first quarter, one of our goals was to start fast and we certainly did that.

Kids played hard. We didn't come out of it as clean as we would like to health-wise, we did lose a guy for at least the next couple weeks, Jordan Whitehead, that I don't usually talk about injuries, but with a guy of Jordan's significance and probably you guys saw him with a blow up bag on his arm, so probably no secret that he was not going to walk back out this weekend. So I figured I would at least let you know about that. So he'll be fine. We hope to have him back for our bowl game. Don't know when that will be or exactly when, but he's doing well there. The biggest thing, obviously, our kids need to do now and we have done a great job every week of refocusing on the next one and Coach Cutcliffe's bringing a very confident Duke Blue Devil team into Heinz Field on Saturday at 3 o'clock. And they're playing as well as they have played, they got a red shirt quarterback that really the Jones, Dave Jones is playing really well, he's accurate, he can run, he does a lot of different things with the ball, very smart with what he does with it. But they're very confident coming in here and we'll have to refocus our guys like they will have to refocus, they're coming off a big win as well against North Carolina, a ranked team, so it's two teams coming off a big win that got to go play ball again. And like I tell our kids every week, it doesn't matter what you did a week ago, nobody cares on Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock what you did last week, win or loss, nobody cares. And nobody, you know, people forget real real fast what happened down at Miami after you beat Clemson, except the coaches don't forget, unfortunately, we remember those things. But, offensively, Zak Roper is their offensive coordinator, does a great job. The Roper family has got a long, long tradition of coaches and I know the dad was a great high school coach and college coach, I believe. He's got brothers that I got a relationship with. But they run a spread offense, we're not going to see much two-back offense at all. Like to throw it around. Been very productive through the years. And as you know, Coach Cutcliffe's a quarterback guru and offensive guru, so he'll have a lot of say in what they're doing. And they're very talented. And they're going to come in here and probably do what they do. Defensively, Jimmy Knowles is their D coordinator, does a great job, probably more like a 4-2, 4-3 defense. Very sound, very smart. They will make you earn it, they'll bend a little bit, but they're going to make you earn it, keep things in front of them. They don't give up up many big plays and as always, it will be a ball game, I guarantee you that. They're well coached, it was a great game down there last year and I'm sure they're looking for revenge off of last year. So with that I'll open it up for questions.

Q. Sort of like the anatomy of the stand, if you will. Have you had some time perhaps to look through the plays that led to your defensive sequence that forced the ball back in your hands. I remember in post-game you hadn't had time to look at film or anything. But especially on first and second down, talk about what put you in position to make the third and fourth down stops, make them lose a yard on first down and then luckily having them not move the chains.
PAT NARDUZZI: I watched so much Duke tape this morning I forgot. I remember the third and fourth, but the first and second I don't really remember. I know we were at a third down and one and a half probably and we had a timeout. And we really had two defenses in the huddle and two different personnel groupings depending upon what they came out. And they came out in big people, so we came out in big people. And Allen Edwards made a heck of a play. You talk about a guy who keeps getting better -- kind of like their quarterback -- the more reps he gets the better he has been. And he made a nice play on the third down and one which, you know, giagantic play. They get the first down there, the game's over. I got to use my last timeout that I was trying to save. And, again, I think you got to attribute to the defense and what they did. And they believed. Two weeks in a row, Virginia Tech and Miami, we talked about it in here about getting the ball back and saving your timeouts and when to use a timeout. And I'm glad we had one timeout left with that offensive drive, because we ended up getting flushed out of the pocket and coming short of a first down and having to use it. We would like to have used that on a field goal and not had to throw the ball on the ground. But the kids did a great job executing that, but then on fourth down, they decided to go for it and, which was risky on their part, but they were trying to end the game. And they already had a few points put up on them and I can't blame Dabo, he's a great coach and they got the home field, their fans there, they can end the game with what we wanted to do, end it with their offense on the field is how you always like to do it. And our defensive guys came up -- Jeremiah Taleni, as we spoke, the guy's become a star here the last few weeks. He's making a lot of plays inside and I'm happy with the way he's playing. And Matt Galambos, who is was, I think at least, our player of the game in this room, voted by the coaches just defensive player of the week, was very productive and we were able to keep him fresh too. I think Quintin Wirginis had like 30 snaps in the game, which also kept him -- because there was about a hundred snaps in the game -- I think 98 snaps out of Clemson. And we were able to keep -- we had a plan of putting Q in -- we always have a plan of putting Quintin in the game, but I kind of mentioned to Coach Harley, you sit there and say it in the staff meeting you're going to do it, I said, just third series, he's going in. Just tell him so he knows he's going in and everybody knows. But I think that really helped us keep Matt healthy and fresh so, in the fourth quarter, he's flying around still and is able to make that fourth down stop, with the other 11 guys, of course, but with Galambos and Taleni on that play that's really what happened on that sequence.

Q. You had five guys contribute to the front seven on that. Wirginis and Ffrench hold the edge, forcing him to the outside, and that gave Matt a chance, and also Taleni a chance to catch up from the back side, too?
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, it comes down to run defense. I know you guys keep looking at balls going over our heads, but I truly believe that when you stop, you're able to stop the run, that stopping the run and in the structure of what we do, helps you win football games. If you can't stop the run, I mean, you guys watch it on Saturday afternoons all over the country. If people can run the ball -- I think they had less than 50 yards, I think we charted it -- we don't count quarterback scrambles for yards, we kind of count it like the NFL does -- they had 44 yards rushing. We felt that was our advantage. They hadn't tried to pound it for awhile in the game, they wound up throwing 70 passes, and rushing defense wins you football games.

Q. Does that underscore what you said a couple weeks ago after Tech about Taleni, that you kind of were upset at yourself that you hadn't put him in that game?
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah Taleni and Amir Watts both. Amir got dinged up a little bit, but I think I said it last week, we weren't, you know, we weren't upset that those two guys had to go start that game. We felt good with the depth there.

Q. Your offense has been really productive even in that game and the previous game. Do you think maybe that's what Dabo was thinking, why he didn't want to give you ball back.
PAT NARDUZZI: That's what I would be thinking. Just like every week, we want to try to end it, kneel down, a victory play with the tail back about six yards or a receiver back about eight yards in case something happens with the snap, you tackle them. But that all goes into it. People can look back and say, why didn't you punt it? They punt it to Quadree Henderson and let Quadree take it to the house, who knows. He's been electric with the ball in his hands as a returner. So those are great decisions that coaches get to make and I don't question his decision, I'm glad he went for it.

Q. You were using more of a rotation at linebacker. Do you think -- that not only Galambos, but you used Bam, you used Saleem. Having those extra guys, how big was that?
PAT NARDUZZI: We have done that all year. We subbed those guys in, in the right situations. So the Mike was the really important one. Shaun played a ton of reps out there to the field and Prayer took most of the reps to the other back, but Saleem came in and made a huge play in the game and had fresh legs doing it. He looked pretty fast there. He walked down and guys were busting him, walked by Mike Williams, the receiver, and the other guy was coming from the other side and the two receivers are pretty fast.

Q. What was the message yesterday to the team when they came in here?
PAT NARDUZZI: Get over it. Let's move on. Get to the next one. We watched all the tape like we normally do. No different message. We just talk about the wins, talk about the good things, the bad things, try to make all the corrections. And another huge play in the game I'll bring up was the guy on special teams, Jay Stocker. Ran down on a kickoff, with six seconds to go, you can loaf down there and see what happens and they're going to pitch it around and try to make something happen. Jay went down there and forced the first throwback and he was the guy. And he's five yards in front of everybody else, running down on kickoffs. And we joked in here that Jay must be the fastest guy on kickoff team. Where were you other guys? But he flew down there, forced a bad lateral and Coach Powell did a great job of coaching up what we wanted there in that situation. And we have seen that happen, Miami-Duke a year ago, people win games on that play. So I thought that was another huge play in the game.

Q. As you watched the tape afterward how spectacular was that touchdown run by James?
PAT NARDUZZI: It was big time. He showed that he's got speed to get to the edge. That was not a slow defense, I might add. The stiff arm and breaking it up, it was huge. I believe that was after a Saleem Brightwell interception, correct? You talk about those two plays stacked on top of each other and there's been times where you get a turnover all of a sudden you kick a field goal or you got to punt, but that momentum created momentum for our offense and they took advantage of it.

Q. Was there something different that you guys did at times to confuse Watson or was it just getting more pressure on him? Because he made mistakes that you don't normally see.
PAT NARDUZZI: I don't know. Maybe ask him in the press conference. We did what we do. We had some different coverages in, trying to slow them down. But which I don't know if we did or not. But we made them earn some things and they made some spectacular catches as well. Like Williams that one catch he had on first -- it's like what are you going to do. But we did some different things, but we didn't do it all perfectly, I guarantee you that.

Q. That touchdown run that you talked about that James Conner had, that you had the play Aaron Mathews that blocked the goal line, it seemed like he made a few plays on special teams.
PAT NARDUZZI: He's a tough guy. When we recruited him we thought he was tough enough to play defense, so he's obviously tough enough to go block and he's tough enough to go run down as gunner and make two solo tackles against two pretty good athletes in space. Which we made a switch to that. We had gunner tryouts in practice about four weeks ago and ever since we had gunner tryouts, hey, who wants that job? We need someone who is going to be one-on-one to try to go down and make a play. But it seems like since we had the gunner tryouts and really focused on something that was weakness -- that's what we do as coaches -- that we have seen some great plays made out of -- Jordan Whitehead a couple weeks ago had a couple solos, Aaron Mathews did, and Lopes had one as well a couple weeks ago. So we have emphasized something that we weren't getting what we wanted out of them and Aaron Mathews did a great job.

Q. How was the tenor of this win with the reception that you received, was it different than even some of your bigger wins?
PAT NARDUZZI: Based on my phone blowing up it was bigger than the Penn State win. I don't remember having this many text messages that I've had to try to, try to return. For everybody out there, I apologize for not returning them yet. But it's coming little by little. We still need to focus on Duke. But it's a big win. I think that Panther Nation was excited, didn't know what to expect, and just liked the way that our guys went out and fought. And that's what we're going to do every week. I don't think you can say that there's a week that you can say that we don't come out and fight.

Q. Was there anyone in particular you were surprised to hear from?
PAT NARDUZZI: No. There's a bunch of them. I mentioned one and then I would have to mention 50 and someone would feel bad.

Q. You talked about this as a statement win. How important is it to capitalize on this in terms of the standings the rankings and recruiting?
PAT NARDUZZI: What standings?

Q. ACC.
PAT NARDUZZI: Oh, we're just going to take it one game at a time. I don't really care about the standings. Unless something falls apart in the ACC as far as who is there and in the Coastal and who knows what happens the last two weeks. We're just going to take one game at a time and see how it goes. We just worry about what's happening in the building and worry about beating Duke, a good football team that's on a high right now.

Q. What are your thoughts about how Nathan played?
PAT NARDUZZI: What's my thoughts? The guy played unbelievable. Played -- he played spectacular, really. He was on fire. He made every shot. Sometimes -- I don't know if he's in here, not yet, I think he'll be here with you today -- but a couple times he took some shots that he maybe shouldn't have. He was trying to make plays. Which is what you want a senior quarterback to do, try to make plays. Could have taken a couple short ones early, but besides that he was spectacular. That first throw he made to Jaymar, I was going to try to tip it back to him. That was perfect. And that started off our momentum in that first drive for a touchdown. But Nathan played spectacular, Walter Camp National Offensive Player Of The Week, I think that says probably about enough.

Q. You guys go over just about everything you do, at least in walk through before. That probably doesn't include a bunch of guys taking a knee and locking arms before the last second field goal. Where does that come from, what kind of emotion is going on on your sideline?
PAT NARDUZZI: I don't know. When I saw them all kneeling down I thought I would join them. I wasn't thinking about it, but I looked back and I'm like, what am I doing? I'm glad they called a timeout or I wouldn't have been over there with them. They tried to freeze the kicker, so it gave me time to kneel down and reflect with our guys over there.

Q. What were you reflecting on?
PAT NARDUZZI: I just knew, you know, Chris was going to -- I knew he was going to nail it, but what I really went back to was the Syracuse game, really, is when I knelt down with those guys last time. So maybe every field goal I should go kneel down. I'll just go down, I'll take a knee every time. Right, Chris? But that's kind of went through my mind is the Syracuse game, we were kneeling down, and I was like, this is money.

Q. You said on TV that you went up to him and gave him a kiss after the extra point. I don't know, as a head coach, how do you kind of, where did you learn to kind of handle situations like that when a player goes through a situation in a big game?
PAT NARDUZZI: You don't really, I don't think you learn it in a book. I can say from my Sports Studies Master's Degree at Miami of Ohio that maybe I got it from, through Robin Feeley, one of my professors there at Miami, but that's just something -- we're always positive with our kids on game day. I might rip them during practice and here or there and I might get after people on game day, but not on players. I'm never going to get after our players. You got to be positive. It's game day and it's just my philosophy. To go tearing into a guy, that's not going to help. I can tell you, he was down a little bit, he can probably speak a little bit more, just had that look on his face. And I just went up and said, wipe that off, forget about it, it's over with. And that happens, there's not a player on offense or defense or other parts of the special teams that didn't make a mistake like he did. And it happens. You watch the field goal, he kicks the field goal, he's trying to kick a 50 some yarder and you can see the sand come up from the grass, as you watch our copy. And he's like I got, I got the ground. Which is going to cost it. So that happens. That's no different than a guy dropping a pass, making a bad throw, missing a tackle, not making a play on a ball. So, but kickers are different than other players, they have to go sit there and think about it for 15 minutes before their next opportunity. So, I just, I don't know what made me do that. Maybe it's because he's so good looking, I don't know.

(Laughter.)

Q. You mentioned with the number of texts that you had. For you personally was this bigger sweeter victory?
PAT NARDUZZI: No question about it. They're all sweeter. I think every one you get afterwards, I mean they're sweeter for different reasons. An in-state rival game was a big win. And to see how well they're doing down there and having a great year, it makes it even a bigger win. But then to go down in your conference, a conference game that matters, become bowl eligible, at the same time as you knock off the No. 2 team in the country, it's even better. But you know what, this Duke win, if we are capable of going down there and getting it done and coming to Heinz Field and getting it done it will be just as big. Other people might not think it, but they're a good football team and every win is a major win.

Q. You guys haven't really accomplished your goal that you had before the season, to make it to the ACC championship. You're 6-4 and you have two big wins. Do you think you can really take away some successful things from the season if you don't reach the ultimate goal?
PAT NARDUZZI: No doubt about it. You can have goals, but we shoot high and sometimes you don't get that (indicating), but you get that (indicating). And there's nothing wrong with that. But if we would have said, hey, let's win six games and we win six games and we say hey, we reached our goal, I'm going home, I'm going on vacation and maybe I'll go to South Florida and hang out on South Beach. But you shoot for here (Indicating). If you shoot for here (Indicating), it's not very good. So we're always going to shoot high and anywhere, as long as you didn't get down here (Indicating) you're okay. But we still got a long way to go.

Q. When it comes to the precision with which you guys have, all that ball handling in your offense, how much drilling does Matt do with the offensive players in terms of timing precision of the shovel passes, the handoffs, the jet sweeps, things of that sort?
PAT NARDUZZI: That's what we do every day in practice. We have a TTO period. I don't know if the media is there that early. I don't know when you guys go get a coffee and a donut, but we do that the first thing we do, just kind of without the O-line being there, just working all the mechanics, I guess you would say, of what we do offensively. And then that's what they rep full speed with the O-line when we get to the team period during the practice. But it's what we do and work at it every day.

Q. Some psychologists might say when a person has success in any walk of life tendency is to relax. How do you fight that as a coach with 19 and 20-year-old kids?
PAT NARDUZZI: It's like I told our guys last night, again, I'll steal this from Mike Tomlin, they got it up in their locker room and really his motto is, the standard is up here, anything less is not good enough. I've seen what you guys can do when your energy is high, your emotion is high, and you're hitting all cylinders. So, do we do that this weekend? I don't know. But that's the challenge as a coach and as a player to mentally get your mind to a point where you play like that every week. And I think that you learn how important it is when you put it in your mind that, hey, we can go do this, we're going to do this, we will win, and then you do it, they understand that they mentally have to prepare that way every week. Doesn't matter who you play.

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