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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

April 19, 2018

Pat Narduzzi

Greensboro, North Carolina

PAT NARDUZZI: We just finished spring ball Saturday and with another successful and probably more importantly, a healthy spring came out of it. I don't know if we've been this overall healthy with no post-season injuries and everything to go with it after spring ball. So we're healthy going into our summer conditioning, our fourth quarter program. I'm happy with the development and the coaching and the attitude of our football team going into the 2018 season.

Q. I was asking about the defensive coordinator Randy Bates and what he's meant as an addition to the team.
PAT NARDUZZI: I'm currently in meetings with our team right now. You know, spring ball ended, and I try to sit down for 30, sometimes 45 minutes with each one of our players and just talking to each position offensively, defensively, special teams, kickers and all that.

Coach Bates has done an unbelievable job in the sport period of time he's been here. I've known Randy for a long time, and the one thing I keep getting from our players, just saying, hey -- kind of my first question: How is spring ball, how is your relationship with your position coach, and how is your relationship with the coordinator, offensively or defensively or special teams.

And the thing I keep continue to get back is our players love his attitude, love his energy and loves their relationship with Coach Bates at this point. I think things are going really, really good. I see a different defense this spring. I see guys playing with a little bit more edge and attitude, and he's brought some great things to our program. Defensively they are probably about 70 percent similar to what we are and then there's that 30 percent new little things that I think can add into our defense that can make us an elite defense.

Q. Kenny Pickett, what can you say about his evolution and growth and building off some of the positives from last year?
PAT NARDUZZI: Kenny had a really good spring. Shawn Watson, our quarterback coach, offensive coordinator, has done a tremendous job coaching and developing him. He had I think a really good spring. His offense in the spring game was limited to the talent around him because of splitting up the draft, with having a draft -- I guess just having a backup offensive center snapping to him. Maybe half of the receiving core and half of the running back core and just not having a full complement of his normal players that he had for 14 days of spring ball around him. I think he did a tremendous job. He moved the ball, had one errant throw, but really the errant throw was probably more on the receiver because he never came back to the ball; kind of hung the quarterback out a little bit. So there's only one turnover in the spring game.

Doesn't turn the ball over. Makes great decisions. Very accurate and he's a leader of our offense right now and our kids trust him and have confidence in him.

Q. Speaking of the receivers, what is your assessment of that position as you finished up spring practice?
PAT NARDUZZI: Great question. My assessment, it's a sore topic to be honest with you. If I had to say, probably the most disappointing part of the spring was just really the durability of our receiving core. I think we have some very talented football players, and they are going to make a lot of plays and they will be here for us in August.

But if I had to say, and it's not a major disappointed but just a little bit disappointed we didn't keep our guys as healthy as we needed to. Is that us as coaches beating them down? I hope not; is it maybe guys not taking care of their bodies as well as they need to. But overall, we just didn't have enough of our top receivers out there for enough practices.

We talk about 15 of 15, meaning, we give out, you know, a nice piece of Pitt gear if you make all 15 practices because that's the only way you can get better. We had a lot of guys, our offensive line, every guy practiced every practice. So they got 15 of 15, except for one guy missed one practice but everybody else made every one of them.

The receiving core wasn't that fortunate I guess. Sometimes we're unlucky and guys get banged up and so forth, so -- but we've got some playmakers out there. Aaron Mathews had a great first couple days and Maurice Ffrench is going to be a player for us. Tipton is going to be a player for us. Taysir Mack, transfer in, had a great spring. Michael Smith is a guy that's going to do some great things I think in the future and developing, and some of those young guys got a lot more reps than maybe they normally would have with some other guys out. Rah-Rah Lopes, Rafael, had a great spring, again, was probably one of our tougher guys. May have missed the last two or three practices but did not finish 15 of 15.

So we've got a lot of talent in that room. But we just didn't have a lot of youth, so that was something that -- they are all 100 percent healthy right now but we held them back for whatever reason, and hopefully they have a good summer and stay healthy through August and into the 2018 season.

Q. What was the process you went through in deciding what to do with the tenth assistant coach and how does Cory fit that?
PAT NARDUZZI: The tenth assistant, that's an interesting and great question because last summer at this time when they talked about adding the tenth, I said, I don't know what I'm going to do because my mindset was, I'm going to hire a guy to fix any weakness we have.

So as the season went on, it was, what do we need. You know, as the season progressed, you know, you still kind of didn't know where the weakness was. And then you have some coaching changes, you know, we have a guy take a head job down in Wofford and some things move around, and he kind of had some DB expertise and then you hire a defensive coordinator who has got more linebacker expertise as opposed to secondary, but he's coached at secondary, too.

It just made a lot of sense at that point when that move was made to say, you know, we are going to have two secondary coaches because we lost a coordinator/secondary coach and focus on that. Really, it was simple. I mean, my first thought was it's going to be probably either a special teams coordinator or a running back coach one or the other and maybe a secondary coach because there's four guys back there. Two years ago, I thought, God, if they ever named a tenth coach at Michigan State, I was really the tenth coach because I coached the defensive end. It was really a D-end or D-tackle coach where there's four positions. Linebacker has three guys, one guy can handle them. So it's really where do you want to split it up. My thoughts were Charlie Partridge, who is now our assistant head coach is not having any problem coaching all four guys. And so I was like, hey, let's put our investment into that secondary and now we currently have five assistant coaches on offense and five on defense.

So it balances it out. Your scholarship numbers are about the same offensively and defensively so our player/coach relationship on both sides of the ball is now even, where in the last 20 years, it's been uneven when you think scholarship numbers and player/coach ratio. That was kind of what went into it. It wasn't an easy decision and Cory has done an outstanding job. He's very, very intelligent. You always hire smarter guys than yourself, and he came in and interviewed -- we interviewed probably five or six guys for that job and he came to the top. There was a time when we kind of said, well, this guy is good but can we get better and we just continue to interview and we got better every time.

Q. What do you think of the new kickoff rule, and do you think it will signal the end of kickoff down the road?
PAT NARDUZZI: I don't think it's going to signal the end of the kickoff. I think there are studies out there that say that there's not as many injuries as people think on the kickoff team, and running down there, covering kickoffs, but I don't think people are hanging the ball up anyway and getting people trying to return it. I don't think we're going to see much of a difference.

I think we'll see people still take it out of the end zone. So they are going to take it at the four-yard line, three-yard line, two-yard line. They are not fair catching it there. I think the more you watch, you see it's more of an attitude that the return guy -- our return guy will take it three yards out and depends on the hang time, too. But our guys are going to take it out of the end zone and feel like they can get past the 25, and everybody is looking for more; and players want to make plays, and that's why we recruit playmakers and athletes. They want to return kicks. I don't think there's a fear of kickoff return coaches, teams, or players that are worried about, oh, gosh, I wish the ball would be kicked in the end zone. I don't want to return it.

No, they are taken out of the end zone, and I don't know if there was a study done how many balls were kicked out of the end zone or taken out of the end zone but people are not afraid to take it out of the end zone, so what good does that rule do.

Q. You mentioned defense playing with more of an edge and attitude this spring. Can you talk about what you saw and some specific things that might have happened in practice that made you think that way, as playing with an edge?
PAT NARDUZZI: I think it just comes down to attitude. We got that big word up on the back of our team room and it's really plastered all over our facility and it comes down to attitude and how do you feel and how do you wake up and how does your coaches act every day.

I think defense takes over the attitude of your coordinator and sometimes your head coach if you're around him enough, but I can't be there every minute of the day. I see a similar attitude out of our kids that we had at Michigan State. I commend Coach Bates. He sticks to the little things and he focuses on the same things every day. It doesn't change day-to-day on what he wants and there's a consistency there. He's just very energetic right now in what's happening and I think our kids are maybe addicted to the energy right now and are feeling it and then when that happens, you know, they are playing their tails off; you have an explosive defense.

And again, it also goes with, our guys, we finished the year pretty good with Virginia Tech and Miami as far as defensive performances, maybe not a win, and we're starting to play at a higher level. Now there's maybe an injection of more enthusiasm and attitude with a defense that I think is pretty deep. A year ago, I think we had four linebackers that could play for us and now we have six. Our secondary is sound and solid, even though we lost the great Avonte Maddix and Jordan Whitehead. I still think we have some guys that can play back there, another year in it, and we have depth and seniority on defense. We're not that young. We're not going, oh, my gosh, what happens if this happens. We've got depth everywhere and I think we saw that in the spring game.

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