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ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

August 29, 2018

Pat Narduzzi

Greensboro, North Carolina

PAT NARDUZZI: Well, it's great to be with everybody today. Obviously football season has begun. We're excited here in Pittsburgh to kick it off against Albany this week. I'm excited, number one, to find out really who we are and what we have. So often you hit each other, you practice against each other, and you don't really know what the product is going to be until you put it out there on the field and you get to go against a different opponent. So we're excited. I think our kids are excited. Should be an interesting game.

Q. I know you've got a bunch of quarterbacks on the roster, but the story of Jeff George, Jr., joining the team and just what you can say about how it was kind of an interesting way that he found himself in Pittsburgh.
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, kids nowadays find interesting ways to join your football program, I can tell you that. But Jeff George is a guy that we had up over the summer after a grad transfer from Illinois. We were trying to get him here, and he ended up choosing the Michigan Wolverines, which you know I didn't think was a very good decision. But you know what, some guys, they've got to make decisions. They make decisions for whatever the reason. But the good thing is he saw the light and we were able to get him back here. He's a super kid. I really like the kid, and we're happy to have him part of our program.

Q. I know Kenny Pickett is at the top of that, but what you can say about the quarterback room and what your takeaways have been from them so far and how you've got kind of a busy room in there right now.
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, I'm happy with where our quarterback room is right now compared to where it was a year ago. I mean, at this time last year, we were only with Max Browne, who was a great kid and a guy I think who had great potential had he not gotten hurt. But we were going into a season without a guy playing in over a year, getting a start.

This year with Kenny Pickett being out there, we knew that he was a very talented individual a year ago, but he's become a leader of our football team. Guys trust in him, and he's got a great arm. He's got the ability to move around in the pocket and make plays with his feet. So we're excited about where he is. Ricky Town is our backup and Nick Patti is not far behind, so we feel like we've got two very good capable play callers, and we're see how the season unravels here as far as who that guy is going to be down the line.

Q. If you could expand on the challenges that Albany is going to present in the season opener for you guys.
PAT NARDUZZI: Great question. I mean, you think of all the situations you're going to go through. First of all, we don't know who they are. You can watch tape from last year, but they've got obviously the same head coach in Gattuso, but their defensive coordinator is a guy named Keith Dudzinski, who has also inherited a co-defensive coordinator, who last year was the offensive coordinator, so he moved over. So I'm sure we'll see some different rings to that defense, and their defense is productive, as well. Maybe you don't see too many. And then offensively, they've got a new offensive coordinator, Coach Davis came from Fordham, so he was the offensive coordinator at Fordham. Before that he was at Northern Iowa.

So we've watched -- defensively we've watched Northern Iowa offense, we've watched Fordham offense and we've watched Albany offense from last year, so we've got a little bit of everything into the game plan, really game planned for three different football teams.

When you look at that type of game plan, we try to mix things in that fit both or all three squads, but those are things that you run into.

The other thing I think there's always a situation, you don't know who they are as far as people, players. They've got a real fast-track guy that's also the punt rusher, kick returner, wide out. Testaverde is their quarterback, who didn't play last year, so it's like you've got to go back to watch him play against Texas Tech, against Texas a couple years ago. So we've watched a ton of tape. That's the issues that an opener against someone that you really don't know -- if we opened up against Clemson or Virginia Tech, you know them because you played them in the past. Without ever having played them, that's the problems that it's posed there.

Q. I'm just wondering what you hope to learn or see out of this team that's going to help you get ready for the following week. I know I'm not supposed to be looking ahead, but I am for a second --
PAT NARDUZZI: Well, I think we all look ahead. I want to see us go out and play the game the way it's supposed to be played. It comes down to execution. I mean, Albany will bring a good football team in here. They'll be motivated, so we're not worried about that. We've got to worry about what we do when we go out in that game, and I think that's the most important thing. I think you make your most improvements from game 1 to game 2, but I want to find out how much do we have or how much do we need to work on. That's going to be the key is where are we, and that's what you find out in the opener.

But I think it's how detailed, how fundamentally sound we are, are we going to lose it when we get to game day because I've seen good things in practice but what happens on game day, what happens when you get into Heinz Field at 3:30 and they turn on the lights in the stadium and the music goes on, do we continue to do that, is it a different atmosphere. And that's what I want to see. I think we've got a pretty mature team. I think that we're going to play in a game like we practice, but those are things I'm looking for is the same consistency we've had in practice and will that carry that over into Heinz Field.

Q. At receiver, who are you looking at or who's had a good fall that can really step up for you guys this year?
PAT NARDUZZI: You know what, I'm out there today, we just finished practicing here because we practice in the morning, and I'm looking at our receiving corps and I'm getting really excited. I think our backfield is going to be fine and we're going to run the football and all of that, and I know we've got arm out of Kenny Pickett, but when I look at Dontavius Butler-Jenkins and I look at Shocky and I look at Tre Tipton is playing well, Ra-Ra Lopes is playing well, Rafael. I'm excited to see some of our receivers that maybe Pitt fans and ACC country have not seen play yet. Dontavius Butler-Jenkins is impressive. He goes out there today and just makes some grabs that it's like, wow, we haven't had a guy really do some of the things he's doing out there right now.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of the new toys out there. There's nothing better than having new toys in your backyard that you can play with, right? You get bored with the old swing set, it's kind of dirty; we've got some new toys to play with there, and the same thing on defense and the secondary.

Q. So much back for you at linebacker this season; talk to me about the confidence you have in that group and what the defense as a whole gets when you get a player like Quintin Wirginis back?
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, Quintin Wirginis is obviously our captain and leader of the defense. I'm happy with where our linebackers are. We've got to do it daily. You get into game plan weeks, and they've got to step up and there's more to learn. I think we know what we're doing defensively, schematically, now it's -- every week is a different offense that you've got to face, different weapons at different positions and different calls that you have defensively. It's going to be how they take each one of those game plans and build it into their wheelhouse, I guess.

But we're excited about the depth we've got at linebacker. When you like at Wirginis and Seun Idowu and Elijah Zeise really running with the ones most of the time, but Saleem Brightwell is right there, who started for us at Mike last year, and then Chase Pine has really come on. We moved Chase Pine from linebacker to D-end just because we needed a little help at D-end, just felt like it was going to be a good move for him, and then a couple days later we said, shoot, let's move him back to Mike, see what he does there, and all of a sudden he turned it on. I think it kind of woke him up a little bit. So he's played good football for us, as well.

And then out there on the field, Anthony McKee has really been as consistent as we've had, and Cam Bright is another guy that's a young guy that's coming on as we go. We've got a lot of guys there that can play football.

Q. I'm wondering how you think the defensive line is going to stack up against Albany's running back that's just returning, Elijah Ibitokun-Hanks. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right --
PAT NARDUZZI: Yeah, I'll let you work on that. I'm not even going to attempt it. Albany likes to run the ball, and we're not sure if Elijah will be in there. They also have a kid named Karl Mofor, I guess, from Greenbelt, Maryland, so both a New Jersey and a Maryland kid that are good running backs. They've got a really, really solid veteran offensive line. I think it starts up front. But how is our D-line going to match up against them? If they play the way they should if they play the way they've played in practice and they're playing with an edge, I think we ought to do pretty well.

But you know what, we can sit here and talk all we want on Wednesday afternoon. They've got to go out and play. But I like our D-line. I like the depth in our D-line. Like I said, it's going to be fun to go turn them loose and see what happens on game day because we'll find out if we're going to be dominant or do we still have a ways to go.

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