We’ve talked on here about how great it is to have landed a defensive ‘genius’ as our Head Coach, especially after the rather disastrous showing by our Panther defense in some of our close losses over the past two years.  It is nice that we have a HC with a defensive bias, especially after spending three years with Paul Chryst who pretty much ignored the defense and left it in the hands of an inexperienced and overwhelmed DC in his last two years at PITT. (Surprisingly, in Chryst’s first year of 2012 with Defensive Coordinator Dave Huxtable running the defense was ranked 17^th overall.  Still we pulled in seven losses.)

When looking back on our defensive shortcomings last year the low point was the knife in the neck, thrust by DC Matt House, that gave us the quick bleed-out defensive trauma in the bowl loss against Houston.

We boldly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on the strength of our Swiss-cheese defense allowing three TDs in the last 3:41 of the game.  It was apparent that our defense was so confused and upset out there trying to get them in the proper positions pre-snap was like herding cats. That game, as sadly negative as possible and even worse than the ‘Same Old Pitt’ games, will be remembered for eternity.

The defensive lapse problem wasn’t limited to that particular game but occurred in our losses during the regular season also.  In the table below we see how poorly our defense played in five losses where we allowed the opponent to come back in the second half to take the lead and the win.

What does table that tell us? Two things really; first our offense got better at scoring 2^nd half points as the season went on…Yeah for us!  But more importantly, it shows how truly horrid our defense was in the 2^nd half of our losses.  Look at it more closely and you’ll see that in those five losses we gave up an average of 22 points in the 2nd half!  22 points on average!  Here, let me say that one last time…22 frickin’ points in the 3rd and 4th quarters.

Get what I’m saying?

So how do we go about changing that as soon as possible?  Can we do it as soon as the 2015 season?  Most Pitt fans say yes, not only can we but we will be much better.  There are valid questions to that belief, but let’s first review we have done over the off season to rectify the ‘Big Problem’ (which also centered on not having this).

Well, the first thought that came to Pitt’s collective minds was to hire a defensive minded HC, which we did in MSU’s Pat Narduzzi.  The second was to have him select and hire a DC who he feels he work with and can have execute his overall defensive planning. Narduzzi hired Florida International University’s (FIU) Josh Conklin for that position.

The third was for Pitt to give Narduzzi and his staff adequate resources to be able to recruit defensive players that he and Coach Conklin want to have on the roster so to succeed in avoiding what happened to Pitt football in this last season.  Immediate impact recruiting, especially on the defensive side, is very hard to accomplish but you can’t build a good defense without good players.

So, one of the above points is an immediate fix (Narduzzi & Conklin)  and the other is for the future… or is it?  It all boils down to the age old question of ‘Which came first; the chicken (good defensive coaching) or the egg (existing defensive player’s talent)?’

The reality of this situation is that we are going into this season with a HC who in his first DC job at MSU took a full four years until the roster was almost totally populated with his recruits to show signs of a decent defense.  Listed here are Narduzzi’s results in his first four years as the DC at MSU.

His defenses put up continually worse results in almost all categories in each of his first three years before he steadied out a bit in his 4^th season.  Keep in mind that all the rankings listed are out of 120 D1/BCS teams.

Not real pretty and we want much better.  We will get back to Narduzzi’s past results in a moment also…

Narduzzi’s start as a DC is much the same situation as Conklin will be facing now regarding inherited defensive talent. We had only one 3rd team All-ACC on defense in LB Anthony Gonzalez and he’s graduated.  Save him we had no post-season award/selection recognition for any others on defense.  That last point is the basis of the apparent lack of talent in returning players who Conklin is working with.  (More on individual players later…)

Here is Josh Conklin’s staff experience and record. One could look at his past results and think he was a failure in his first job as the DC of  (FIU).  His defense’s weren’t very good and contributed to FIU losing 19 games over the last two years. Granted, he didn’t have much of an offense to complement and help the defense as Pitt had last season, and at FIU he was using inherited (poor) players much like Narduzzi had in the beginning of his tenure as MSU’s DC.  While you certainly can’t pin those losses on Conklin alone it isn’t impressive to see how badly the team played.

With that one has to wonder why Narduzzi specifically chose Conklin rather than other more experienced and successful DCs who could be lured away from their present positions.  But nothing is always as it seems, especially with sports and stats. Personalities and relationship sometimes trump logic.

In hoping that is the case here let’s take a detailed look at Conklin’s results during his time as the DC at FIU.  Also listed is are the ’12’s Tennessee team’s defense stats when he was the Safety coach there – not that that means much in this context but I wanted to provide some additional background.

* = Conklin’s year as the Safety coach at Tennessee.

It appears that Narduzzi did disregarded Conklin’s factual results as a DC and liked what he saw in Conklin’s football personality in molding aggressive and turnover producing defenses so much it clinched his decision to hire him.  Many have been hired on lesser reasons. This reason of hire could very well be the tipping point from an inept to a solid defense especially as we were horrid in that area. Here are those sterling FIU TO stats compared to our less desirable ones:

That 19 fumbles covered is truly outstanding and it is hard to believe that a team can create almost three TOs per game on a consistent basis… if we get that type of play things will look pretty bright.

In his new position Narduzzi’s biggest adjustment will be that he isn’t the DC and while he’ll obviously be involved he won’t be the prime decision maker during the games, nor should he be.  His job is to set defensive policy and steer his staff into meeting his goals for how the defense should work and produce.  It isn’t to be calling defenses or making in-game personnel decisions that undercut his DC position with Conklin’s defensive staff and players.

Unless of course we see the same sort of crap defensive play this year under Conklin as we did with House last year… then Narduzzi damned well better get directly involved.  Of course, as the HC he can question the quality of his DC’s decisions and have Conklin cinch up the game’s defensive game plan to adjust to the opponent’s successes on offense.

That is where Narduzzi’s defensive experience will help PITT this season. We all know by now what Narduzzi did in his last four years at MSU.  His defense got better each season and ended up being one of the best in the country across the board of defense in 2014.  But the situation of those last four years as a DC at MSU compared now to what’s he’s seeing in his first year as HC at PITT are two different animals.

The football theory dissimilarities between Narduzzi and Chryst are also as mentioned above; Chryst didn’t have the defensive acumen to intervene with his DC’s running of the defense in overall planning or in-game strategy when needed.  That combined with an inept and inexperienced newly-promoted DC in Matt House killed us in the long run.  Chryst’s influence on the offense was clear, his no-hands-on approach to the defense, even as it was sinking our ship, was pathetic.

A similarity of this season as compared with Narduzzi’s first four years stated above is that neither he nor Conklin will have players of their choosing who may get two-deep playing time save true FR LB Saleem Brightwell and JUCO transfer JR DE Allen Edwards. Pitt fans seem to be setting their caps on these two new players really contributing but they are both average rated recruits and are untested at this level of play.  Luckily the staff will also have true FR Safety Jordan Whitehead whose talent could go a long way in smoothing out Narduzzi and Conklin’s first year at Pitt.

What they have to work with are returning defensive players who were mostly unsuccessful in pulling their weight as a unit last season, especially in the clutch times as seen in the ‘Second Half Defense’ chart above.  We are replacing two three year starters at LB in Todd Thomas and Anthony Gonzalez with upperclassmen who weren’t good enough to win a starting position other than by default.

Some other players showed promise and made some good plays over the year but any new and better talent will most probably be from guys who were never starters before like DE Rori Blair, DT Tyrique Jarrett, DB Terrish Webb, etc.  There is also the hanging question of how much Rori Blair will be able to contribute early in the schedule due to his pending  disciplinary actions.

This brings us back to whether we’ll see a big difference in PITT’s defense and just how good it will actually be.  In looking at all the results these two coaches have had both in their past jobs and factoring in talent level of the returning players they have to work with I’m not overly optimistic.  I don’t feel the same as other fans do who assume just because we have Narduzzi with his defensive experience we’ll automatically see a 180 degree change.

In two or three years we’ll start really benefiting from Narduzzi’s hire when it comes to defense.  He and Conklin will have their own favored systems in place, will have worked together and understand each other as a team for a year or two and, perhaps most importantly, will have a roster with their players recruited specifically to play in those systems.

But will they have major success right off the bat in Year One just because we hired Narduzzi?

There are way too many variables to be convinced that by itself will turn the defense around.  Narduzzi has a strong background in defensive arts but the bottom line is that he’ll be the HC and Conklin will be in the position where the rubber meets the road and he’s completely unproven as far as defensive successes go.

We are probably not going to see a big jump happen like we hope it will. We should keep our fingers crossed for a better defense in the aggressive way they play.  That is the biggest area of progress we’ll have.  which will get us more turnovers , give the offense shorter fields to score in and will create positive breaks that were missing in our losses last year.

But the defining description of a good defense is wherheter of tnot that defense alone can carry the team to a win if the offense is faltering that game.  At this point with Pitt that isn’t the case and we’ll see if that can happen throughout the upcoming season.  Let’s hope it gets better in keeping the opponents score down by a few ticks per game and not having any Houston-like meltdowns. That alone would be +1 in the win column.

If the defense can do those things then we will have the “Narduzzi Turnaround” we hoped for.  If not, then we will be on the more realistic two year track for major changes to the success of the defense.