November 2, 2015

 Pat Narduzzi Press Conference (italics are mine at the end for the ND story)

Notre Dame Week

 PRESS CONFERENCE VIDEO: Narduzzi ND Preview

PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT (HTML LINK): Narduzzi Text Transcript

Opening Statement:

“Coming off a tough Thursday night loss, we had our usual Sunday night meeting and gathered the boys together and we’re ready. I hope you guys are ready. We’re going to move on to the next game—a huge one with Notre Dame coming in here Saturday at noon. They’re bringing a great football team, very well coached. Obviously, a Top 10 football team and probably one of the most talented teams that will walk into Heinz Field this year.

They’re a nationally recruited team. From recruiting and playing against them in the past, I’m not sure if Brian Kelly would admit this but they can go out there and have the pick of who they like to get in recruiting.”

On what he remembers from the 2013 Michigan State-Notre Dame game:

“I don’t remember those. Notre Dame had 220 yards of total offense and we lost the game but good football team. Brian Kelly will hose it out like they did and throw the ball down the field like he still does. So I expect to see the same.”

On if he was displeased with some of the 2013 officiating calls:

“That was so long ago I don’t even remember…I remember winning the Rose Bowl. [laughs] That’s about it.”

On how the team uses the extra days following last week’s Thursday night game:

“We give the players a lot of time off. They needed it. I don’t think it was easy for North Carolina, and it all depends on depth, but [we] had Friday off. They had an injury check to make sure the bodies are taken care of and to make sure nothing [that we didn’t know about after the game] came up. So we just had the guys check-in downstairs to make sure they feel good that way. Saturday, they got to enjoy themselves.

You know, these kids have a lot of stresses in their lives—socially, academically—and we put it on them athletically. Stress is maybe the biggest thing for these kids. So we let them have some time off and, frankly, the coaches needed some time to refresh as well. We put a lot of heavy work into that [UNC] game going into it. The coaches got to work on their iPads [post-Thursday].

I made all of my notes on my phone; I was taking notes during the game, watching—it’s always good to watch the live T.V. [telecast copy] game, too. I’ll try to go back and catch a couple of them during the week, whether it’s during the week or travelling on a plane. I’m sure the kids watched every lick of that football game.”

On if he watched the Notre Dame-Temple game and what were his impressions:

“I thought there was a great atmosphere in Philadelphia. Temple gave everything they had. They’re a very talented team and the coach does a great job of recruiting and they played a great game. You know, Notre Dame found a way to win, which is what they’ve done.”

On if he noticed any adverse effects of a short week after watching Thursday’s film:

“Well I think so. I think we had a little bit more emotion in the second half. Just as you’re watching the game, I’m seeing guys being more emotional in the second half—celebrating more so than the first half, and even though there was nothing to celebrate. I didn’t feel like we had the energy and passion we needed to have in the first half. It was the entire team all bottled up. I talked to them last night, and any time we win, we win as a team. Every time we lose, we lose as a team.

The first person who is going to take the blame is me. Did I have them prepared for the game? I thought we took some time off and gave them a chance to be fresh but, what is right? I don’t know how North Carolina practiced. I don’t know what their depth issue is compared to ours. We have to give them credit because they got it done and we didn’t.

“As a coach, you’re always searching for ‘why.’ That’s our job. First thing is, I’m going to look and see that we didn’t have them physically ready to go and emotionally ready to go because of  time. For the future, I hope we don’t schedule Thursday games with a Saturday game prior to—I hope we have an open week. I don’t think it benefits our kids in any way. Academically I think it’s tough.

We have our kids sitting in a hotel on a Wednesday night when they have class and some guys were at class Wednesday night and we had to have [football operations director] Chris LaSala go pick them up. That’s not good for anybody.”

On tailback Qadree Ollison playing with emotion:

“We talked. Coach [Jim] Chaney talked to him immediately during the game. Qadree’s a great kid. I want him to feel emotional; I want him to feel like that. It was good for us at Georgia Tech but you can’t act like that and go overboard.”

On receiver Tyler Boyd’s health:

“Tyler’s good. He ran yesterday and he’s ready to go. No question, he’s ready to go. I don’t want him getting hit like he normally would [during practice] but he’ll be fine.”

On the team’s pass rush being less productive the past three games:

“It’s called ‘make a play.’ M-A-P. That’s one of the things we talked about. We have to make a play. If we get a sack three out of the four times we missed, or five times that we missed? We had opportunities and we have them every week. We just need to get those and clean it up and make the plays.

“We’re just not making the tackles. So I don’t know. I’m just glad they came through untouched. It’s my job and Coach [Josh] Conklin’s job to get them there. You obviously have to give their quarterback credit for side-stepping and making them miss. We have to make sure we keep our eyes open. I don’t know if we have our eyes closed. I don’t know, it’s something we have to look at.”

On if he’s confident the pass rush is getting there and it’s just missed tackles:

“No, we weren’t getting there. When we did get there, we didn’t finish it. Sometimes we didn’t get there fast enough and held our DBs out to dry. I always say there’s some times where we should have some coverage down there and we don’t get it and there’s times where we have to make a tackle and help the DBs out. So, it takes 11. It takes 11 guys on that field. It’s never just the pass rush and never just the secondary. It’s a combination. I think of their 271 total yards they really had five plays for 201 yards. In five plays. If you pull those five plays up and say, “It is 11 guys not doing their job.

“You do what you do. You just have to be more consistent and you have to make a play. DeShone Kizer is a good player too—don’t forget that. [laughs] So, you’re facing some very athletic quarterbacks here in the ACC and then also with Kizer. You have to put your chest on him not just your hands. When you have an opportunity, you have to take advantage of it.”

On why the defense has gotten off to slow starts in the last three games:

“Just inconsistency. I mean, you put that first drive up [on the screen] and I could put on a clinic. Again, North Carolina has a good football team, but we’re not doing the little things right. Darryl [Render, sitting in the audience] can probably touch on it because he watched the first series yesterday as a defensive unit. It’s stuff that we’ve done since day one that we have to do.

Does the emotion get to you? We should be through that after the games we’ve been through. So it’s doing the little things right. If you don’t do the little things right then you’re not going to be a very good defense. That’s what we’ve showed the last couple of weeks. Just not doing the tiny, little things right. We should be able to stop the run better than we have. That’s the frustrating thing. If you throw a 71-yard pass, I’m okay with that. But you better stop the run. So that will be a major focus this week.”

On cornerback Lafayette Pitts:

“I anticipate him being back as a starter. He’s a senior captain for us, he’s had a great year for us. He just wasn’t playing good at that point [in the North Carolina game]. [UNC] was going after him and it was better to get him out of there and see what another guy did. Ryan Lewis came in and I think had like 27 snaps and did well. So it was good to get someone else in there. You guys have bad days, right?

“Everybody has a bad day and he didn’t have a particularly great day. He really didn’t. Besides getting hung out and one time he lost his leverage. He’s got to stay on the inside back shoulder and he let the guy come back across the field. But, you know, good articles and good plays. You know what? There are some things as coaches that we didn’t do well enough either. Like I said, it starts with me and the offensive and defensive staff. We have to find better ways to make our kids successful. Somehow, some way, we will do that.”

On if the defense has been blitzing less recently:

“I think we’re blitzing more. Which, you know, is sometimes a mistake. Right, Darryl [Render]? We should be able to play our base defense. I think when you start not trusting your base, then you start to do that. Our guys have to play better base defense so you won’t feel like you have to—as I call it—junk it up. I felt like we had to junk it up really the last two weeks because our guys aren’t paying attention to the details that they need to. So we have to get that done.”

On how this Notre Dame team compares to some of the teams he’s seen in the past:

“They’re as talented as you’re going to see. I mean, second-string quarterback, third-string quarterback, it doesn’t matter. When you look at Kizer compared to [Tommy] Rees, who was the last guy we defended, he’s a mobile guy. [Rees] is a pocket guy who’s going to throw it very well. He’s very intelligent and managed the game really well. Maybe Kizer [as a young player] doesn’t have as much of that, but it doesn’t show. I’m just saying Rees was ten out of ten when it came to that.

That had to be his specialty of getting Coach [Brian] Kelly the right play and putting that offense in a position to be successful. I can’t imagine a freshman, a young guy – what is he a redshirt freshman? I can’t imagine DeShone being as good as that. He can obviously make plays and he can make all the throws he needs to. He’s a big, big guy.”

On what he can do to make sure his players enter a big game like Notre Dame not overly emotional:

“We have to focus on us, ourselves. It’s not about what North Carolina did Thursday, it’s about what we didn’t do. And that will be the same focus this week. So it’s not who they are, it’s who we are.”

On why the down field passing game hasn’t been working recently:

“You watch the tape; you tell me. I mean it could be a lack of separation at times. At times it looked like [North Carolina] was running our route for us. So we have to get guys who can get open and get off the press. That’s our receivers’ job, and then look back for the ball when they are open. So there’s a little bit of everything. We knew they had a great pass defense and if you have to throw, you have to throw it. We knew they’d be all over you and make it hard for you to get open. That’s what they do.”

On if he’s happy with the state of the running game:

“I won’t be happy even if we rush for 300 yards a game, I guess. No, we need to get some explosive gains. We’re not getting that. Obviously James [Conner] isn’t coming back this week, so those guys are still a work in progress. They aren’t the ACC Player of the Year or all-conference players yet, and every week they’re young. I mean Darrin Hall didn’t get any reps last week and, again, he’s young. It just didn’t come to that, but he’ll get some snaps this weekend. Qadree Ollison is still the guy, but those other guys are all going to get opportunities in the Notre Dame game, for sure.

We need to spread it around and see who gets hot again. But we need someone to break a couple big runs. We have to have more explosive plays on offense and defense. Whether it’s deep balls or catching a short one and taking it to the house. We’ve got to get some more of those. It’s hard to be a great offense when you’re not getting explosive gains. I know you want deep balls, and so do I. But, again, it’s also what the offense is giving you and what you can do. That’s what we’re capable of doing right now and we’ve got to get better.”

On the clock issue at the end of the first half in the UNC game:

“We had a headphone problem. I thought the offense was going fast tempo in the two minute and was going to get on it. Obviously every time you get a first down the clock is going to keep running, but we didn’t do a good job of communicating. We had the headphone issue. That’s why I was upset, because we should’ve called a timeout. But you only have so many timeouts. You’d like to save them for when you get down near the goal line, so we had some headphone problems.

“It’s my job [to call timeouts]. No doubt. But it’s also got to be communicated. If I know they’re going to go, I don’t want to call a timeout without Coach Chaney knowing because we’re going to get up on the ball and call a play. That’s what we planned on early. You don’t want to use your timeouts until later on, if you can save them. Obviously you want to save your timeouts for if you have a chance to kick a field goal at the end, so that was the issue there.”

On whether Pitt’s success with fake punts begins to render it less effective:

“I don’t know. Ask Notre Dame. You would have thought they would have been ready for it but it all depends on what it is and how you do it. We’re always going to have a couple ready—different ones whether it’s a pass or run, we’ve had them whipped up since spring ball. And we’re going to have them available. If you’re good with them, you run with them. It’s going to take a little bit of pressure off the pressure people are putting on us.

They had some safe [personnel] out there. They had 6-foot-5, 6-foot-6 tackles out there and we got moving on them. They had their safe in there and gave up a six-yard gain. So does it work? I don’t know. It all depends on who it is and people have to look out for it as well.”

On backup quarterback Chad Voytik’s role in the offense:

“It’s diminished a bit as we go on but he’ll have a role this week. He has a role every week. Right now he’s a backup quarterback, and you can see how fast a backup tailback or quarterback, whether it’s in the NFL or college football, you can get in the spotlight really quick. You have to be ready to go. Chad is a leader on this football team and that’s where we are right now.”

On if it’s a good time to play Notre Dame:

“I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to play Notre Dame, am I right? I mean, it’s a good football team. It doesn’t matter if it’s within the first four games or late in the season, it doesn’t matter. We have to reevaluate what we have going and what we’ve done. We need to go out there and play football. Try to win a football game.”

On if it’s different this week because of a non-ACC game:

“It is a little bit. We talked about this last night. This game is a game that’s not going to affect the next three ACC games after that but we’re focusing on Notre Dame.”

On his impression of the Duke-Miami game:

“I was watching another game at the time but it is what it is.”

On Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer and his retirement:

“He’s a legend coach. Loyalty and legendary. How many coaches stick around like he does? That’s why I respect him, he’s my kind of guy. Not just because of the loyalty he’s shown. I’m sure he’s had plenty of times where he could have left Virginia Tech for another job, but that was his home. He made it a home. He’s kind of a legend there and he’ll be a legend in Hokie history.”

… and separate from this press release, you can’t make this stuff up.

Notre Dame fired an academic coach after she allegedly made football and basketball players from the school have sex with her daughter, according to the New York Daily News.

The Daily News obtained an internal school report of an unnamed academic coach saying she violated the university’s “values” and its “discrimination harassment policy.”