Narduzzi On His QBs: 'There's Competition'
PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) -- Believe or not, football season is right around the corner. Camps are starting up all over the country and it's not different for the University of Pittsburgh and head football coach Pat Narduzzi.
Narduzzi joined the Fan Morning Show for a full hour on Thursday morning to discuss his team heading into the 2017-18 season.
Pitt landed USC transfer QB Max Browne in the off-season and he is the number one guy listed on Pitt's depth chart right now. But if you think he has the job locked up... not so fast!
"Max Browne is the guy that came out of spring thought as the number one guy, but Ben DiNucci is right there," said Narduzzi. "There's competition. And if Max Browne thinks he's got it all by himself he'll have another thing coming."
Contrary to last season's QB competition between Chad Voytik and Nathan Peterman, Narduzzi would like to name a starter before heading into the season.
"I think I made that mistake my first year (having a QB competition into the season), I think I cost us the Iowa game because I couldn't make (a decision) fast enough," said Narduzzi. "I'd like the kids to make that decision, I don't really want to name the starting quarterback, I want it to be so visible that everybody knows. I'd like to have that thing set in stone before we start the season, but if we have to go into it and see who's going to make plays, we'll do that."
Narduzzi hit a slew of other topics during his time in-studio, including whether he has come to trust his secondary more.
"I'll let you know after a few games," said Narduzzi. "We're going to start off with a bang with Penn State and Oklahoma State after that Youngstown game. After three games, we'll know where we are."
Speaking of Penn State, Narduzzi listened to a clip of Penn State head coach James Franklin saying that the Nittany Lions were only concerned about Akron. Akron. Akron. Akron. And not Pitt to start the season.
"You know what, the schedule came out sometime in February, March, I don't know when the schedule came out," he said. "They put 12 teams on our schedule so we've spent the entire spring and summer really evaluating our talent. Our teams (as well), breaking them down offensively, defensively. We're going to take it with Youngstown State as the number one game, the number two game is Penn State and then we go on to Oklahoma State, then we go on to Georgia Tech and we're going to finish in the ACC conference, as you know. Every game is important."
As we know, Narduzzi shows a lot of emotion and passion on the sidelines and he says that he never wants to have you catch him looking bored or out of it.
"I'm going to try to always protect our football team and I don't ever want to be that guy that (people) say, 'Hey, he doesn't really care, he looks like disengaged.' I'm going to be engaged. I'm going to try to show my personality," he said. "I am not going to get a 15 yard penalty, I can tell you that. That's not going to be me, so I'm going to have to control that. But we were allowed to do it a year ago so I probably went as close to the edge as I could."
You can listen to part 2 of interview with Pat Narduzzi on the Fan Morning Show below.