What Pitt Head Coach Pat Narduzzi Said About West Virginia

Monday afternoon, Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi held his weekly press conference to discuss this Saturday’s game against West Virginia. Here’s what he said about the Backyard Brawl versus the Mountaineers.

Thoughts on the Backyard Brawl

“Obviously a gigantic, a really, really big rivalry game here. There’s maybe not many more important rivalry games in the country. You guys can all talk about the River City Rivalry…we all know that’s not really a rivalry. This weekend, if you don’t know anything about rivalries, this is the one. This is the one that people in Pittsburgh live for. This is the one that people down south live for.”

Initial thoughts on West Virginia

“They got a heck of a football team. Neal Brown is a heck of a football coach. He’s calling the plays and schematically, he’s very similar to (Scott) Satterfield. I’ve got a ton of respect for him as a football coach, as a scheme guy. He does really good stuff. They will challenge you really in all three phases of the game. They’ll be multiple on defense running different fronts and coverages – none that we haven’t seen thus far. We may even see some three safety stuff, who knows?”

WVU’s offense

“Offensively, it all starts with their quarterback Garrett Greene. I think him and (CJ) Donaldson in the backfield with Jahiem (White) in the backfield as well, they like to run the ball, they’re going to throw RPOs. And I think they’ve got really talented receivers out there. They got deep ball guys, they got intermediate guys, they got guys that can make plays. We’ll see a bunch of RPOs, we’ll see deep balls, we’ll see it all.”

Teaching his players about the Backyard Brawl

“I think they know. I mean, 73 players on this team were on that trip last year or in that game. Probably got another 46 or 50 guys that were here in ’22 when we played them at home. But yeah, we’re going to educate them on the rivalry, what it is.”

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