After a hectic day in Pitt’s upper campus, the football Panthers were back at it Thursday morning in the Athletic Department’s “southern wing,” holding practice No. 9 of spring camp 2018.
The buzz around the practice, of course, was the hiring of new basketball coach Jeff Capel, who was in attendance for the start of the morning session and, at the invitation of Pat Narduzzi, addressed the football team before practice. A pretty big crowd of various University and Athletic Department personnel as well as high school coaches and others were on the sidelines, too, so it was a lively environment.
I think, in general, there is some energy coming from the basketball hire. Any impact on the football team’s practice was probably negligible, but there’s no doubt that everyone around Pitt feels like this latest coaching search turned out pretty good.
- As it relates to the football team itself, there were a few things of note Thursday morning. One storyline I haven’t really delved into much - for obvious reasons - is injuries. We all know the hardline stance Pat Narduzzi has about injuries: he doesn’t like to talk about them or hear them being talked about.
So I’ll say this. Yes, a number of players are limited this spring with what appears to be varying degrees of ailments. But I’ll also say that there doesn’t seem to be anything too serious - by which I mean, anything that would be serious enough to draw concern about long-term implications. For the most part, it seems like the coaches are being smart with these situations.
If someone is a little banged up, keep them on the sidelines and let them work with the strength staff rather than rushing them back onto the field where a minor injury could turn into something major.
- For the guys who are on the field, we saw a lot of the same personnel alignments that we saw on Tuesday. Primarily, I’m talking about the offensive line.
What’s more interesting to me, at least on Thursday morning, was the linebackers. The coaches are still getting Elijah Zeise work at both outside spots, sometimes playing Money, where he was last season, and sometimes playing Star, where he worked two years ago. He seems to be the most flexible of the linebackers and appears to be the one getting most work at multiple positions.
I think Quintin Wirginis and Elias Reynolds are pretty locked in as the middle linebackers (Kyle Nunn, too; I would say he’s No. 3 behind Wirginis and Reynolds). Saleem Brightwell is at Money and Oluwaseun Idowu is a Star, with Zeise playing both. Anthony McKee and Jalen Williams are also at the Star, while Chase Pine and the other redshirt freshmen - Albert Tucker and Cam Bright - seem to be working at the Money spot.
Rob Harley told us earlier this spring that he sees those two outside positions as interchangeable; personally, I think most of those guys are more or less locked into their spots, particularly the younger players who are focused on learning the defense.
- One thing I noticed on Thursday morning was during one of the final practice periods we saw in the media viewing window. Harley and grad assistant Mike Caprara were spending a lot of time focusing on the Money and middle linebackers and how they react to run-pass option plays.
This was pretty interesting to watch and will be pretty important for the defense this season. Last year, opposing quarterbacks took advantage of Pitt’s inexperience at linebacker and used those RPO’s and other play-fakes to open up big plays (Mason Rudolph comes to mind). As the season went on, I think the linebackers got better at defending those plays, but there was still a lot of room to grow.
As such, I imagine they’re spending time on that stuff just about every practice - which makes sense, because defending those plays well can really only come through repetition. You have to follow the ball, but you also have to make sure you know where the ball is going first. Then, once the quarterback has committed to something - anything, whether it’s run, pass or keep - you have to react quickly.
So you do it over and over and over, and that was the case Thursday morning. Pat Narduzzi was even getting involved in the drills, assisting Harley and Caprara and offer tips and pointers to the linebackers.
- We’ll have videos, photos, articles and more from practice later.
The buzz around the practice, of course, was the hiring of new basketball coach Jeff Capel, who was in attendance for the start of the morning session and, at the invitation of Pat Narduzzi, addressed the football team before practice. A pretty big crowd of various University and Athletic Department personnel as well as high school coaches and others were on the sidelines, too, so it was a lively environment.
I think, in general, there is some energy coming from the basketball hire. Any impact on the football team’s practice was probably negligible, but there’s no doubt that everyone around Pitt feels like this latest coaching search turned out pretty good.
- As it relates to the football team itself, there were a few things of note Thursday morning. One storyline I haven’t really delved into much - for obvious reasons - is injuries. We all know the hardline stance Pat Narduzzi has about injuries: he doesn’t like to talk about them or hear them being talked about.
So I’ll say this. Yes, a number of players are limited this spring with what appears to be varying degrees of ailments. But I’ll also say that there doesn’t seem to be anything too serious - by which I mean, anything that would be serious enough to draw concern about long-term implications. For the most part, it seems like the coaches are being smart with these situations.
If someone is a little banged up, keep them on the sidelines and let them work with the strength staff rather than rushing them back onto the field where a minor injury could turn into something major.
- For the guys who are on the field, we saw a lot of the same personnel alignments that we saw on Tuesday. Primarily, I’m talking about the offensive line.
What’s more interesting to me, at least on Thursday morning, was the linebackers. The coaches are still getting Elijah Zeise work at both outside spots, sometimes playing Money, where he was last season, and sometimes playing Star, where he worked two years ago. He seems to be the most flexible of the linebackers and appears to be the one getting most work at multiple positions.
I think Quintin Wirginis and Elias Reynolds are pretty locked in as the middle linebackers (Kyle Nunn, too; I would say he’s No. 3 behind Wirginis and Reynolds). Saleem Brightwell is at Money and Oluwaseun Idowu is a Star, with Zeise playing both. Anthony McKee and Jalen Williams are also at the Star, while Chase Pine and the other redshirt freshmen - Albert Tucker and Cam Bright - seem to be working at the Money spot.
Rob Harley told us earlier this spring that he sees those two outside positions as interchangeable; personally, I think most of those guys are more or less locked into their spots, particularly the younger players who are focused on learning the defense.
- One thing I noticed on Thursday morning was during one of the final practice periods we saw in the media viewing window. Harley and grad assistant Mike Caprara were spending a lot of time focusing on the Money and middle linebackers and how they react to run-pass option plays.
This was pretty interesting to watch and will be pretty important for the defense this season. Last year, opposing quarterbacks took advantage of Pitt’s inexperience at linebacker and used those RPO’s and other play-fakes to open up big plays (Mason Rudolph comes to mind). As the season went on, I think the linebackers got better at defending those plays, but there was still a lot of room to grow.
As such, I imagine they’re spending time on that stuff just about every practice - which makes sense, because defending those plays well can really only come through repetition. You have to follow the ball, but you also have to make sure you know where the ball is going first. Then, once the quarterback has committed to something - anything, whether it’s run, pass or keep - you have to react quickly.
So you do it over and over and over, and that was the case Thursday morning. Pat Narduzzi was even getting involved in the drills, assisting Harley and Caprara and offer tips and pointers to the linebackers.
- We’ll have videos, photos, articles and more from practice later.
