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- Thread starter pittmeister
- Start date
Don’t look now but this article was written from the posts on this board. Notice no author. No news here.
There’s a byline strike at the PG.
They've been doing it for a couple weeks now, both on line and in the actual newspaper, on those rare occasions that they bother to publish one. And every time I see something about it I seriously wonder what, exactly, do they think that they are accomplishing? Who really cares if a story has the writer's name at the top of it? It's not like they aren't writing stories. Is a Ron Cook column any less stupid because Cook's name isn't on it? Did the game story about the Stiller game on Sunday contain any more or fewer facts because the writer didn't put his name on it?
They are pissed off that they can't get the union contract that they want, but they know that if they go on an actual strike that none of them will have a job to come back to, so instead they do something that few people notice, and even fewer care about.
Yes.
So while the author doesn’t believe Narduzzi should be fired, he believes something needs to change and next year we need to see improvements.
Thank you... Captain Obvious.
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The PG continues their witch hunt over Pitt athletics. They will never see a click or $ from me. EVER
To me this is pretty simple. Pn will return and i dont think he will be pushed to change any staff. If next year isnt 8 wins or better than he will be in the hot seat. I would personally fire him but my guess is he gets one more season 2021 to get above that mark. I do not think he can survive at 7-5 past 2021.
So just 8 wins... next year... keeps Narduzzi from being put on the hot seat? Really?
$2 million + annually for 5 straight years of mediocre results and still he deserves more time to prove, what... that he may be capable yet of reaching the high end of mediocrity... 8 wins.
Wow.... talk about a cushy, high paying gig.
If you don’t think 8 wins is a good year for Pitt, then your expectations are too high.
Ha... Only interested in the kind of P5 job Pitt offers, where you are guaranteed at least $2 million and only expected to win 7 games a season and where 9 wins would make me a legend.
What’s sad (and I am sure he’s sick about) is that Narduzzi finally put together a defense good enough to carry even an average offense to 10 wins this season and yet unfortunately the offense was simply not capable of playing close to average in many games.
Narduzzi took the job promising much better results than he has delivered so far. Time has almost run out for him to prove he has what it takes to recruit and hire and coach up to an ability above the high side of mediocrity.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Just curious, how long should it take to turn around a football program that is perceived as a dumpster fire by everyone, including the local news media? I've been as big of a critic of Narduzzi as anyone but does anyone really think blowing up the program and hiring a new staff helps right now? The PG just pulls out the other article they recycle titled "Pitt changing coaching staff, again". There is some stability in the program right now and that's pretty good news considering what the five or six years prior to his arrival looked like.
The short answer is.... 1-4 years depending on the circumstances.
Here’s the longer response. I would not call PN a bust. I think we all expected a little more to this point though. It‘s becoming frustrating that every time he seems to be about to get his team over the hump of mediocrity (7or 8 wins) to a place that pretty much everyone can feel is a step forward, things fall apart.
Personally, I was pretty excited about his hire. I believed him when he said he was going to bring Pitt back to it’s winning ways and to expect it right away. He did at least win 8 games two years in a row with a team loaded with talent ( more than his predecessor was able to do).
With a new head coach, it is reasonable to expect to see some early hiccups as you learn the nuances of the job. In his first two years we saw a few of them i(bad losses) we also saw some impressive wins.
Here’s the thing: a good coach should continue to improve, making better decisions and winning more games. Unfortunately, PN made a drastic mistake in hiring his buddy Watson after Canada left. That mistake lead not only to terrible offense productivity (including poor play calling and players being used improperly), but also a poor job in recruiting at multiple positions. The result is what we now see today on offense. That egregious mistake in hiring Watson and the nosedive the offense took because of it, shows Narduzzi was still struggling with key Head coaching decisions.
He and his defensive staff have done a nice job on the defensive side recruiting and coaching, but as a HC he is expected to do more. He is responsible for making sure the players coming in to the program on the offense side are talented and deep at all positions.
This year’s defense was as good as the offense that Canada coached. The thought that this year’s inept offense is going to somehow be much better next year is hard to swallow. Heck, Kenny was saying this year’s offense would be much better before the season...and who is likely to run next year’s offense.
Do I want Narduzzi fired? No. But if he can’t recruit better and deliver enough wins to take Pitt to the next level as he promised, what are you supposed to do. Losing the Miami game because the offense could not do much of anything was bad. Going scoreless against VT was downright embarrassing. Losing to a very mediocre BC team with an inferior defense at the end of the season was demoralizing.
PN once again squander a key opportunity to end the season on a high note. One more win would have at least kept alive the possibility for 9 wins. There is a pretty good chance Pitt loses at least one of their best D lineman (maybe their best two). They’re going to lose both starting corners and maybe possible more key players. How much better will the offense really be next year. This was supposed to be the year for a big step forward. Enough with the excuses. How many years do you think it should take?
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It isn’t that simple. The almost mythical 2009 season for wanny had 10 wins, but it was NOT a good season.
he didn’t take over a dumpster fire. Isn’t it worrying to you that his best two years were his first 2 with the last coach’s players and he had gotten pretty significantly worse since....and yes, I know that pitt might win as many games as 2016, but that schedule was exponentially more difficult. This pitt team would have had 4 wins against that schedule.
Granted the last two games were especially disappointing, and the offense and special teams were mostly painful to watch this season. On the other hand, I made money taking the over on number of Pitt wins, so maybe some perspective is in order.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
If you thought everything was fine when he got here, you're completely unreasonable. Chryst was the last guy since Wanny to last more than a year -- one guy didn't even last a week -- and he was running around the country telling Pitt's top recruits they should wait to commit if they wanted to play for him. Your memory of 2016 is also pretty cloudy. Yeah, better schedule but go look at some of those losses. Certainly not "exponentially more difficult". You're using words you don't understand if you believe that.
Narduzzi isn't setting the world on fire but he's providing much needed stability to the program for the first time in a while. If you don't value that, consider what happens if Narduzzi was let go today. Probably lose the top half of the recruiting class, a bunch of your best kids enter the portal, and you end up rebuilding from nothing. Again. The funniest part is that you'll be here in five years telling us that Narduzzi was better than whoever Pitt ends up with.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
You sort of talked yourself out of what you were thinking.
The circumstances here aren't the same as someone walking into a blue blood that was already decent with a massive budget and prior P5 HC experience. Pitt has been playing musical coaches since the NC, with the exception of Wlat, and has run whatever tradition and pedigree it had into the ground. So yeah, it's not really reasonable for Pitt fans to assume 1-4 years is doable or you end up in the same rabbit hole you've been rushing down for almost 50 years.
Do you want stability and to keep going 7-6 or 8-5 or do you want to keep making changes hoping to get better but most likely going 7-6 or 8-5 anyway?
I had serious questions about the direction of Pitt football when they recruited players the caliber of Elijah Zeise.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Right now, Pitt needs stability or there's no chance of improvement. Recruiting has started to move the right way. If that continues, the product on the field will improve as well. This year's roster composite was 42 after two very pedestrian classes. This year's class is much better and probably very close to Pitt's average. Once the roster catches up, the results should come.
You might as well root for another school then because 10 wins under any circumstance is a very good year for Pitt.
If those are my two options -Guaranteed steady mediocrity... or a chance for better with the downside being the team stats mediocre - give me option 2 every day of the week.
There is an option 3: The Pitt administration lets PN know 7 and 8 win seasons are not enough and offer to green-light extra funds to secure whatever he needs to make sure the offense has talent coming in like the defense (e.g. maybe hire one of the best damn recruiters in the country on the offensive side of the ball).
Stability is nice, but they didn’t hire PN just for stability. They also hired him believing he could (as he promised) get the team back to winning 9 and 10 and even more wins a season. Heck even a 10 win season every 4 years wouldn’t be bad. Maybe, just maybe PN is a very good DC who is just not cut out to be a HC.
It is this simple: PN needs to shows he can bring in legit P5 talent on offense beyond a couple of good WR (which he seems to have in the fold for next year) and while showing he can get more out of the offensive players on the roster (which has been an issue for 3 years now) or Pitt needs to thank him and move on.
Part of the problem with the argument is that it now has been 5 years, not 1-4 years as mentioned.
What is his excuse? He promised he would win more than he has when he was hired. He needs to deliver. If he needs more time, I want a damn good reason (if I am the AD) with some evidence that strongly supports his talk about delivering this time around.
The nosedive at the end of this season would not helping his cause, if I were the AD. The fact that Kenny and the rest of this offense (which sits at the bottom of the ACC in many categories and was the reason for every loss) is what we will likely seeing out there next year Is not helping his cause either. How is PN convincing anyone this offense will be better (and thus this team) without any major upgrades to this side of the ball?
Enquiring minds want to know.
yep, players like Conner, Boyd, Whitehead, biz, holtz. Maddox, Lewis, savage, weah, ollison, hall...they were ALL MAC level players.
If you want to see MAC level, look at our entire offense.
First, if you don’t think that the 2016 schedule was exponentially harder than this year, I have no idea what to tell you. The amount of good to great offenses and QB’s they went up against that year is astounding. They played three future first round QB’s and several others in NFL rosters. You cannot say the same about this year.
Two, I firmly believe that if Narduzzi left today, the next coach inherits a much weaker team than pat inherited. He inherited a bunch of talent in both sides of the ball, and while there is defensive talent on this teams, there probably isn’t a single player in the offensive side who will get drafted.
Three, stability is great, but to trade off for below average performance and mediocrity isn’t worth it.
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