The head coach is supposed to create the environment and instill the culture that leads to a winning program. When things go wrong, the coach is then to address each problem and either solve it or mitigate it so that the team's campaign isn't compromised.
Well, consider Pitt's 2020 season compromised.
Pat Narduzzi saw several issues arise Pitt's three-game win streak to start the season. Sure, each game resulted in a win, but dropped passes, inconsistent offensive line play and a defense that started out an an all-time best pace for sacks and defensive performance had given up multiple big plays.
He was saying the right things after those wins when he would address that the team did have things to work on going into their next games. He said how his players were still hungry after their 21-10 win over Syracuse after several mistakes, and the same was said after the team's 23-20 win over Louisville.
But after four consecutive losses to drop the team to 3-4, answers are needed before this season spirals into the worst of Narduzzi's tenure. His worst season was 2017 when Pitt finished 5-7 with a .417 win percentage, which the team's current .429 win percentage hovers just above right now.
When Narduzzi was asked Friday whether he could mention any group that's become more consistent or shown improvement in the team's bye week, he didn't give a specific answer and went into how experienced and improved Notre Dame was in the Fighting Irish's 45-3 blowout of Pitt last Saturday.
"It goes week by week," Narduzzi said. "You look really good against Austin Peay but then don't look good against Notre Dame. You look at those 129 starts on the offensive line and the improvement of Ian Book, he's a different dude than we faced last time. There are different guys we're going against. Everybody's getting better every year and every week. Just look at some of our pressure and you'll see some of our guys doing some good stuff but then getting blocked."
Yes, Notre Dame is talented and experienced and that's the reason that team is ranked No. 4 in the country. But the question was about how Pitt has gotten better or at least more consistent in any department on offense or defense, and he continued with a long response about Notre Dame's strength.
"Those other guys are on scholarship for a reason," Narduzzi continued. "We had a lot of one-on-one blocks on front where even Calijah Kancey might win a matchup but be a half-second too late and it's a big play. If it's an average line that looks a lot different. But you couldn't probably face a more experienced offense or defense than that team. You try to repair improvements but some things don't look as good because of who you're going against."
The biggest element of the bye week that Narduzzi says benefited his team was the rest, as he said the team only practiced twice this week after playing for seven straight weeks. He made a point to mention how Pitt was one of only five teams in the power five conferences to pull off a schedule like that.
"We've gotten much needed rest for our team mentally and physically," Narduzzi said of the bye week. "Our kids probably weren't physically prepared like I'd like them to be last week. I have the same thoughts of that Notre Dame now as I did then. When you watch our kids on tape we weren't as fast as we needed to be. We're one of five power five teams that have worked through these crazy times we're in and played seven football games. We didn't play four non-conference opponents to start the year. It was one non-conference game and then six straight physical and tough ACC football teams. No one else has done that. It was a conservative Thursday before the game and I kind of cut it back but maybe I didn't cut it back enough. I think our kids had mental fatigue and physical fatigue and we faced a good football team."
Narduzzi's method of helping his players recover was to give them extra time off this week and keep practices light, without pads and shorter. His plan is to let that help the team physically from playing for two straight months.
"We've had a good week and our kids needed it," Narduzzi said. "We had two days of practice this week, none of which in full pads. Just running around and working the fundamentals of what we need to do to get better. We look at a lot of tape and self-evaluate like we normally do on a bye week. When I started the season I though a week eight bye was OK. But when you get into the grind of it, it's not OK."
But he also mentioned how the break was important for his players' mental health as much as their physical health after losing every game the team played in October.
"Every day is a mental game whether you win or lose and you have guys that can't deal with success or failure," Narduzzi said. "That's always there and there's definitely frustration during the game, but our kids rebound quickly and they're ready for the next challenge. Our practices were good but only an hour and 20 minutes, I'm going to get them fresh. I've got to get our guys playing fast and feeling fresh with their legs underneath them. It's hard to see the speed of a defensive lineman, but I think with seven straight grinds, there's more than what you see on the field."
"From the training room and all the hours they spend here," Narduzzi continued. "There's so many things involved, including being tested for COVID all week. It's a long season and our kids have done a heck of job getting through the games we have because you see the problems at Wisconsin and Clemson. Our kids have done a great job at that but that doesn't give us a win or a loss."
Back to how a head coach helps a team figure out getting those wins in the middle of a losing streak, Narduzzi does need to figure out how to fix Pitt's problems before facing Florida State on Saturday, November 7th at Doak Campbell Stadium.
Pitt's strength is clear in that it still stops the run with an aggressive and physical group up front that leads the ACC with the fewest rushing yards allowed with 69.1 per game, and leads the ACC with 31 sacks.
Several players in that group rank among the nation's best in FBS play, as Patrick Jones is tied for the most sacks in the country with seven sacks and Rashad Weaver is tied for the eighth most with 4.5. Weaver and Jones are tied for sixth in the country with nine tackles for loss, but SirVocea Dennis leads the team and is second in FBS play with ten tackles for loss.
But Narduzzi is the team's head coach. Not the defensive line coach or the linebacker coach, or even the defensive coordinator. He's the head coach, and the problems across the board stem too far and wide for Pitt to accept that in exchange for high ranking performances by its defenders in the front seven.
The problems are abundant on an offense that now ranks eleventh in scoring in the ACC with 25.7 points per game. Granted, the team has been without starting quarterback Kenny Pickett for the past two weeks in facing ranked opponents, but based off Narduzzi's response about the prospect of Pickett playing next week, Pitt may have to continue adjusting without him.
"He's where we were a week ago," Narduzzi said of Pickett's recovery. "We take it day by day. Joey Yellen's taken most of the reps this week. We'll see, all we can do is hope and pray. He's working his tail off and he's tough, but I wish I could give you an answer. I don't know."
Based off how Narduzzi's responded to injury questions all season, this response tells me there's slim to no chance that Pickett is playing next week unless he's disguising the truth to keep Florida State guessing.
So how does the offense adjust without Pickett? It will be tough to put faith in a rushing offense whose 98 yards per game ranks next to last in the ACC.
"The bye week is big because you have a lot of time to evaluate and see what you are for sure," Narduzzi continued on how the team has improved. "It starts with fundamentals and making sure we're doing our job regardless of our coverage or our blocking scheme up front. We have to get back to the basics and we had more time to do that and that's where it starts."
Pitt's offensive line was supposed to have a much better year than it has showed in 2020. Jimmy Morrissey as the captain at center was supposed to be the centerpiece in an experienced group with veteran players like Carter Warren and Bryce Hargrove, but the group hasn't found any level of consistency yet.
This problem has existed ever since Pitt started its ACC play against Syracuse and has only gotten worse as the season continued. In Pitt's first three wins the Panthers averaged 143.3 rushing yards per game, which would still only rank 12th of 15 ACC teams if that was their season average. But the Panthers have averaged just 64 rushing yards across their four consecutive losses, making it even harder for Yellen to work in his first two starts for the program.
The problems have been the same all season in that Pitt cannot win battles up front and get bullied by even average ACC opponents. Here's N.C. State's rushing defense that ranks ninth in the ACC, giving up 182 rushing yards per game. Watch how Pitt loses every single battle across the line of scrimmage, giving nowhere for Vincent Davis to go:
That's been the story of Pitt's rushing offense all season. When asked how the team addressed issues on offense during the bye week, Narduzzi remained vague and pointed out the team's frustrations and misfortune.
"We looked at everything," Narduzzi said of the offense. "We've had a few extra meetings to see tendencies. We could look and point the finger out wherever, but whenever you do that there's four pointing right back at you. We've got to be better, but better in all three phases. We had twelve penalties in the game and ten of the twelve were in the second half. Those were frustration penalties. But when you self-evaluate yourself you have to look at what's going on. You had a backup quarterback the last two weeks against two of the best defenses and teams in the country. It is what it is. There's a lot of different reasons that play into it."
Maybe, but at the end of the day the Panthers still need to give its defense a break and put up points to keep the team in games. Narduzzi says his team is still focused on making week to week changes rather than holistic ones.
"We're not going to do any evaluating until after the season," Narduzzi continued. "The first thing on everyone's mind is what we did last week. I'm not going to sit here and evaluate the whole season right now. I could sit here and do it week by week or play by play, but we have to figure out how to get our playmakers the ball. Those are things we've addressed this week. We'll evaluate at the end of the year, but right now we need to regroup and play together to put a better brand on the field."
Paging Mark Whipple, because if the offense continues on the path it's been this season the Panthers' offense could regroup in the offseason without him.
The problems don't just stop at the line, as receivers thought to be consistent last year are now dropping passes left and right. Drops have come from receivers like Taysir Mack who made the game-winning one-handed touchdown catch in the Quicken Lane Bowl last year for Narduzzi's first bowl win in his tenure, to younger players expected to step up like Shocky Jacques-Louis.
Here's arguably Mack's worst and most pivotal drop of the season when Pickett perfectly placed the ball to a wide open Mack in the end zone on a two point conversion in the fourth quarter against N.C. State. There's no excuse for a senior who was supposed to be a big part of the offense making mistakes like this, on top of all his other drops, that cost games.
Had Mack caught this pass, Pitt would've had a seven point lead over N.C. State before their last touchdown and might've forced overtime in what ended up a one-point loss:
The defense isn't exempt either from the big mistakes category either.
Big passes have become all too frequent for a defense that started off allowing only 121 passing yards and ten points per game in its three game win streak to start the season, as now those averages have skyrocketed to allowing 308.8 passing yards per game and 34.3 points per game in the team's four straight losses.
And what makes matters worse is the problems that cause those horrid results are numerous and not one department that takes a simple film session adjustment to address.
Here's senior cornerback Jason Pinnock coming off his man in a zone defense to guard someone Paris Ford already had locked down to give D'Eriq King an easy touchdown pass:
Those kind of communication breakdowns have happened more than enough to be noted as a problem, but even when Pitt has properly communicated in the secondary its defensive backs have gotten bullied by bigger-bodied receivers and tight ends all season.
Here's Notre Dame's Ben Skowronek absolutely bullying Marquis Williams on a 73-yard touchdown bomb. It doesn't take a football genius to see how a 6-foot-3, 224 lbs. receiver like Skowronek could push around a 5-foot-9, 175 lbs. cornerback like Williams when he's left in single coverage:
And yet, Narduzzi has remained adamant that Pitt's defense is going to stick to its identity even as offenses shred the Panthers.
But when asked about Pitt's defensive scheme on Friday, Narduzzi said that his team does help its secondary at times, citing short fields as the bigger problem for the defense.
"We do both of those," Narduzzi said when asked if Pitt would drop more defenders into coverage instead of committing more defenders to the box. "That's part of our plan and part of what we do when we drop seven and play Cover 3. It comes down to who you're playing against and what they do. I don't know where our defense ranks in the country but we're not going to grade anyone off of one game. We gave up three touchdowns on defense from short fields and a blocked punt on a touchdown and that's 28 points. You subtract 28 from 45 or whatever it was, we can't give up short fields. I see it all over the place and I don't think it's any different. We're going to make plays, they're going to make plays and we just hope to make more plays and score more points than the other team. We're not going to be perfect I'll tell you that."
Narduzzi can say that his defense balances its presence in the box with defenders in deep coverage, but the tape doesn't show that. If it did, we would see plenty of those deep balls being challenged by both a cornerback and a safety, or a linebacker and a cornerback at the same time.
That's not happened enough in this team's 2020 campaign, and now the defense has dropped from being one of the most respectable units in the country to being known for giving up big plays every game for a month.
Now it's a legitimate question whether this season is going to have an impact on Narduzzi's tenure. He signed a seven-year extension in 2017 just a year after his Panthers upset Penn State and eventual national champion Clemson in the same season. But this was supposed to be the year that defined his tenure with several seniors and veterans in the program who he's developed in this being his sixth year coaching the team.
When asked if he's worried about how his program would look if it continues its skid into it's final four games, Narduzzi tried to play off the significance of how this season could end.
"Every game is important," Narduzzi said. "Not worried about the perception outside, I'm worried about the perception inside. I'm worried about what our kids and coaches feel. I don't read about what you guys say out there nor do I like to. I know how it is, so I don't even look and that's the way the world is."
Regardless of how Narduzzi sees the importance of the team's final games, these games are going to be vital to determine just how many of the fires he can put out that have become the major problems the Panthers have seen on the field.
The Panthers face three unranked teams in Florida State, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech before facing the No. 1 ranked Clemson Tigers. Based off Pitt's losses to Boston College and N.C. State, no game can be considered a given win in the team's home stretch to finish ACC play.
If Narduzzi's team finishes with only the three wins, it would be his worst season by far and arguably the biggest disappointment the program has had to stomach in a decade. It would also be a major sign that the program needs changes after what could be a horrible collapse.