After Pitt's game against Georgia Tech was postponed to Dec. 12 due to COVID-19 concerns, plenty of questions remained as to the status of the football team. There was no indication of players testing positive, how many players might be in quarantine due to contact tracing, or any indication of how the Panthers would move forward after the postponed game.
On Monday, Pat Narduzzi gave further indications that many of those same questions are unanswered for the program. At the time of his speaking, Pitt's head coach still didn't even have the full COVID-19 testing results, nor did he know when the Panthers' next practice would be allowed.
"We'll find out later this afternoon, I hope," Narduzzi said. "I don't think I'll tweet anything out. We tested on Sunday, which was yesterday around 1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m. And all our kids are going through that process right now. We have no results from our Sunday test. If we [don't] get bad news in those tests, which I hope we don't, we've told our kids we plan on practicing Tuesday and so forth. But it all comes down to what happens on our Sunday tests as it does every week and then our Wednesday test and Friday test. But the best thing is that we don't have to travel this week, so we're not really putting our kids on an airplane for two hours."
Narduzzi has remained vague about Pitt's injuries and COVID-19 issues all season, so don't expect him to provide any specifics on who might've tested positive or won't be available for Pitt's upcoming game against Virginia Tech this Saturday at 4 p.m. at Heinz Field. But he did give some indication that Pitt had a hand in this game not happening, even without Pitt releasing any information on whether players had contracted the coronavirus or would miss a game.
"You feel like you lost this week," Narduzzi said. "I felt like Saturday . . . we lost that game. I've told you we've won a lot of them through the year. And every Saturday when we get to that game, it's a win. It's a win to get there. And we lost this one. We didn't get there. That's disappointing. I didn't want to let Georgia Tech down. Obviously, they had some issues, as well. Again there's a lot of teams around the country that are having issues, NFL and college. But that's what it is."
Pitt hasn't had any players miss a game due to COVID-19 complications for seven consecutive games. That track record does suggest the team might not actually have an active outbreak right now. Georgia Tech's Director of Athletics indicated the Yellow Jackets wouldn't have been able to field a full team on Saturday, and that played a big role in the postponement.
But as COVID-19 infection and death rates spike around the country, and in Pennsylvania, concerns over Pitt's players contracting the coronavirus are legitimate. And as he has all season, Narduzzi wouldn't provide any indication on specifics of whether the team had players who did test positive or if there was a small outbreak among the team.
"I'm not going to get into numbers," Narduzzi said when asked how many player he expected to miss the Georgia Tech game last week. "I don't make those decisions (on whether we play). Our chief medical officers make that decision, as far as whether you could or couldn't. I can tell you this: The numbers weren't so bad that we probably couldn't have played it. Okay. If we've got 22, we can play. We weren't down to 21, I can tell you that. In the ACC we don't have a number put on that thing because I don't think you can put a number on our student-athletes."
"Since the beginning, I've told our kids, I'm going to fight for them. Since July and August it was about their safety and taking care of them -- not taking care of me, taking care of them and making sure they're safe. The one thing I would say is I think it's a lot different when you're home than when you're playing on the road. We just (don't want to) jeopardize the next week and next week, and we jeopardize our football team and our kids. And I'm not going to do that for them or the parents. Again, it's the chief medical people making those decisions obviously, but that's how I feel at heart, as well."
Those decisions came down late last Thursday, just hours after Narduzzi finished his press conference discussing the Georgia Tech game. That's how delicate the status of playing and not playing is for college football teams, as an entire week of preparation can be put in, all before a simple text message or e-mail could let the coaching staff know that the game can't be played.
"You don't know until really Friday at midnight or Saturday morning when you wake up you get your text message that says, hey, everything's good," Narduzzi said when asked how he felt about the team's chances to play Virginia Tech this weekend. "And again it's been like that -- we've gotten used to it. We've gotten spoiled that the results have been great. So we expect to play Virginia Tech this weekend."
What Narduzzi does know is how his staff felt over the weekend after not playing. Pitt had just ended its four-game losing streak by beating Florida State with its first road win of the season and was looking to build momentum before coming back to Heinz Field for the team's last home game of the season.
"Our kids put all the work in. It's like putting all the work in, you study your tail off for that English exam," Narduzzi said. "All of a sudden the teacher at the last second says, we're not having that. You're, like, wait a second. I did all that stuff for nothing? That's kind of where we are. We expect to play the Virginia Tech game. We hope we're not let down again. It will be up to our team and players on how safe they are out there. And we talk constantly about wearing a mask, staying socially distanced and pretend everybody has got it. Everybody on your team has got it, and everybody in Oakland has got it. Everywhere you go you've got to be right here and wash your hands and be more accountable for that."
Pitt has also taken every precaution to make sure its facilities are kept clean to prevent spread of the coronavirus. They share the same training facility as the Steelers.
"We deep clean it probably three or four times a week," Narduzzi said. "But even after that it got deep cleaned, we were slow to go in the locker room, make sure we're showering in small groups like we normally do. Our protocol here in our facility we feel is pretty safe. I don't think anything's happening here but you just don't know how a guy gets into your bubble. There's just so many unknowns, but what you look at as a staff is what happened and how do we fix it."
• Narduzzi also discussed the status of Pitt's upcoming senior day this Saturday, as the upcoming game against Virginia Tech will be Pitt's final home game of the season. That's usually the marker for Pitt's seniors to be celebrated and honored along with their families.
But the NCAA's waiver due to COVID-19 has made it so players could play this entire season and not lose a season of ineligibility. Some seniors may decide that this won't be their last season, and that has obvious implications as to whether they'll participate in normal senior-day festivities. Narduzzi says parents will be able to attend, but cannot get to the field to be with their sons as the normal ceremonies would allow.
"It's a work in progress," Narduzzi said of senior-day planning. "But obviously the parents can't come on the field even though our kids see their parents, just Heinz Field, that's not going to happen. Maybe if we played at a high school stadium somewhere they'd let us have it, but it won't happen at Heinz Field. Somehow, we'll have video on the video board. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but we'll try to make it as special as we can for those seniors in 2020. That's what it is. There's nothing else we can do and everybody's in the same position we are across the country."
Narduzzi also indicated that there will be some players who he expects to use the waiver and not partake in the senior-day celebrations because they'll be back next year. But the specifics of who might take that option are still up in the air.
"We don't know who," Narduzzi said. "We'll find out who we trot out there on the field on Saturday for senior day and we'll kind of go from there. But being it was an extra year, people have lofty goals on what they want to do. Just like Patrick Jones coming back, these kids have decisions to make, these young men have decisions to make. Patrick Jones made a great decision on coming back. Again, it's just a lesson for everyone: Can you get better? If you can get better and improve your stock as a football player, if you want to play at the next level, then why would you do anything else? It's a tough league to break into."