What Goes Into a Bye Week for the Head Coach of a Power Five Football Team?

Pitt ran a couple of practices during the bye week, Frank Cignetti Jr. broke down the offense and Randy Bates broke down the defense. Pat Narduzzi just filled in where he was needed. He did a little bit of everything.

Of course, Narduzzi recognizes that he’s a defensive-minded coach. He’s more hands-on in the defensive meeting rooms, breaking down film and what plays should look like. He’s still present in the offensive meeting rooms, just not as active.

“And my role I feel like on offense, to be honest with you, I’m the self-scout GA,” Narduzzi said Monday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “I’m the self-scout. I’m looking at what we do every week. Trying to give them information as to what I see as a defensive coach, what they’re doing and what we can do better. And I’ve always done that, whether they listen or not.”

Pitt had the week off between a much-needed Virginia Tech win at home and now a much-needed game against Louisville on the road. Pitt is 4-2 (1-1 ACC), and the second half of the schedule is largely up for grabs. Pitt controls its own destiny, aside from Georgia Tech now, when it comes to winning out over the second half of the season.

It’s been a season in which Pitt has flashed potential, pushing the newly anointed No. 3 team in the country to overtime with a hobbled Nick Patti, but there likely won’t be any new concepts added. It will be tweaking what has and hasn’t worked going forward.

“I mean, you can put new things in,” Narduzzi said. “You can put new things in. But it’s not going to be — it’s tweaking stuff more than it is throwing this new concept in that the guys. I mean, to me, offensively, defensively, you know, even special teams-wise, you throw in what you’re going to do in spring ball, fall camp and then you refer back to it or you tweak it a little bit.

Pitt will not run the triple-option offensively against Louisville. There won’t be any drastic alterations to the game plan that haven’t been implemented over the offseason and tested against legitimate competition. It’s one thing to put in new plays offensively and defensively and excel against the scout team as opposed to experiencing success against legitimate competition.

However, that doesn’t mean that Narduzzi and Pitt’s coaching staff as a whole hasn’t been self-scouting this week in the hopes of improvement. Even if he won’t say what exactly the staff found.

Pittsburgh Panthers defensive lineman Calijah Kancey (8) October 8, 2022 David Hague/PSN

“I think on open weeks, you know, we’ve been pretty good at going back and saying, “Okay, what are we doing? What’s it look like?’ What are they looking at? But defensively, I can show you,” Narduzzi said. “You know, we do it every week.

“Offensively, defensively, you get deeper into it in an open week because you can. Got a tip from an old coach one time, he said, ‘You know, you build tendencies, and you break them in big games.’ And I think after six games, it’s time to maybe break some tendencies, whatever they are.”

Obviously, Pitt’s tendency to run the football with the ACC’s leading rusher, Israel Abanikanda, won’t be changing. Narduzzi said that all good teams have tendencies, and it comes down to opposing teams stopping those tendencies. It’s the only way to break good tendencies.

“But we look at self-scout every week,” Narduzzi said. “It’s a priority to know what we do, when are we doing it, what’s our run-pass on our first down, second down. What’s it, you know, our run-pass after, you know, on second down after an incomplete pass. I mean, we look into everything. You’d be, like, ‘I cannot believe you look at this.’ But we do. We look at a ton of stuff.”

There were a lot of areas for Pitt to clean up following the Virginia Tech win, a crucial win that allowed Pitt to enter the main stretch of ACC play with a .500 record in the conference, but there are areas in which Pitt has also excelled. Pitt has the ACC’s leading rusher and an offensive line that put together its strongest performance of the season.

The defense should be at its healthiest in a couple of weeks coming off the bye, and there’s an added level of versatility coming off the VT win.

And while Pitt watched a lot of Louisville over the weekend, previous games since the Cardinals were on a bye over the weekend, Narduzzi that he watched every college game that he could over the weekend. And that rolled over the NFL games on Sunday with his family, since he was able to actually be home.

“I’m lucky — I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” Narduzzi said. “Okay? I don’t know how lucky you guys are. I’m lucky because I’ve got four kids and a wife that loves football.

“Even when I go home last night, they’ve got Sunday Night Football. I don’t even have to say, ‘Hey, can you change the channel?’ They already got it on.”

Narduzzi said his oldest daughter was making homemade pizzas and Sunday Night Football was blaring on the TV when he got home from the Pitt facilities last night. It was a good day in the Narduzzi house. But it will have needed to be a good week in the Pitt football program going forward too.