LOUISVILLE — Pitt possessed the football seven times in the second half against Louisville Saturday night.
On those seven drives, Pitt’s offense mustered three punts, two turnovers on downs, a fumble and a field goal. And that came after Pitt turned the ball over three times inside the Louisville 30-yard line in the first half.
To put it mildly, it was a horrific night for Pitt’s offense and everyone involved — aside from Israel Abanikanda.
However, throughout the inconsistency and rough sequence of first half errors from Kedon Slovis, Narduzzi said he did not even consider pulling Slovis, which was the same response he had when Slovis struggled in a loss to Georgia Tech earlier this month.
“It takes 11 guys,” Narduzzi said following Pitt’s loss. “When you win, Kedon does a great job and when you lose, everyone wants to point the finger at the quarterback. We don’t point fingers in the locker room, you guys can point fingers all you want when you talk in the media, but he needs some help.Â
Narduzzi pointed to Yasir Abdullah’s strip-sack, a moment that basically sealed Louisville’s win over Pitt, as a cadence problem in which Slovis didn’t receive a ton of help from the offensive line — right tackle Gabe Houy specifically.
“Gabe Houy is still in his stance, I think he’s still out there in his stance,” Narduzzi said. “You don’t give the quarterback a chance if you don’t block the right end off the edge. Again, he gets too much credit when we win and no credit when we lose.”
Even when Pitt has won in recent weeks, it hasn’t led to heavy praise for Slovis considering his inconsistency in the passing game. He’s drawn his share of criticism, and Saturday’s performance was one that detrimental to the team.
Slovis threw for 158 yards and two interceptions on 16-of-29 pass attempts against Louisville, both interceptions coming on plays a player with his experience should know not to make, and it was the continuation of a disappointing season for Slovis and Pitt’s offense.
Narduzzi didn’t consider benching Slovis for Nick Patti or Nate Yarnell against Louisville, and it isn’t a consideration going forward either.
“Yes, (Kedon is the guy),” Narduzzi said.Â
We have decent recruiting and we did well in the portal. Then came Cignetti.
Cignetti has a long resume of failure. He keeps getting hired, then he fails and gets fired.
Cignetti cannot coach QB’s. Picket would would failed under Cignetti. Everyone in the locker room knows it. Cignetti is why Addison left.
We suffered a bit to the Israel momentum. He played well but Rodney and Vincent are a step faster than he on acceleration. He is top speed, 2nd level awesome. He was getting drilled far too often last night from the stuffed bunch formations and sideline to sideline zone blocking, pulling guards were jail breaks from their gap. The swing passes to the right resulted in Slovis getting wiped. The blocking Run and Pass Schemes are not working. Slovis is Slow to Read the Pass options. We were blessed with a strong performance by Pickett last season who trusted WRs… Read more »
The two TE two WR one RB formation is used by Utah Utes as well. Let’s power gap block Scheme with it, with OL firing forward instead of Zone sideline to sideline Shuffle. When they came out I-formation with Daniel Carter I thought nice smash mouth given we had RH Jr. back too. But it was a Play Action start. Go back and Watch ESPN replay, the outlet Pass to Daniel Carter was there on the first inyerception. The 2nd interception was Slovis getting rid of it with a Dude in his face. Had Slovis had better throws on Screens… Read more »
Headline should be rewritten to read “Narduzzi confirms that he’s so stubborn he won’t consider any changes”
SLOVIS is reading but making poor decision with what he’s seeing. Forcing instead of dumping to the flat on the 1st Interception trying to force the TD with a poorly under thrown pass while the flat was wide open for 13 and a 1st down. He’s not as accurate a passer has he’s being made out to be.
16 of 29 for 158, 0 TD, 2 Ints. He missed a lot.
They run IZZY good but Tinngame is on, QB play is B. A. D.
*Tinngame. Run Game is on.
Narduzzi doesn’t criticize Slovis, saying ” we don’t point fingers in the locker room”…then immediately calls out Gabe Houy. Gotta love him.
Narduzzi sees these guys in practice everyday for months…..he knows neither Patti (who throws sidearm) or Yarnell (who played against one of the worst FCS teams out there this year) are bigtime QB’s. The problem is the archaic scheme of Cignetti’s, which takes far too long for passing plays to develop and Pitt’s WR’s don’t get much separation
other than maybe Wayne on occasion. The rest besides Bart are below avg. Why do you change an offense that avg’d 43 ppg ?
This is a mistake. Let’s see what Nick Patti and Nate Yarnell can do.
Slovis may be Narduzzi’s guy but he isn’t “the guy”. He is clearly backup material. This Minchy kid should enroll early and bust his butt b/c he may have a chance to be a starter as a true freshman b/c there is nothing but stop gaps on the roster ahead of him.
With the way Cignetti’s offense looks, I’m afraid that we’ll never see Minchey in a Pitt uniform.