Is Pat Narduzzi Finally Considering Change?

BLACKSBURG, Va. — Pat Narduzzi still isn’t ready to place the blame on Phil Jurkovec. He may be thinking it, too, but he’s still finding ways to blame anybody but his quarterback.

It’s the offensive line failing to block. It’s the wide receivers running the wrong routes. It’s the running backs failing to gain traction. And to be fair, he’s right. Frank Cignetti Jr. has delivered a disasterclass offense, one in which no one is safe from criticism. But a good quarterback can mask offensive inadequacies, a competent quarterback won’t lose games on his own and a bad quarterback drags the offense done with him.

Jurkovec has been a bad quarterback this season, and he dragged Pitt down with him Saturday night against Virginia Tech.

He completed 11-of-22 pass attempts for 235 yards and two touchdowns. Looks OK. Nothing special. But OK. Well, five of those completions came in the fourth quarter on the final offensive possession, trailing by 17, and it may be the single most misleading box score I’ve seen.

Jurkovec completed a 75-yard touchdown strike, a nice post route from Bub Means, on his first throw. A very nice play. It was downhill from there — even his 61-yard touchdown to C’Bo Flemister was the bare minimum. Complete the screen pass (which he wasn’t able to do consistently) and watch it unfold. That was it. 50% of Pitt’s offense.

He didn’t receive much help from his offensive line, sure, but it’s entirely unfair to blame another poor performance on the offensive line.

“Phil was under pressure the whole game,” Narduzzi said following the loss. “He got sacked four times, even when we had a completion, he’s getting hit. Every time. That is not an easy situation to put anybody in, and I still feel that’s the guy back there making the plays. He had one ball that was not good in the flat, I don’t know if it slipped out of his hand or what, but other than that he made some nice throws.

“He’s under pressure all day. You can put Dan Marino in there, Dan Marino is not gonna do anything, period. Our line is patched up right now, and we’ve got to get better. On the turnover, on the second play in the second half — again we make a run in the second half. We got a T screen, defense gets a scoop and score, things are looking good. There’s no quit in that locker room, but second play of the third quarter, we miss on the left side and Phil gets killed. I don’t know what quarterback is gonna sit back there and throw the ball effectively.”

Pitt QB Phil Jurkovec drops back to pass against Virginia Tech on Saturday, Sept. 30, 2023 in Blacksburg, Virginia. (Mitchell Northam / Pittsburgh Sports Now.)

Jurkovec has completed 57-of-112 pass attempts (50.9%) for 818 yards with six touchdowns and three interceptions this season — adding 66 yards and two fumbles on the ground. And he’s played just one solid half of football against Power Five opponents this season, all losses.

He hasn’t looked comfortable, he hasn’t given Pitt a chance to win games — only taken it away — and he looks woefully unprepared to run a floundering, failing offense. But, again, Narduzzi didn’t blame him.

“Can you throw deep? You don’t have time,” Narduzzi said. “You don’t have time. You gotta throw the checkdowns, you gotta try to take what they’re gonna give you, and we’re back 20 yards. The delay of games, the noise was a factor. Last time I came down here, we shut the crowd down, there was no crowd. Those fans were in there for the entire game. We didn’t quiet the crowd, we kept them in the game, the cadence wasn’t easy even though we worked it.”

Narduzzi had the perfect opportunity to ease in a new quarterback, whether it was Christian Veilleux or Nate Yarnell against Virginia Tech Saturday night, but he chose to roll with Jurkovec. He thought that Jurkovec gave Pitt the best chance to win, and maybe he did, but he simply cannot continue to do so. Is he going to do so?

“I’m gonna re-evaluate where we are,” Narduzzi said. “I see a lot of things that need changed on offense. We got nine first downs. It’s hard to win the football game. We had two explosive plays, that’s all we got. So, we gotta look at what we’re doing, how we’re doing it and that’s my job as head coach to fix it. So, it doesn’t come down to one guy, it’s everybody. It’s a team loss, period.

“Major self-scout to figure out where we are and what we gotta do to right the ship. And figure it out.”

Pitt has a week off to self-scout and watch the tape, but the tape won’t show much of what Pitt didn’t already know. Narduzzi looked deflated, defeated as he sat in his postgame press conference. He sounded defeated.

Narduzzi has shown nearly unwavering loyalty to Jurkovec so far this season, and maybe it is really up to Cignetti to yank Jurkovec and put in a new option, but Pitt cannot expect much if it keeps running this offense with this quarterback. Something’s got to give if Pitt wants to win another game this season.

Louisville comes to town in two weeks, and Pitt will need to change drastically if it wants to compete in the second half of the season.