New Pitt wideout Raphael Williams has always pursued his dream of playing football at the highest level, and it just so happened that Kade Bell has helped in that pursuit.
Williams committed to play for Bell at Tusculum (D-II) in 2021, playing in the COVID-19-shortened spring season, and when Bell left for Western Carolina, Williams went with him. He’s followed Bell basically his entire journey — aside from the stint at San Diego State last season.
He decided to leave following the 2022 season to pursue football at a higher level and wound up at SDSU, but he was unable to play due to NCAA eligibility rules, so he hit the portal once again following the 2023 season. It was, once again, in pursuit of playing at the highest level.
It certainly didn’t hurt that Bell wound up taking the offensive coordinator position at Pitt around the same time.
“(Bell is) almost like a big brother to me,” Williams said Wednesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “Like, he’s teaching me everything, he can relate. He can understand me, I can understand him, so that relationship helps.”
Bell is one of three former Western Carolina stars to find their way to Pittsburgh this offseason, and it’s not a coincidence that all three wound up in Pittsburgh, too.
New wideout Censere Lee entered the transfer portal at WCU before Bell was hired away by Pitt, but even as he was in the portal and receiving interest from other programs, it was the relationship with Bell that stood out.
“(Bell) took me in, and he told me everything he was about,” Lee said Wednesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “I loved it, never lied to me, everything he said was going to happen happened, had a great two years with him, and it’s been great.”
Bell certainly is a change in how Narduzzi has approached hiring offensive coordinators during his time, decades younger than each of the previous, but Narduzzi didn’t hire him because he’s 31. He hired Bell because of the energy, enthusiasm and offense that he is already bringing.
“You know, coaches coach,” Narduzzi said Wednesday. “I don’t care what his age is. It doesn’t really matter. But I talked about enthusiasm and energy and I got enthusiasm, energy, and I’m an old guy. So, I don’t know if the big brother or anything like that matters. It’s knowing your offense and having confidence in what you do and having fun at what we do as coaches.”
It was a stressful hire for Narduzzi — the first of an offseason filled with coaching hires. And with the stress of hiring a coach, let alone four coaches, it kept Narduzzi up at night.
“The day after the season, I start to strategize and think, ‘What are we going to do? How are we going to do this?’ And it’s hard,” Narduzzi said. “And then it’s hard to put the rest of the staff together, myself and coach Bell. Hours and hours and hours of text messaging, just talking about different guys, and what fits him, what fits me, what fits us as a team.
“It’s never easy to get there. The hardest one is that coordinator job. I think once I got coach Bell in here, it was easier to get the next pieces in there. But it’s just finding the right piece. Because he’s got guys on the tip of his tongue that he likes, and it’s just finding the right guy that fits Pitt.”
Narduzzi considered a lot of candidates when conducting a national search for the offensive coordinator position. He hired Bell, and it was a confident hire. He was sure of who he was bringing.
Much like Narduzzi himself, Bell has sort of built his own brand of an offensive scheme. It’s a system that will play fast, throw the ball over and force defenses to make decisions with pre-snap movement, checks at the line and a lof tempo. But it will be tweaked and designed based on who is running the offense at quarterback, too.
The mantra is to play fast and score faster, but that’s obviously when the situation calls for it. It’s picking right times to speed it up, and the right times to slow it down. Bell is confident in his ability to craft a system that can do both successfully — and Narduzzi is confident in his belief of Bell.
“We’re being up-tempo at times, and we’re gonna play fast, and I think maybe one of the things that sold me is, you know, defensively we’re not very complicated,” Narduzzi said. “And any normal football guy would look and say, Gosh, they line up on normal downs with four down. They line up in almost the same spots all the time. The linebackers look like this. The corners are pressed out there. I mean, everything looks the same. But then on the snap it changes. And it’s simple but complex.
“And I think that’s what our offense is. You know, when people talk about playing fast, I think they think the tempo. But I think that fast goes two ways. And you talk to a lot of our guys, and talk during spring ball and after spring ball, so our guys will say it’s simpler for them to go play faster. And again, when I say fast, you can have an athletic guy, but if you take an athletic left tackle, or a tailback, or a wide receiver, and you give them too many things to think about, they start to play slow.”
There is a lot of excitement from the current personnel — and the recruits that have been targeted by Bell over the first month or so of his tenure — about the new offense.
It’s a major change from the slow, plodding scheme that Frank Cignetti Jr. ran over the last two seasons, and it will take some time to install throughout the spring. But as Narduzzi alluded to, it’s not rocket science.
It helps to have Williams, Lee and new running back Desmond Reid in town and working with their offensive teammates even before spring ball is kicked off. Williams, who is adapting to a new environment and teammates, is still able to be a teacher in his own right. He knows what Bell wants. As do Lee and Reid.
Lee is grateful for the opportunity to be able to line up, play fast and catch the defense off guard — seven to 10 seconds in snapping the football. Narduzzi wanted to play fast and score a lot of points, and that’s exactly what Reid said to expect next season.
“A lot of points,” Reid said Wednesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “We’re trying to put up 50 a game, that’s the goal. We’re trying to score whenever we want to — even in the fourth quarter, we can be up by 50, we’re still trying to score. So, just expect a lot of points to be on the scoreboard.”
Left lane, hammer down?
Or, run the score up against teams so the voters notice? Like James from Altoona does.
What’s your excuse Penn State? Stop talking noise and thinking your program is so superior to Pitt’s program. Pitt has produced many NFL Hall of Famers with two more coming in the not too distant future.
Where’s your big results Penn State when you bring in four and five star recruits every year?
Last time you did anything memorable was when Kerry Collin’s was your Quarterback so maybe tone down the bragging a bit. Do something meaningful first then come talk to us.
Rah rah
Sounds promising. I do happen to believe energy is a very crucial element in a good coach. The last two offensive coordinators didn’t seem like they had the energy to light a lightbulb in truth. I also feel that energy isn’t just encouragement and enthusiasm. I like to see a coach that expects a certain level from his players and gets after them when he doesn’t see that level. I like to see that standard and fire because I believe the kids feed off of that. I’m hoping the new uptempo offense works well and isn’t just going to result… Read more »