Ludwig: Pat Narduzzi Has Put All His Eggs in Kade Bell’s Basket

It was a risk to hire Kade Bell as the new offensive coordinator, but once Pat Narduzzi officially pulled the trigger, he had to put his complete trust in the young play-caller.

Bell was the most important hire of the Narduzzi era at Pitt. It’s likely make-or-break. If Pitt slogs through another 3-9 season, or slips even lower, it would be very hard for Narduzzi to come back from. Narduzzi needed to nail the hire, and he needed to surround Bell with what Bell thought he needed to succeed.

Narduzzi is a hands-off type of coach when it comes to involvement with the offense on a day-to-day basis, admitting it was more of a 15/85 split between his time with the offense and the defense, so he needed to bring in an innovative coach capable of running the offense. Cignetti didn’t work. He admitted as much — indirectly.

“We’re going to go fast when we need to go fast; we’re going to go slow,” Narduzzi said earlier this month. “Some people think a defensive guy doesn’t like that. I couldn’t care less. It doesn’t help when you go slow and huddle up and look at the clock, looking to see if we’re going to have another delay of game. That doesn’t help either.

“As slow as we went offensively last year, we didn’t win the time of possession. So, some people think that defensive guys want to win the time of possession. I want to win the game, and I want to win on the scoreboard. And I want our kids to have fun doing it. I think that’s what coach Bell brings.”

I see the appeal of hiring Bell. Was he the very best choice? Maybe not. But he’s a young, innovative mind who was going to get that chance at the highest level sooner or later. It just happened that Pitt was the first school to give him that opportunity.

If you can coach, you can coach. It doesn’t matter what level you’re on, or where you’ve been. Is the inexperience a factor? Certainly. He’s had his father Kerwin at just about every stop along the way, and that’s no slight, but there’s comfort in the known entity. I think that’s a significant reason why Narduzzi decided to let Bell surround himself with what he already knows.

Bell is a young coach who doesn’t have much of a network. He’s brought most of that network to Pittsburgh. Bell has Jeremy Darveau who knows what he wants up front, and he has JJ Laster who knows what he wants out wide. Lindsey Lamar has some familiarity, too. Narduzzi and Bell have talked about the benefits of such familiarity.

Pitt, by all accounts, should hit the ground running this spring. Half of the Western Carolina coaching staff and the top playmakers over the last three seasons are in Pittsburgh now. Pitt needs to hit the ground running. The new offense isn’t exactly complex, not like the one that Cignetti unsuccessfully ran, but it’s certainly new.

There will be an adjustment, but hiring assistants who are intimately familiar with the scheme should — in theory — allow for the smoothest, most efficient transition possible. The hires may not be flashy, outside of maybe tight ends coach and special teams coordinator Jacob Bronowski, but each hire fits what Bell wanted from a position coach.

Narduzzi put all of his eggs in Bell’s basket when he hired him back on Dec. 10 and followed through by surrounding Bell with what he wanted.

“He told me he wanted to go score points — go fast and score points,” Bell said earlier this month. “I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t think I’d be here right now if that’s not what he wanted. Just makes sense because that’s not really how it’s been. And that’s just being honest, and I think that’s what shows that he’s willing to try something new and change and the way college football is going is I tell our kids all the time, we could be up 21 and like that in college football, you can be down seven.

“So, if you’re not trying to separate from people, if you’re just trying to barely win, if you’re not trying to have confidence and be aggressive and try to step on people’s necks, as I would say, bad things can sometimes happen. It’s awesome. I think he’s an awesome, super aggressive guy. He wants to win, and I think that’s all that matters.”

Bell was the hardest hire of the offseason, and Narduzzi said that once he actually did hire Bell, the entire process got easier. It didn’t matter if he was from Western Carolina or Alabama.

“Sometimes people like that don’t get those opportunities and people are like, ‘Oh, it’s FCS, you got to hire a Power Five guy or something like that,’ but I don’t have that and say, I hired a guy from Alabama or LSU to make it look good. Okay. As I say, it’s not about looking good. It’s about being good. We got the right guy in Kade Bell.”

Narduzzi decided upon Bell, and that was it. It was about surrounding Bell with who he felt like he needed to best run his new offense after that. And it’s certainly a risk. It’s a young, unproven staff. It could be a massive success, or it could fail miserably. Recruiting is uncertain, but it was uncertain even before the new staff arrived.

But Narduzzi recognized a problem, changed his course of action and decided to entrust a young, innovative coach with fixing it. Now it’s time to see if it works.