PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi said he didn’t talk to QB Phil Jurkovec about his comments after the game on Saturday, where he criticized ‘grown-ass’ men for booing him and/or the home team as ‘pathetic’. Narduzzi said it really doesn’t matter.
“They were probably booing me,” Narduzzi said Monday. “Number one, I don’t hear it. Fans are going to be passionate.”
Those are the fans in the stadium which are a limited number. Then there are the fans on social media who see and react to it.
“I really don’t care about the guy that is in his basement on Twitter,” Narduzzi said. “I hope that the kids don’t listen to that. It doesn’t really matter. If that’s what you want to do, you want to do. I’m not dealing with it, the guy in the basement.”
“We are disappointed enough. We are going to stay positive in this room. That’s all I have to say about that.”
About the performance of his first-year quarterback against Cincinnati. In his second game back home with the Panthers, Jurkovec was 10-32 for 179 yards and three touchdowns, while sacked five times and rushing 10 times for 38 yards.
“Get the ball out quicker,” Narduzzi said. “When you get hit 21 times, and any NFL quarterback will tell you, when you get 21 times in a game and you get hit early when you shouldn’t, you are going to struggle. Everyone wants to point the finger at Phil.”
Narduzzi said it’s why he doesn’t say much after a game because he wants to have time to study the game tape. When he did, he said he found it was much more than just Jurkovec to blame the offenses issues.
“He knows where to go with the ball,” Narduzzi said. “It’s just getting everything to be the right way. Like we talked about a week ago, we got to clean up our protections. We have to keep it cleaner. It wasn’t good enough against better competition. If it wasn’t good enough the week before, then you step the competition up.”
Narduzzi expects West Virginia to run similar things Cincinnati ran and then need to clean that up and will be work this week, especially in picking up blitzing.