Pitt Caught Off Guard by New Syracuse Offense

Pat Narduzzi and the Pitt Panthers never saw Syracuse's offensive wrinkles coming.

PITTSBURGH -- Pitt Panthers head coach Pat Narduzzi made a startling admission during an interview with the ACC Network between the first and second quarters of a loss to Syracuse at Yankee Stadium - his team had never seen what their opponents were running on film and was completely unprepared. 

The scoreboard made things clear enough. Pitt was being gashed on the ground by Syracuse's new-look offense, which featured everything from quarterback option to wildcat runs with a tight end and backflips on the edge. Pitt was left in the dust and allowed a season-high 382 rushing yards. 

The Orange played starting quarterback Garrett Schrader, but clearly weren't confident enough about his health 

“Obviously, they didn’t plan on passing. I’m not sure if Shrader could throw it. He hadn’t played for the last couple of weeks and I didn’t even know he was going to go today. I had no idea who the starting quarterback was — you try to work for Del Rio and everybody else. They did a lot of different stuff that we had not practiced. We tried to adjust as we went.”

Dan Villari, a quarterback-turned-tight end, was a surprise producer as he shouldered most of the load alongside LeQuint Allen with 154 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries. Villari had just two carries for three yards on the season coming into the contest, and it was clear Syracuse subverted Pitt's expectation by leaning heavily into his skill set. 

Narduzzi mentioned that he made note of Villari's involvement in the wildcat package coming into the game. However, he stated that the Orange switched up the formations and deployed those looks far more often than they had previously this season. 

"They’ve run a couple of snaps of it down on the goal line," Narduzzi said. "It’s mostly a goal line package. He’s a tough kid, former quarterback transferred in there and can also throw it. You prepared for it, they’ve maybe done two snaps with the wildcat. They’ve run a couple with Quentin, but nothing to the magnitude. And the formations they were in were different. Good job by them."

Narduzzi conceded that the ease with which Syracuse ran the ball on the Panthers' defense was frustrating, especially considering it is typically a strong suit of the team. 

"It’s frustrating," Narduzzi said. "You get frustrated with a loss, period. There’s a lot of things you’re frustrated with, but certainly we would like to stop the run and we didn’t do that today."

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