Pat Narduzzi: Pitt is Preparing for Brennan Armstrong to Play

Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi believes Brennan Armstrong will start at quarterback for Virginia against the Panthers on Saturday

Matt Newton | Nov 18, 2021

No one knows for sure if Brennan Armstrong will start at quarterback in Virginia’s all-important game against Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon. Armstrong missed last week’s game against Notre Dame with a rib injury he suffered in the fourth quarter of UVA’s loss to BYU on October 30th. The Virginia football program has released no details about the severity of Armstrong’s injury or his timetable to return. Just as in the Notre Dame game, it seems that Armstrong’s status for Saturday’s battle for first place in the ACC Coastal will not be clear until kickoff.

Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi does not think it’s as complicated as that.

“I’m sure the first question - Brennan Armstrong - expect him to play,” Narduzzi said in his weekly press conference on Monday. “I think they saved him up. He will be primed and ready for an ACC clash, so we do expect to get their best player, which they didn’t have Saturday.”

It is unlikely that Narduzzi has some inside source planted in the UVA football program secretly feeding him information on Armstrong’s status. The more likely scenario is that Narduzzi is merely speculating and is doing what any good coach would do and preparing his team for any possibility.

On Thursday morning, Narduzzi went on the 93.7 FM Fan Morning Show on Pittsburgh Sports Radio and doubled down on his projection for Armstrong’s status for Saturday’s game. This time, he was even more candid in his thoughts on Armstrong’s injury.

“I have no doubts in my mind he’s playing in the game,” Narduzzi said on the show. “I think you’d have to rip his rib cage out of his chest cavity for him not to play.”

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi tells us he's fully expecting Virginia QB Brennan Armstrong to play Saturday:

"I have no doubts in my mind he's playing in the game. I think you'd have to rip his rib cage out of his chest cavity for him not to play."
— The Fan Morning Show (@FanMorningShow) November 18, 2021

Setting aside the vivid and somewhat ridiculous nature of Narduzzi’s comments, the message is clear: Pittsburgh will prepare as if a fully healthy Brennan Armstrong will start for the Cavaliers on Saturday at Heinz Field.

“They’ll be ready for us, for sure,” Narduzzi said. “They’re explosive. It starts with him [Armstrong] at quarterback and he has a bunch of big targets. They run 60 different personnel groupings for our kids to figure out what number is who? They got tight ends that play quarterback. They have all kinds of personnel groupings that you have to worry about on that side of the ball… Bronco [Mendenhall] is a good football coach, [he] will have his guys ready.”

In terms of actual confirmed reports from the Virginia football program, there has been essentially zero information released about Armstrong’s status for the past three weeks. According to Virginia head coach Bronco Mendenhall, Armstrong is day-to-day and it will likely be a gameday decision for whether he plays or not.

“His injury didn’t look good early in the week and it looked better every day and even all the way to warmups,” Mendenhall said after the Notre Dame game. “We’re not ruling anything out, but it is literally day-by-day.”

During Mendenhall’s weekly press conference on Monday, he said he did not have any further updates, but said that he was hopeful “that it is more second to second rather than day to day.”

It seems the waiting game will continue all the way up until kickoff once again. Bummer.

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