Aug. 30, 2010

Dave Wannstedt Press Conference

August 30, 2010

Utah Week

 

Opening Statement

“We are excited about this week. The game won’t get here soon enough. Any time I think it’s the opening game, it always carries a lot of end-of-camp, beginning-of-season attitude and there’s that dead time in between when you’re practicing and it’s almost like a bowl game mentality.

                                                           

“Right now, the biggest challenges for our coaches would be to make sure that we don’t try to invent any new plays or any new defenses at this point. We’ve had good practices, we had two very good physical practices last week. Our players responded in the manner that I hoped they would have. Yesterday we backed off a little bit, and we’ll do the same today, making sure that we’re as fresh as possible.

 

“From an injury standpoint, we’re probably as healthy as we could expect coming out of a very physical training camp. Greg Romeus has obviously been a big topic, and he’s been great this last week. Ray Graham is very close. He practiced in team yesterday, and he will be available to play. From an injury standpoint, at least from today, we’re in pretty good shape. It’s just a matter of taking care of the final details these last couple of days, loading up and getting ready to go.”

 

On Tino Sunseri:

“Tino Sunseri and I talked two days ago. He came into my office and I gave him a few stories of other quarterbacks, both on this level and the NFL that were starting off their careers for the first time. I really wanted to make the point to him that he’s one of eleven players on offense. We’re not the type of offense where Tino’s the only one who needs to make plays. Lucas Nix needs to make blocks, Jon Baldwin needs to make catches and Dion Lewis needs to make runs. I want him to have the mindset of being confident, but also going into this game feeling that there’s no more of a burden on his shoulder to carry than any other player on offense.

 

“Even though he hasn’t lined up and started a game, at this point last year Bill Stull was the starter going in, but Tino knew he was the second quarterback in line, and at any point was ready to play. I don’t think that this is something that has caught him by surprise. I think he’s prepared himself for this. We have a good plan, and he understands it.

 

“Tino is very intelligent. He understands what we’re trying to do as an offense. He has a strong enough arm to make all the throws that we ask our quarterbacks to make. We’re not going into a game plan saying that we can’t call this play or that play because the quarterback can’t get the throw there accurately. He can make all the throws. He has intangibles. You don’t win a state championship in Pennsylvania by accident. Tino has been there, and he’s done that.

 

“This is a team game, and we have to play great defense, we have to play strong on special teams, we have to be able to run the ball a little bit and do some things to try to keep a little pressure off of him. Tino is prepared, and he’s excited. He has the total confidence and support of our coaching staff and the players on our team, so it’s going to be good. I’m excited for him as well as our football team.”

 

On the core strength of this Pitt team:

“I think that we have a solid core. We all know that this is the youngest team that we’ve had since I’ve been here. By youngest I mean that we have two scholarship seniors starting on offense in Jason Pinkston and Alex Karabin. We have the two senior defensive ends (Romeus and Sheard), plus Dom DeCicco and Ricky Gary. (Six) starting scholarship seniors, that’s it.

 

“However, I think that whether you have 25 seniors or you have nine seniors, it’s the quality. What is this group made up of? And when we hit the adversity, which every team hits every year, I believe our guys will respond the right way. Sometimes being a little bit younger, kids are excited about the opportunity to play, and they’re more focused on what they should be focused on rather than the things that are out of their control.

 

“We’re going to find out these core strengths quick. You try to practice things in camp with these younger players by pressing them physically, and then putting them in situations on the field where they have to compete at full speed. While we did those things in camp, there’s nothing like being out there on your own, with the lights on you and you get hit in the mouth. Everybody has a good plan until you get hit in the mouth, then you see how good the plan is.”

 

On the challenge of a strong opener at Utah:

“It’s one of those games where one turnover might mean the difference in the game, a bad decision in the kicking game might mean the decision of the game or where a broken coverage for a touchdown might make the decision of the game. There’s less room for error when you’re playing a very good, ranked football team at home as compared to an opponent that you can maybe make a mistake, and you’re strong enough in your talent to overcome.

 

“We’ve been talking all week about playing clean out there. We’ve had noise pumped in, we’ve tried to do everything to create an atmosphere to put our players in so that they’re able to keep their focus and play a clean game. We’ll see.”

 

On Utah’s spread being comparable to any more familiar opponents:

“I would say that they’re a little combination of West Virginia or South Florida. Then they’ll jump into a Wildcat like Rutgers did with a receiver, and they’ll run their Wildcat package. They have a lot of offense. A lot of the stuff that we’ve been working on in preparation for Utah will carry on all season for our team.

 

“Utah does a very good job. They have two quarterbacks: (Terrance Cain), the starter at the beginning of the season, a little stronger athlete, they’ll bring him in, and then there’s Jordan Wynn who took over. He’s a good passer, a good decision maker. He’s a better athlete than most people would give him credit for, a little bit like Tino.

 

“Then they’ll jump into a Wildcat package with a receiver in the backfield, start throwing passes, and then here we go. They’re going to put some pressure on our defense mentally, to adjust and be sharp. We feel good about Dom, Jarred Holley and Dan Mason, who’s really had a good camp, so I’m going to be excited to watch him play.”

 

On playing in higher elevations:

“When we were at the Dolphins, they used to go out a couple of days early. Everyplace I’ve coached for 16 years (in the NFL), we’ve gone out the day before, lined-up and played. I think that all the studies from the Olympic athletes will tell you, that if you want to try to make a total adjustment, you have to be out there for three days, it takes 72 hours. So even going out that extra day, which some of the NFL teams do, doesn’t really do anything. You go out, you line up and play. Fortunately we’re fairly healthy, so we’ll be able to play guys.”

 

On Ray Graham:

“We have three more days. He was in team period yesterday. We’ll see how everything goes.”

 

On Andrew Taglianetti:

“He’s gotten better and better everyday. He’ll be playing, that’s for sure. His knee is fine.”

 

On defensive depth:

“We have five corners that we like. We have Saheed Imoru. Buddy Jackson has had a good camp. There’s K’Waun Williams who will probably be one of the true freshmen who will play in the game in some capacity. Our depth on the defensive line is good. Aaron Donald, a freshman from Penn Hills, will play in the game and be involved there. Aaron and K’Waun will be the two freshmen as of today that we know will be involved in the game to some capacity.

 

“When you take a look at our depth in other positions, you look back to last year where we had three linebackers that we felt good about, and then we were dropping down to the redshirt freshmen. This year, we have four linebackers. Tristan Roberts came down and had a good camp this year. So now you have Tristan, Greg Williams, Dan Mason in the middle and then you have Max Gruder who can also play in the middle, while Tristan and Greg are able to jump to the other sides. Then we have some young kids — Shane Gordon, Kevin Adams — players like that who are really good and are ready to play. But now we have four older guys that understand, so we gained some depth there.

 

“The only position that we don’t have that much depth at, currently, is the offensive line. Right now, we have a quality tackle, a quality guard. We just don’t have the depth there that we have on the defensive line and a couple of other spots.”  

 

On Utah’s similarities to its 2005 Fiesta Bowl team:

“It’s all the same stuff. That play that they scored on, the reverse flea-flicker at the end of the game, they still run that. They still have their same trick plays. They’re an explosive team from the standpoint of spreading you out. They have a lot of screens, a run game. They do a good job of mixing it up.”

 

On Alex Karabin:

“He’s a smart player, one of the smartest on our team. He’s on it. His playing experience will be the only thing that we’ll have to get caught up on. As far as identifying things and making calls, he’s really good. That’s probably what gives him a little bit of an edge to be honest with you.

 

“It’s great to give a kid like him a scholarship. We gave one to Pat Costello a few days ago and we renewed Andrew Janocko’s. We were able to give three walk-ons scholarships this year. We don’t get the number of walk-ons that the other state schools get, so we’re always competing to get these kids here, and they all come here with the intent of playing and earning a scholarship if there’s one available. Obviously, it’s exciting that we had something to be able to offer these kids. They’re so deserving.”

 

On the challenge of Utah’s defense:

“It’s different than our defense. They play a completely different coverage package than we do. So everything that our offense has been working on all spring and summer, playing our defense is completely different. They’ll pressure more than we do, so when you have the combination of different fronts, different coverages and the pressure package: that would be three things (that are different), which is a lot.”

 

On Pitt’s offensive philosophy compared to the spread’s popularity:

“I think that we can recruit players. We know what we’re doing from a technical standpoint and scheme standpoint, and we believe in it. I think that we can recruit players here to fill those roles. If you couldn’t get good backs here, if you couldn’t get quarterbacks that could throw the ball, then you do what they do in high school by moving your best athlete there and running the spread.

 

“These guys do it a little bit different from the standpoint that their quarterback really doesn’t carry the ball that much. They’re a shot down, sprint team, but it’s the screens and it’s the read — he’ll carry it, but they’re not a ‘Pat White spread’ team if that makes sense.”

 

On preparing for Utah:

“This is always a challenging week when it’s the first time that you’re working against each other. Everybody’s working and getting ready for the season whether you’re offense or you’re defense. Now, we start exchanging people to get a show-team look. That’s the first reality check for a lot of these younger kids when they look down and see that they’re wearing a Utah jersey, thinking what’s different about this picture? We’ve reached the point that there won’t be many freshmen that play unless we need them.

 

“Todd Thomas was down here this week and he gave me a great picture. We used him as a Wildcat quarterback. We used him as a running back and he’s an example of a kid that allowed us to make our defense better. With Anthony Gonzalez being a quarterback who is also a good athlete, he can give us a good picture doing that. Those young guys have done a great job getting us prepared.”

 

On Sunseri’s ability to make changes at the line of scrimmage:

“He won’t have much ability to make changes. We’ll have some checks, but as we did with Billy, it’s just our philosophy. We’re not a big audible team. We’ll add things to it and if certain looks come up we’ll take advantage of it, but we’re not one of those teams that puts too much on the quarterback from that perspective. He’ll have to make some decisions.”

 

On the benefit of last year’s playing time for Sunseri:

“I think that it’s not that much of an advantage. Sure, you’d like to have had him play five games like their kid, but I think that every week he had the mindset that he was one snap away from playing. He prepared himself that way every week. That’s how it happens in college football. Your time comes, and he prepared himself.”

 

On the offensive line:

“We’re improving every day. We have a ways to go, but I’ll probably be saying that in Week 10 because it’s a young, new group.”

 

 

On the importance of the Utah game:

“The focus has really been on them. Our guys understand that when you play on national TV against a ranked team, your focus has to be there, you have to have a sense of urgency. We really haven’t talked about anything, to be honest with you, other than Utah.”