Pitt Football Defensive Preview

Basically if Cal ran a 4-3 base instead of a 3-4 base

What is nice about getting this preview for this game week is that HC Narduzzi is a consistent proponent of the 4-3 Cover 4 scheme and coverage. Not to say that he doesn’t have other looks and coverages, no real defense has just 1 call and good luck. But if one were to be a gambling man, betting that Cal will face the above alignment and coverage for most of the game; they might leave the casino rich.

Some X’s and O’s

Lets start with what Narduzzi expects from the defense, I used the information gleaned from the coaching clinic linked above.

These are the 4 main tenets of the Narduzzi defense and what are the main commandments of the defense(timestamp here):

You can see here that Pitt will come out in an aggressive and downhill mindset. His main aim is to stop the run in order to force the opposing offenses to be one dimensional, and leave the corners on man-press to force high difficulty plays. Philosophically this is a simple approach and thus easy to instill defense wide.

Digging into what Cover-4 we can see the following (timestamp here):

As you can see the Cover 4 adds into the philosophy of the 4-3: aggresive downhill run stopping DL, spilling the run into the outside letting the LBs to clean up, with the Safeties in support and coverage if needed.

While the corners are left on press looks, per Narduzzi it limits the route-tree, if the CBs are giving up outside leverage the WR has only the go or comeback route available, if the CBs are giving up inside leverage you have the slant, drag, and in routes. This gives the defense some tells about what the offense might run route wise.

In another talk linked here:

HC Narduzzi wants pre-snap looks to look the same but there would be disguises. We know that he wants to live in the 4-3 Cover 4 world but just to make sure the offense is on their toes he will throw a Cover 2/3/6 shell post-snap if needed.

Something worth noting is that Pitt emphasizes speed on the LB and DB position and that they will shuffle the roster and assignments around to have as much speed as possible on the field.

Formation wise, to quote him: “Besides 3rd down and medium and 3rd and long, we’re going to line up in a 9-tech, 3-tech, shaded nose, and 5-tech.”

Finally, he adds that their preference is to be a zone-blitz team. Which means that they will drop a DL and bring in a LB to bring 4 and drop 7 in coverage but sometimes it isn’t going to be the 4 dudes we expect.

There is more information in both of the talks pertaining to scheme, but I don’t think I could do justice in breaking down 2 hours worth of coach talk. However, if you do want to see what a good coaching clinic looks like and have 2 hours I recommend these!

Jimmy’s and Joe’s

Alright, now that the nerdy chalk stuff is over, let’s move to the players who will be executing this defense. We’ll start with the guys in coverage:

We can see here that the CB with the most targets and allowed catches is Rashad Battle it is worth noting that on his 27 tatgets he forced 3 incompletions and allowed 2 TDs. Ryland Grady on the flipside has faced fewer passes and allowed a lower completion rate, but when he does allow a completion it goes for more and for as many TDs as Battle.

Teams generally don’t try to attack the middle of the field since it is clogged by LBs and the safeties being close to one another in a Cover-4 look.

Kyle Louis is the most tagetted LB on the field and allows a decent rate of completions. However, Fernando should be wary of the LB who is the team’s interception leader who has shown the ability to be a sideline to sideline disruptor.

In the run game we can see the Narduzzi’s emphasis on coaching the LBs to run to the ball and the fact that the DL isn’t asked to make the tackles on the run, putting the onus on the LBs to make the plays. So far the LBs have stood up on task. What is worth nothing that of the 3 LBs each one of them usually stops the run between the 2.6-4.3 yards gained by the RB. This spells trouble for the turgid Cal run game where getting 2.6-4.3 yards per carry seems like a dream right now.

Bloesch better figure something out with the OL. They have to be able to climb into to the second level and make blocks on the LBs to keep the RBs able to gain some semblence of a run game. If we’re unable to do that we’d be basically ceeding the ground on offense and playing into Pitt’s hands.

Pittsburg brings LB pressure more often than Cal (Cade and Teddye’s pass rush% are 1/3rd of Louis and George). With Louis and George coming into the rush 28-29.7% of the time, most of the time Cal will have to reckon with a straight 4 man pressure packages. The battle to watch will be Nate Matlack #2 who usually lines up on the right handside of the OL which means the embattled TJ Session will have to step up against a pass rusher with a lot of pressures to his name. (to compare, Matlack has the same pass rush win rate as Cal’s leading pressure generator in Xavier Carlton, both woth 10.7 win rates).

The team doesn’t total as many sacks as Cal (11 to Cal’s 14) and they have not faced the OL quality Cal has, this might be a game for Nando to stand and deliver if the OL can hold.

Final Thoughts

Cal will have a very interesting game on our hands on offense. We have struggled running the ball against any team with a pulse on defense, and Pitt’s scheme and production looks like a bad match up for us. On the flipside, Cal has a chance to win the game through the air as the Pitt pass rush doesn’t seem to have the same juice it wants to have and the coverage guys don’t seem to be overall great ball-hawks but are competent in coverage.

Something worth noting is that their primary slot defender is LB Kyle Louis. Could this be a chance for Dyches/Endries to have a breakout game? I mean Jack Endries has shown explosive speed at the position and Dyches is likely roughly the same level of fast.

Source: https://x.com/RAanalytics/status/1844504450075140255

Stylistically, Cal fans will feel a sense of bizzaro Cal defense where we’re more of a 4-3 look with no desire to deploy nickel packages. It will be a physical and aggresive stop the run first defense, facing off against an offense that spent Fall Camp facing a 2-4/3-4 defense that wants to be aggressive and physical in forcing offenses into being 1 dimensional.

At the end of the game, I think Wilcox and Narduzzi would’ve loved to go to a pizza place and spent a couple hours talking ball. The vibe I got from the coaching clinics I watched is that both are cut from the same cloth when talking about how to build a program and what they want from their defenses.