Kade Bell shepherding Pitt offense through spring's 'growing pains'

Long past anyone else’s 7½-hour work day, Kade Bell is typically still in his office, evaluating another piece of video, working on the next day’s Pitt practice schedule or just formulating new ways to move the football.

Finally, it’s time to go home, but sometimes when Bell is leaving the facility, quarterback Nate Yarnell is coming through the front door for his second shift.

“I go home to my wife and to my daughter pretty late,” Pitt’s offensive coordinator said Thursday after practice, “and he’s walking in the building to watch film until about 9 o’clock.”

No matter how the offense’s growing pains — Bell’s words — turn out by the end of the season, Yarnell is putting in the time this spring with the intent of making them disappear.

“He loves football,” Bell said. “He wants to be great. He doesn’t want to be average. He just doesn’t want to win six or seven games. He wants to go to the ACC championship.”

Days when Pitt has practice in the morning, it’s a long day for the redshirt junior quarterback from Austin, Texas. To relax, he sits down at the piano in the players’ lounge and plays for a while. Current go-to tune: “Hotel California.”

Back at his day job, Yarnell is displaying the leadership qualities that he will need to hold onto the job, Bell said.

“The one thing I love about Nate at practice, it’s never someone else’s fault,” Bell said. “That’s what great quarterbacks are: They take responsibility. The kids see that.”

It should be noted that these are the early days of Bell’s total makeover of the Pitt offense. It will continue for two more weeks with coaches and in the summer in players-only workouts.

Bell said Yarnell’s progress will have a direct bearing on the season’s outcome.

“The quarterback is the difference between winning a championship and not, right?” he said, speaking generically. “You have to put good players around them, but when it comes down to it, I have to see what the quarterbacks can do.”

The growing pains involve recognizing whether to hand off or throw when running a run/pass option. Bell said the offense threw 86 passes in the scrimmage last Saturday, but that wasn’t the intent. “Really about 60-something. About 12 times (the quarterback) should have handed the ball off with the RPOs.

“We’re getting better with that stuff. I’m putting them in some tough situations.”

Bell said the complexities of Pitt’s defense might be just what the offense needs in its formative stage.

“It’s actually making them tougher mentally,” he said, “because they’re having to go through some growing pains, which I love. We got a lot better in the past two days.

“The biggest thing is communication. Everybody be on the same page. You want to be able to throw the ball before (pass catchers) break. You have to be able to trust exactly where he’s supposed to be. With a new offense, it makes quarterbacks sometimes be hesitant because you want to make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be.”

The other change is Bell’s desire for his quarterbacks to throw quickly.

“How fast can he get rid of the ball and not have a negative play? The way we teach everything is everything’s fast. I want to be able to line up fast. I want to be able to motion fast. I want to be able to communicate fast.

“The faster you do anything, the more it looks the same for the defense. Try to put them in a miscommunication where we get an easy throw. Or we get an easy handoff because they’re out of the box.”

Bell said Yarnell understands the offense to an extent.

“Does he understand exactly what I want yet? Nobody does. That’s because it’s so different, the way we teach, the way we want to read things, the way we get the ball out of our hands. This is not a stand-in-there, hold-onto-it, hold-onto-it, take-the-sack offense. That’s not who we are.”

Bell is confident there is plenty of time to remedy the growing pains before the first game Aug. 31.

“Five months is half a year, basically,” he said. “We have a long time to get better.”

Yarnell said he has improved in “leaps and bounds” since the start of spring drills.

“Coach Bell is asking a lot of me,” he said, “and that’s exactly what I want.”