Pitt's issues may extend beyond just the focus, energy Pat Narduzzi has mentioned

During his postgame media Q&A Saturday, Pitt football coach Pat Narduzzi admitted that his team wasn’t in a properly energized or focused state of mind during a disappointing home loss to Western Michigan.

That certainly got my attention.

It did again on Monday when Narduzzi reiterated those complaints during his weekly press conference.

“I think physically we were prepared. I’m not sure mentally we were,” Narduzzi said Monday. “As I told the kids, I can’t crack your head open and look inside and see what’s in there. Where’s your mind been all week? What are you tweeting? What are you snapping? I don’t know.”

As Narduzzi added, the lack of mental edge his team displayed Saturday is something he had been stewing over since the Broncos closed out the 44-41 upset at Heinz Field.

“I certainly don’t think there was the energy, the emotion, which I might have mentioned after the press conference,” Narduzzi continued. “Or I’ve been thinking about it for two days since the game.”

So Narduzzi wasn’t having a knee-jerk reaction to what transpired. Even as the dust settled, Narduzzi felt his players were either emotionally underinvested — or mentally underprepared — for an underdog opponent at a time when the program otherwise appeared to be on an upward trajectory.

A trait that has dogged the Panthers football team for most of the Heinz Field era. As soon as the Panthers get you believing they may be on the way to a rare 10-win season, they stub their toe against a lesser foe and pull the plug on any momentum they may have built.

If these Panthers follow suit with many of their predecessors, they’ll squeeze out a surprising upset of their own at some point over the next few weeks, only to trip up in disappointing, flatline, under-focused fashion one more time before the season is over.

After a solid road win at Tennessee the previous week, Narduzzi and the rest of the Pitt community seemed to believe this year would be different. That’s what made the loss to Western Michigan so difficult for Narduzzi to swallow.

To Narduzzi’s credit, both on Saturday after the loss and on Monday during his press conference, Narduzzi blamed himself for not properly channeling his players’ emotions. The coach admitted if red flags were out there, he must have missed them.

“I thought it was good last week,” Narduzzi said. “It’s an eye-opener. As much as we talked and put that Tennessee game to rest, they may be shaking their heads, ‘Yeah, yeah, got you, Coach. Got you. Yeah, yeah.’… Just all those things you try to suppress it mentally, but I can’t take care of it, but I would hope getting punched in the face Saturday afternoon, I hope that wakes you up.”

To that last point Narduzzi made, one would think this problem is fixable. Having experienced the blow of having lost to a MAC opponent at home while allowing 44 points should be evidence enough that he should have to constantly goose his players’ motivation the next time they find themselves favored in an ACC game against a conference underdog.

Or even this Saturday against an FCS opponent when the New Hampshire Wildcats come to Heinz Field.

The bigger concern might be what happened physically on defense. Can that be fixed, too? How did Western Michigan hang that many points and 517 yards of offense on the board against the Panthers defense?

If the Panthers’ tactics and execution on defense remain that poor moving into the conference season, it won’t matter how energized and mentally plugged in the players are pregame. Especially if their upcoming opponents execute run-pass options as efficiently as the Broncos did.

“We went back and watched a bunch of RPOs from last year and just looked at what we’ve seen this year in RPOs and how we did it, what we did wrong,” Narduzzi said. “And you don’t see much of a difference what we’re doing structurally and things at all.”

To continue his refrain about being on-point mentally, though, Narduzzi insisted the issues on his defense may still be about focus than anything else.

“What happens if they start dinking, dinking. What (does) everybody think? Let me go help somebody else. Let me go do somebody else’s job, (then) you don’t do your own job and that’s when things leak out,” Narduzzi explained. “So, to play great defense everybody’s got to do their job…those are some things you see out there. We’ll get it fixed, but everybody wants to go make a play, but you’ve got to do it within the framework of the defense.”

With ACC play beginning in two weeks, Narduzzi better fix those issues quickly. Because focused and energized or not, competition is about to improve.

Jerry DiPaola covers the Panthers for TribLIVE. He joins me for Wednesday’s podcast. We talk about the Pitt loss to Western Michigan, Saturday’s game against UNH, Narduzzi’s comments and the state of the ACC in general.