When Pat Narduzzi called, Randy Bates saw nothing 'vanilla' about Pitt's attacking defense

ATLANTA — At the end of the 2017 season, Randy Bates had a secure job coaching linebackers at Northwestern.

He’d been there 12 years, hired in 2006 by coach Pat Fitzgerald, who has been a fixture at Northwestern for all but the first year of this century.

The 2017 Northwestern team finished 10-3, ranked No. 17 in the nation with a top-40 defense that Bates helped craft (No. 34, actually). A year earlier, Northwestern defeated Pitt in the Pinstripe Bowl.

All was well in Evanston, Ill., for Bates and his family.

Then, Pat Narduzzi called.

Pitt was looking for a defensive coordinator to replace Josh Conklin, who left to become head coach at Wofford (S.C.) after the 2017 season. Bates was Narduzzi’s man.

The pair had been friends and Big Ten assistants for years, often talking ball in regards to technique, schemes and opponents. It was a match of football personalities that worked almost immediately after Narduzzi hired Bates.

Four years later, Bates has helped Pitt to an ACC championship, an 11-2 record and a berth in the Peach Bowl on Thursday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

Dig a little deeper, and you’ll see Pitt has had one of the nation’s great pass rushes over the past three seasons. The Panthers have been second in the nation in sacks in each of the 2019, ’20 and ’21 seasons (a total of 148), and they need only two in the Peach Bowl against Michigan State to bring their per-season average in that time frame to 50.

Bates, now 61, accepted the Pitt job not just because it was his first shot at coordinating a Power-5 defense. He wanted to attack, and Narduzzi did, too.

“We were a very vanilla, more of a base-type defense at Northwestern,” Bates explained Tuesday morning. “And the aggressiveness of the defense we’re running right now is really the thing that attracted me the most.

“That’s what I embrace as a coach. That’s my mentality. It fits in very well with what I believe as a defensive coordinator.”

Bates, a fighter himself as a cancer survivor and a coach who likes to do pushups in front of his players, said splash plays are what set units and individuals apart from the crowd.

“We talk all the time about going and making the big plays,” he said. “The guys we know who are making big plays — tackles for loss, sacks, interceptions — those are guys who move onto the next level.

“We try to create a lot of havoc, affect the quarterback, affect the running back, really affect the offense with the way we play.”

Notice Bates’ use of the pronoun ‘we.’ Pitt has adopted that mindset this season to the point that tasks are only done right if they are done together.

“If a linebacker makes a sack or a tackle for a loss, it’s because the other 10 guys did their job so well,” Bates said. “When (linebacker) SirVocea Dennis goes and makes a tackle for a loss, probably (defensive end) Haba Baldonado did just as good a job and maybe forced it back in to him or (defensive tackle) Calijah Kancey did the same thing.

“This is an 11-man operation. This is the one sport where one guy doesn’t make a difference. It’s 11 guys.”

Bates said it’s “kind of my job” to keep reminding players of that fact. Especially in this age of social media.

“Not to put you guys down,” he told reporters, “but sometimes you guys make it even more difficult as a coach.”

The defense wasn’t perfect all season, allowing a total of 1,007 yards in losses to Western Michigan and Miami. Yet, the consensus among some players is the Western Michigan game served as a slap in the face.

“It was a long time ago, but it seems like yesterday,” Baldonado said. “We changed a lot of things in our defense (after that game). In my opinion, that’s what allowed us to have the season that we had.”

The defense stepped up during the push for the conference title, recording 26 sacks and nine turnovers in the past five games. Safety Erick Hallett was named MVP of the ACC championship game.

Pitt has a challenge on a different scale Thursday, confronting a Michigan State team that will be without All-American running back Kenneth Walker III, who has opted out of the game.

“He was a huge part of their offense, but they still have great players,” Baldonado said. “I’m sure they have a lot of running backs who are ready to step up and take his spot. It’s still going to be a tough game, but we’re going to stop them.”