Before you watch this I have to add that Ike and I are old friends so the argument about Josh Conklin and how Pitt has played so far (one-sided as I was sort of excited) isn’t anything to worry about. Ike knows his stuff – we just differ 180° on certain issues.
Here is a Q&A with Josh Conklin regarding the OSU game.
Q: This is a young defense, do you think you guys are going to kind of progress as the season goes along just as you gain more knowledge?
A: “I do. I think Pat [Narduzzi] said it best today. He said he doesn’t wanna hear about how young we are all the time…
Good – neither do I. We have players who are in their 3rd year under Narduzzi and Conklin now and that’s long enough to be in his defensive ‘system’ to play well. As we talked about in the Roundtable above – is it the lack of talent onboard or the lack of coaching? My point is that we
ve heard Pitt fans sing Narduzzi’s praises when it comes to recruit “better” 3* players so then it must be coaching. Which I firmly believe it is. Hence my feelings about Conklin – he’s the boss of the defense and as such the boss of all the position coaches on the defensive side of the ball. If those coaches are not getting the players to execute properly – and they haven’t for over two years now, then the problem rests on Conklin’s shoulders.
I think Pitt fans don’t sometimes get the whole of what the Coordinator actually does… but this is why he’s called the “coordinator” – because he coordinates all the aspects of the defense and then formulates systems and tactics to fit the HC’s defensive vision by developing and executing individual game plans… but it is the non-gameday coordination that is the majority of his job. Most fans I talk to think the DC does only the game planning part and that is really but a small piece of it.
pittpov.com 