Pitt Coaches Address Offensive Line Struggles

PITTSBURGH — It was a rough game for the offensive line in the Pitt Panthers' 30-13 win over Syracuse. The line allowed seven sacks, five of which were on third down, and committed too many penalties, a large contributor to the 13 fouls for 114 yards that the Panthers committed in the game.

Head coach Pat Narduzzi and offensive line coach Jeremy Darveau had plenty to say about the uncharacteristic performance.

False Start Penalties

Pitt committed an egregious four false start penalties for a loss of 20 yards. There were also a few holding calls sprinkled throughout the game. Those should rarely happen, even in road environments.

"I obviously did a poor job of preparing our offense for that game," Narduzzi admitted. "I think the noise was a lot more than Florida State. It's been a while since we've been up there, and we won't make that mistake again."

Narduzzi said it was just a one-game mistake, and Darveau said preparing for loud road environments will be an emphasis in the coming weeks.

"We're really going to ramp up the crowd noise at practice," Darveau said. "If we need to get into some silent cadence, we've got that ready. We just didn't feel like it was the right time just yet."

Kendall Stanley Struggles

The No. 1 culprit of the false start penalties was backup left tackle Kendall Stanley. Stanley has been the starter since Jeff Persi suffered an injury three weeks ago against Boston College.

Stanley has been pretty solid in his two other starts. He is a redshirt junior who transferred to Pitt from UNC Charlotte this offseason and made all 13 starts last season.

"He's a guy that's playing Power Four football in an atmosphere like that for the first time, and it just maybe got him a little bit more," Narduzzi said. "But he won't have that problem this week."

According to Pro Football Focus, Stanley allowed three pressures and had the second-lowest pass blocking grade out of the offensive linemen. However, Narduzzi owned the blame for Stanley's struggles.

"That's not Kendall's fault," Narduzzi said. "I'll blame myself. I just didn't have it loud enough, I guess. Maybe we should have gone to a silent cadence, I guess."

Darveau focused more on Stanley's pass protection flaws than his pre-snap errors. He said that Stanley can sometimes get out of position due to his athleticism. Darveau said Stanley occasionally moves too quickly or gets too twitchy in his pass protection.

"Because he's so fast getting to where he needs to get to, that sometimes it's too far, too short," Darveau said. "So, finding a way to kind of throttle that a little bit and get him to play more within the framework of being an offensive lineman has been kind of the challenge that he's had to address here over these last couple of weeks."

Pass Protection Woes

The seven sacks the Pitt offensive line allowed were the most all season. And there may be a trend developing.

The season-high before last week's game was six sacks allowed against West Virginia. The Panthers also committed 14 penalties for 118 yards in that game. The commonality between the two games is that they were both set in loud, road environments.

"We didn't execute very well," Narduzzi said. "I don't know if our guys were feeling themselves from the week before. That's kind of what I told them last night. 'Defense, you played terribly against Florida State, and you bowed up. Offense, you played great against Florida State, and then you had a down game.'"