Pitt Offensive Aiming for More Explosiveness

According to Bell, Holstein has been more aggressive in camp, and that is due to his coaching philosophy. Bell believes that aggressiveness in practice leads to confidence on game days.

"Who cares about turning the ball over in camp?" Bell said. "On that third-and-6 or third-and-7 in practice, or that second-and-5, if you don't work on trying to make that throw in practice and try to make that tough throw to keep a drive alive, or that drive drive might win you the game in the fourth quarter... then you're never gonna have the confidence to throw them in games."

The other part of Bell's coaching approach is that the more aggressive his quarterbacks play, the more he can dissect mistakes and fix them in practice, rather than making in-game adjustments on the fly.

"It's my job to coach," Bell said, "What happened to that throw? Did you throw that pick because your eyes weren't there fast enough? Or did you throw that pick because your feet weren't set fast enough? That's my job to coach the stuff happening in the play."

If Holstein does play more aggressively, whether it's Saturday against Duquesne or some point later in the season, then Pitt's wide receivers need to step up and help their quarterback make those big plays.

The Panthers had three wide receivers with more than 300 receiving yards last season. The leading receiver, Konta Mumpfield, is now in the NFL, leaving just Kenny Johnson and Poppi Williams.

Pitt has since added Blue Hicks from Louisville, Deuce Spann from Florida State, and true freshman Cam Sapp. All three receivers made the first two-deep depth chart of the season, and Bell believes all his receivers can make an impact this year.

"What we've seen sometimes this camp is that those guys can create some special plays," Bell said. " We create more of those where we might just throw a hitch out there or a slant, and he might go 30, or now we're hitting more post routes, some more down the field throws."

"I think when you can stretch people vertically, it opens up everything," Bell continued. "Whether it's the run game, whether it's the screen game, whether it's the drawback passing game. And I think now we've got a group of guys that can really do that consistently, not just one or two guys. Now we've got three, four, five, six of them that can do that."

While Bell is eager to push the ball downfield and see his quarterback and receivers make big plays, his head coach, Pat Narduzzi, offered, perhaps, a more realistic perspective.

"You can be aggressive as long as you're right," Narduzzi said. "We'll take our shots. He'll (Holstein) be asked to take his shots when it's time, but it's also, complete the ball, move the sticks. I mean, we'd like to be explosive, and Kade likes to be explosive. He'd like to score every series in two or three plays. That's great. That's not college football."

Narduzzi said that there are a lot of good defenses on Pitt's schedule this season, and he is more focused on playing "what the defense is giving you" football than being ultra-aggressive.

"If they're gonna pack it back and be in some type of Tampa 2, do we want to be aggressive? I don't think so," Narduzzi said. "I think the most important thing is we have the ball in our hands, and we're not turning the ball over."

Bell recognizes Narduzzi's perspective, but said there are just some times when the offense has to play fast and score even faster.

"No one wants to call 13,14 plays a drive," Bell said. "It's hard to do that. It's hard to do that in the NFL and expect college kids to be able to do that every drive, to go to 11,12 plays, is tough because you've got to play consistent football. We've got to have some drives where we've got to drive the ball and be patient and take what they give us and run the ball and get 12-play drives. But also, we need to have a couple of drives where we score really explosively."