Oct. 28, 2024
Week 10, Game 8 (SMU Week)
PAT NARDUZZI: Coming off another win, obviously we closed the chapter on Syracuse last night. Outstanding job by our football team. Preparation, I think it always starts with preparation, how we practice, and to dismantle a team like we did, especially defensively — we were on the field for 102 snaps. We lost time of possession by 22 minutes. Our guys didn’t look back, don’t care. They were out there eating.
Our offense only had 45 snaps, so they weren’t on the field very long just because we couldn’t. But it was an impressive performance, especially defensively, and again, would have been nice to give our offense more snaps, but we got a lot of guys to play the game, as well.
That was the other thing. In the past we’ve gotten guys snaps against Youngstown State but we were able to get twos and threes in the game, especially defensively, because of the amount of snaps we had and the score and what it was.
Moving on to the next one in SMU, Rhett Lashlee, won a conference championship a year ago, has stumbled only once this season, so they’ve got a great football team. He’s heck of a coach. Happy for him. We’re looking forward to going down to Dallas.
Defensively they’re four-down, change it up coverage-wise a little bit. But to me they’re very similar to us defensively in my opinion because I think they’re simple. I don’t think they do a lot. I think what they do is sound and they just play hard and play fast. That’s why they’ve had so much success.
I think they’re ranked 24th in the country in rush defense, I believe, or — let me get my stats right here. Rush defense they are fifth in the country, excuse me, so probably No. 1 in the ACC I would imagine.
In rush offense — they’re a running team compared to what we saw last week, a passing team. This is a team that’s going to want to run it at you. Does a great job running it at everybody, but 24th in the country rushing offense.
Defensively, interesting, you talk about transfer portal, they have 17 guys in their two-deep that are portal guys. As a matter of fact, I think every one of their starters is from the portal, every one of them on defense. Offensively they only have seven guys from the portal so I thought that was…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Pitt Panthers #H2P…