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Updated 3 hours ago
The Pitt fans who write on message boards and worry about the loss of a quarterback, running back and 40 percent of the offensive line want to know about Shawn Watson the play-caller.
Those questions will be answered in time — a long time, actually, with the start of Pitt's 2017 season still seven months in the future.
To Watson, Pitt's new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, there is so much more to his job, his fourth since 2013.
“It's more than scheme, more than calling plays,” he said. “It's about the entire plan, the process, developing players and developing the offense.”
Watson, 57, said he was largely influenced by his mother, a teacher in their hometown of Carbondale, Ill.
“I saw her impact so many lives,” he said. “I want to be a teacher. I love impacting lives.
“I love what our business does. Our business affects lives. Developing young men is a huge responsibility a coach has. I have not wanted to do anything else.”
He describes the workload of a coach — seven days a week, for about half the year — as “long days, not hard days.”
“I don't like sitting on my hands. I like being out in front. That's my heart and my passion,” he said.
Hiring Watson turned into a long process for Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi, who lost former coordinator Matt Canada to LSU seven weeks ago.
“I'm very methodical in how I do things,” Narduzzi said. “I brought a few guys in (for interviews), talked to a lot of guys in Nashville (at the American Football Coaches Association convention last month).”
He said he included the entire staff in the process and even gave the quarterbacks some involvement. Watson said he knows several Pitt assistants who will now work with him, and he is good friends with former coordinator Jim Chaney, now at Georgia.
“It's a complex interview,” Narduzzi said. “It's about the person. We find a coach after that.”
For the second year in a row, Narduzzi hired an offensive coordinator with whom he had worked in the past. Narduzzi said Watson “took me under his wing” when both were at Miami (Ohio), Narduzzi's first job in college football in 1990.
Narduzzi, who worked with wide receivers at the time, called Watson “one of my first mentors in this business.”
“Shawn will tell you, we were the best blocking wide receivers in the country at that point,” he said.
Narduzzi is quick to mention, however, that there is more than friendship connected to Watson's arrival on campus.
“I wasn't hiring a friend. He's a dear friend, but he's a great coach,” Narduzzi said. “I was floored with the wealth of knowledge Shawn is going to bring to the table.”
Watson brings more accomplished experience to his job at Pitt than any coordinator hired in three years under former coach Paul Chryst.
He worked with former Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who threw for 3,970 yards and a school record 31 touchdowns and only four interceptions in 2013 before becoming a first-round draft choice of the Minnesota Vikings that spring.
Watson has been an offensive coordinator at four Power 5 schools since 2000 (Colorado, Nebraska, Louisville and Texas) before he was fired at the end of the 2015 season by then-Texas coach Charlie Strong.
After one game that season, Strong took away Watson's play-calling duties, even though Watson had followed Strong from Louisville a year earlier.
“We got away from who we were at Louisville,” he said of the Texas situation. “There were a lot of things that affected those decisions.
“Charlie, all of us, will tell you what we did (at Texas) we believed in. What made us great at Louisville, we made some tweaks.
“It was a tough hand for all of us, Charlie in particular. We all keep moving forward and keep working.”
Strong, who was fired by Texas after the 2016 season and is now head coach at South Florida, did not respond to a phone call from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Narduzzi said Watson will bring to Pitt offensive concepts he employed at each stop of his career.
“He's done it so many different ways and run some of the things we did last year (while averaging 446.8 yards of total offense, fourth in the ACC),” Narduzzi said.
Watson described himself as a “football junkie,” who was studying Canada's offense last year while he was an assistant at Indiana.
“I thought what they did was very unique,” Watson said. “You build your offense around, No. 1, being able to rush the football and you balance it with the passing attack when you need to and choose to.”
Jerry DiPaola is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at jdipaola@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.
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