You had to figure that Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi would be asked about the status of starting safety Jordan Whitehead again at today's press conference. He was and again offered nothing.
Whitehead, if you missed it, dressed but didn't play against Marshall on Saturday. Narduzzi not only didn't give a status update on Whitehead, but has even refused to say if his absence was injury-related immediately after the game.
On Monday, it was more of the same:
The exchange between Pat Narduzzi and reporters at his weekly press conference regarding Jordan Whitehead's status. pic.twitter.com/7TpFmcIqnB
— Craig Meyer (@CraigMeyerPG) October 3, 2016
Whitehead, too, is listed on the depth chart as an 'OR' option with Reggie Mitchell for this week's game against Georgia Tech.
Narduzzi hates to divulge any information on, well, just about anything related to a player's absence. As I said on Sunday, I almost hope at this point that Whitehead's absence was related to something off the field because if it's an injury, it's unfair to the player to have everyone speculating if he didn't something wrong off the field or not. After all, why leave your player high and dry like that? For the sake of secrecy?
I get not wanting to divulge information but sometimes this comes off as a bit much. Narduzzi could be trying to protect Whitehead here from ... whatever. But it's hard to tell when he won't even state if it's injury-related or not. In the end, while Narduzzi is trying to make the chatter on this die down, by answering zero questions related to it, it only has people talking more.
My stance hasn't changed, though - at least in regards to how the fans will treat this. Narduzzi will continue to drive the media nuts but the bottom line is that if he wins, the fans won't care in the slightest. Start losing more games, though, and the secrecy stuff begins to look a lot like paranoia.
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