Pat Narduzzi calls former Pitt player Carson Van Lynn ‘a spy’

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi guided the Panthers to a 54-29 win over Duke in Durham on Saturday, but after the game, he couldn’t help but take a jab at a former player, who he accused of intercepting and translating signals for Duke and described as “a spy.”

The player in question was Carson Van Lynn, who played for Pitt from 2017 to 2020 and then transferred to Duke earlier this year. Van Lynn played in 36 games for Pitt as a reserve offensive tackle and tight end and now serves in the same role for the Blue Devils.

“You feel like they got your signals,” Narduzzi said when asked what changed between the first and second quarters of Saturday’s game. “You know, Carson Van Lynn is over there staring at our signalers. We changed some things up, maybe we didn’t change it up good enough. I don’t know what it is, but we got it done. You’ve got a spy on the other team, and our kids found a way to get it done.”

Narduzzi ended his diatribe about his former player by saying he did not know definitively if Van Lynn was intercepting Pitt’s signals or not but that situations like the one he described are “why transfers and intraconference transfers are not good.” Narduzzi also expressed relief that no one would have “inside information” for the rest of the year after the Duke game.

If Van Lynn was intercepting and translating signals as Narduzzi alleged, it didn’t help Duke all that much, as the Blue Devils were hammered by the Panthers and ultimately lost by 25 points. His former teammates also did not seem aggrieved by anything he did during the game, as they greeted Van Lynn and posed for pictures together after the game.