Sanders Leading with High Aspirations as Pitt Defensive Coordinator
Cory Sanders spent eight years and exactly 103 games working alongside Pitt defensive coordinator Randy Bates.
Sanders put in his time, learned from a well-respected coordinator and a defensive-minded head coach in Pat Narduzzi.
With the conclusion of the 2025 Military Bowl, Bates retired. Then, Sanders received a promotion as the new Pitt defensive coordinator.
In just a short few weeks, Sanders has created a simple mindset: be the best.
“You can’t take for granted being in a great place and a great situation that you’re happy with…I know there’s progressions like, ‘Hey, I want to go be a head coach.’ No, I just want to be the best damn defensive coordinator in the country right now and make these guys better,” Sanders said Wednesday. “That’s my goal. That’s my goal every single day that I wake up, every single day I walk in the building is to be the best defensive coordinator and find ways to improve and enhance our defense and our program,” Sanders said.
Sanders to Maintain Defensive Identity
Under Narduzzi, Pitt’s defense is known as a pressure-heavy unit that prides itself in stopping the run and playing press coverage on the outside.
Sanders, who has previous defensive coordinator experience at West Florida from 2015-16, looks to maintain that very identity and build on it as the defensive play-caller.
“I think over the years, we’ve taken great pride of being an attack-style defense,” he said. “We get after offenses. We’re heavy blitz style, we press and we’re in your face, right? So those things don’t change. Those things are who we are. I think when you look at it, the thing that changes is just the approach of how we go about things, and that’s the day-to-day if that’s in the meeting room or the field and just coming for me. There’s things from a philosophical standpoint like we stop the run. That’s what we do. We attack the football. We want to take the ball away. Like those are things that’s how we’re measured and those are things we want to still execute at a high rate that will make us a successful defense.”
Under Bates since 2019, Pitt recorded a national-best 299 quarterback sacks. Bates’s defenses also ranked in the top-10 nationally on multiple occasions in rushing defense. Pitt has also produced an ACC-leading 21 defensive touchdowns over the past five years.
Sanders spent those eight years under Bates absorbing as much knowledge about the Pitt defense as possible.
“Just from the standpoint of how he breaks down field zones, his approach statistics-wise and looking at it from there,” Sanders said. “From a mental aspect, there’s things that I’ve gained from him. I’ll tell you a big thing about coach Bates, too, his positive energy and how he wakes up and he approaches the building every single day. You talk about when we first got here in 2018 and he had cancer and he beat it. All those things, you just look at a man even from that perspective and just his outlook and his positivity on things even outside of just the football mental aspect, those are great things that you pull away from him with relationships and relating to those kids and bringing up the level of people’s outlook on a day-in day-out basis.”
As a Grand Rapids, Mich. native, Sanders also spent many years studying the Michigan State defense — one that was run by Narduzzi from 2007-14 and carried over to Pitt.
“I grew up always looking up to the toughness and who they were as a defense and how he constructed and ran those defenses,” Sanders said. “So for me, from the moment I got here, it’s been so much growth as a coach, as a person and as a leader working under him. Now for me, it’s great. Now, it’s more conversations of how we’re doing things, how we’re doing this or that or want to change things and just in general conversation. It’s a unique opportunity to create more conversation and just talk about some things and more opportunity for growth from my standpoint of just football in general with coach Narduzzi hand-in-hand right with him.”
Sanders, Pitt Laying Foundation Toward 2026
The start of the 2026 campaign is still over six months away, but practices have begun on the South Side with the Pitt players that returned, have enrolled out of the transfer portal and incoming freshmen.
“Right now, the foundation is being laid,” Sanders said. “Spring ball is gonna come in 25 days. We’re not worried about spring ball right now… I told the kids today, when we wake up, we got to be intentional. We got to be intentional and have purpose when we walk in this building. We can’t drift when we when we step into meetings we step on the field. We got to be intentional about getting better.”
Sanders’ practice routine has shifted from his time as the safeties coach to his new role as coordinator.
“Today, just bouncing around other position meetings. Practice was the weirdest thing ever today just doing individual period and now not running to my corner and doing the safeties drills. Now just walking around watching everybody but it’s great watching those finite details of every single position of what they’re doing and how they’re trying to execute it at a high rate. So it was good and bad. It was good in a sense of just looking at everybody and their coaching and how they’re running and doing their things, but at the same time different just not having your own position,” Sanders said.
Sanders not only oversees the defensive players, but also the assistant coaches on that side of the ball, which includes new linebackers coach Joe Bowen and safeties coach Harlon Barnett.
“It’s been great from the standpoint, you look at Joe Bowen, who’s been a defense coordinator at Buffalo. You look at Coach Barnett who’s been a defensive coordinator at Michigan State as well as Florida State, and you got a lot of great experience there from those guys,” Sanders said. “Bringing new guys in, and they’ve been a part of the system, but they’ve also been outside of it as well. You just hear different perspective and different outlooks on ways to do things or techniques or coverages or fits whatever it may be. It just creates great conversation.”
