Unimaginable Shocking news: The Louisville Cardinals football head coach has scanned his team and sacked two more filthy, selfish players.
Louisville, KY: Only a week after Louisville football under Jeff Brohm’s leadership dominated Notre Dame for a surprise victory, the team was dealt a similarly unexpected blow.
The No. 14 Cardinals (6-1, 3-1 ACC) were favored by a touchdown going into their road game against a sinking Pitt, but they ultimately lost by three scores, falling to the Panthers (2-4, 1-2 ACC) 38-21 on Saturday night.
Pitt, who was having their worst start since 2005, dealt Louisville their first loss of the season. Louisville was having its best start since 2013. Following the match, Brohm accepted full responsibility for the unexpected surprise defeat.
“Well, today was a defeat. Being the head coach, I’ll accept responsibility for it,” he declared. You believe your team is prepared for action, that you have covered all the bases, and that you have made sure they are aware of previous incidents. You address it and talk about it, but clearly it wasn’t enough. I have to do a better job of preparing us for each and every game.”
The possibility of becoming a victim of a trap game was one of the matchup’s main plot points the whole week. Louisville was riding high on the emotions of a convincing victory over the Fighting Irish, and Brohm’s troubles after the big wins while at Purdue had been well chronicled.
When you consider that Pitt was coming off a bye week, that they had switched quarterbacks in an attempt to find an offensive spark, and that the game was played in almost nonstop rain, you can see why this game was selected as a popular upset pick around the country.
Having said that, Brohm did not believe his players were as focused as they needed to be. He thinks they were concentrated on the task at hand, and rather than their strategy or mental condition, he credits the play on the field for the defeat.
The three red zone blunders made by the Cardinals, two of which directly resulted in touchdowns for Pitt, are the difference that Brohm emphasized.
Quarterback Jack Plummer was responsible for all three of Louisville’s turnovers. The first came from a turnover in the second quarter that let Pitt drive down the field and tie the score at fourteen points apiece. The third was a pick that came on the very next drive and bounced right out of wide receiver Jimmy Calloway’s hands and into the hands of a Pitt defender. The second was an 86-yard pick in the third quarter that increased the Louisville deficit from three points to ten.
While Brohm acknowledges that Plummer needs to improve his football management, he also primarily blames himself for not positioning Plummer and the offense in a more advantageous position.
“But I believe that we need more balance since we aren’t playing the running game as consistently as we would like to. The quarterback is relieved of some of the pressure. It wasn’t limited to him. It was impossible for us to make contested catches. We did not make contested receptions, and we had plenty of one-on-one opportunities for big plays. It was just a lot of factors coming together, but like I mentioned, that’s my problem. I wasn’t prepared to leave.”
The way that Brohm called plays affected the game as well. When faced with a 4th and 1 from their own 34-yard line on the first drive of the second half, Brohm decided to take a risk and go for it. The Panthers scored 24 points in a row in the second half after Pitt’s field goal, which came after Louisville was unable to convert.
“Well, I had hoped to acquire a half yard. Thus, it’s clear that I was mistaken or that the play calling wasn’t correct,” he remarked. “We’ve performed that play a lot. With two tight ends on that side, you’d like to be able to hammer it in there and simply come off the ball. Since it resulted in a field goal for them, it is evident that the play call and choice were poor.”
Midway through the third quarter, Louisville likewise appeared to give up on the run and start throwing deep ball after deep ball. The 52 attempts Plummer made to run the ball were the most by a Cardinal since 2018. The Cardinals ran the ball 33 times.
In any case, the Cardinals are about to go on a much-needed bye week. Louisville will need to mentally regroup after Saturday night’s disappointment if they are to win their remaining challenging games against Duke, Miami, and Kentucky.
“We need to reorganize,” he stated. “Remember that the timetable will get harder every week from now on. All teams will be prepared to play, and we need to improve. It’s a bad day; give the other team some credit. We were defeated; they triumphed.”
