Louisville football is coming off a less than stellar opening game against Alabama. With potential for a bounce-back game against Indiana State on Saturday, here’s five things to look for from the Cards.
Heading into Week two of the 2018 season, we still don’t know a lot about the Louisville football team.
While the Alabama game didn’t teach us much but what I learned was that Puma Pass has the potential to be the real deal. Knowing that Pass was playing against the best defense he may ever face as the QB at Louisville, I thought he looked very good.
Louisville has to work on a lot of things, including the dumb mental penalties. Alabama can beat you on talent alone; They don’t need four twelve men on the field calls to help them. I liked what I saw from the defense early on until they got worn down.
There’s a quite a few different points we could highlight on our five things to look but these are the five that I think are most important.
1. Who Steps Up In Place of Jonathan Greenard?
For the second season in a row, Louisville lost key defensive player in the season opener. Greenard will be lost for a significant amount of time this year. So who will step up in his place?
Louisville needs to look at this as a “next man up” situation. True freshman Jarrett Jackson and Malik Clark were listed behind Greenard on the pre-season depth chart released last week. Amonte Caban could also be a name to look for.
Greenard’s loss will be felt like Jaire Alexander’s was last season, but losing one player shouldn’t derail a whole defense like we saw last year. I don’t see the defense falling off like in 2017. This is mainly because I think we have a better guy calling the defense this season. It’ll open up for the next guy to make his impact felt.
2. Can the Cards Build Confidence?
Louisville will likely be on the other end of the blow out this week. This is a perfect game to get some of that confidence back and build off this win. Yes, I know it’s Indiana State but it helps build confidence, particularly with the younger players and transfers.
The Cards will look to get better play from the running game and secondary unit and build off this game and go into WKU with more swagger.
Guys like Dae Williams, Colin Wilson, and Trey Smith could get things going Saturday and they should. This will help roll momentum into next week and build on it has conference play approaches in just a few games.
3. The Jeremy Smith Factor
Louisville’s ground game struggled against Alabama- as does everyone- but it got some major news a few days before the game.
Jeremy Smith will be returning to the squad and this will be a good game for him to return to. This will help him get up to speed and get into game shape.
Smith can help carry the load going forward and just add the stable of backs that Bobby is going to run with this season. He will get a couple warm-up games before the Cards enter conference play.
4. The Secondary Play
Louisville’s secondary didn’t have the best outing against the Alabama wide outs. Indiana State is the perfect game to get back to basics on and play fundamentally sound.
I want to see our cornerbacks just shut down the Indiana State receivers. I’m not too worried about them yet but if they give up some big plays and get burned deep on Saturday, it might be time to reevaluate preseason expectations.
Louisville’s secondary, other than Jaire Alexander, has struggled since losing former defensive backs coach Terrell Buckley. I think they need a game like this to get their swagger back, even if the other teams talent isn’t up to par.
I look for Rodjay Burns to have a big game this week and snag his first interception as a Cardinal.
5. How Well Does Louisville Rebound?
Treat this game as a rebound game. It’s kind of like a preseason game. The coaches have seen and studied the Alabama game. Now, you use this game to correct what needs work, and to experiment a little bit with lineups and new wrinkles in the system. Work on things that were noticed on film and continue to improve in those areas.
I know this won’t happen because of risk of injury but I wouldn’t mind if the starters played all the way through the third quarter just to build chemistry and work on timing in a game setting. I think it will help with the season going forward but if it’s 50-7 at halftime I doubt we see it.
On the other side, I’d like to see Malik Cunningham get some run and other young guys. TuTu Atwell and Hassan Hall caught some eyes in the Alabama game, so hopefully we see more of them.
Look for the Cards to take full advantage of a few games against lesser competition and ultimately get the ball rolling going into a challenging conference slate.