Stock up, stock down for Louisville football after Virginia

Malik Cunningham

I’m not sure what led the coaching staff (Bobby Petrino) to believe that putting in Malik Cunningham would be the end all, be all solution for the offense. Though the redshirt freshman is a great athlete who has the ability to make big plays at any given time with his legs, his athleticism and elusiveness comes nowhere near that of Lamar Jackson, nor does he have a good enough arm to make throws. To view Cunningham as a savior was unfair from the jump and actually ended up hurting his game in the process.

We quickly saw that Cunningham was unable to make throws that were necessary to keep the defense from stacking 8+ defenders in the box and planning for only the run. The defense only allowed six completions to Cunningham, none of which were for more than 11 yards, and only 26 yards running on 10 carries.

2.6 yards per carry is not exactly the big play hopes that the Cards thought they were getting. Now don’t get me wrong, Cunningham showed some nice things in the half that he played. He was able to at least help the Cards drive the a ball a little bit down the field, while keeping the defense on the sideline to rest. He also was able to finish the game as the team’s leading rusher, which says a lot about how bad the running game was for the Cards.

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However, after the interception by Rodjay Burns that was returned back to the Virginia three yard line, Bobby decided to go to Puma Pass and never looked back.

We’ll likely get some type of update today from Bobby Petrino but it doesn’t appear that Malik Cunningham showed enough in his first start to be the full time quarterback moving forward.

Puma Pass

Look I’m a nice guy, I really am. I’m never going to be the one who @’s players on Twitter or other social media outlets, or boo’s at games. But sometimes you have to call like you see it, and Jawon “Puma” Pass just ain’t the dude to lead this team.

Pass re-entered the game at what I thought was the prefect time, which says a lot about how bad Petrino was during this game. With the Cards at the three yard line with three chances to punch it – giving a nice short slant route to Dez or Jaylen would’ve been a great play call, and a pass that Jawon Pass could make.

Unfortunately for him and the offense, three straight running plays were called and the Cards couldn’t punch it in. From there Petrino left Pass in as the team’s QB and he actually made a few nice passes, but for the most part showed that he doesn’t have the arm, or IQ to be the Cards QB moving forward.

Pass had a couple of throws tipped at the line, a few thrown into the dirt short of his intended target, one picked off, and several others that were nowhere near where they should have been. The accuracy displayed by Pass, as well as the difficultly handling pressure up the middle were flaws exposed by the Virginia defense, and one’s that will have to improve fast if he has any shot at being the team’s QB full time.

At this point I honestly don’t know what you do at QB if Bobby Petrino choosing between Pass and Cunningham. There is an ideal third candidate one that we’ll touch on more in a bit.