Louisville football: Could Gunter Brewer coach an All-American in year one?

Louisville football will bring in their most experienced coach, Gunter Brewer, to coach their most talented position, wide receivers.

“If a coach lacks sufficient persistence, he will be unable to complete the critical task of finding growth opportunities out of adversity.” -Seth Davis -Michael Scott

Louisville football faced a ton of adversity in the 2019 season. In almost every area, Louisville coaches lost control of their team and, time after time, were unable to reel them back in. From 40 and 50 point beat-downs, to complete lack of execution on both sides of the ball, two really bad teams separated Louisville from an 0-12 season. The Cards finished the year on a 9 game losing streak, and aside from an okay performance against Florida State early in the season, they were never even competitive.

Perhaps the most frustrating area where Louisville struggled was in the wide receiver unit. Louisville brought in, hands down, it’s most talented receiver group ever and completely laid an egg. The Cards accounted for 2,533 in 2018, which is good for just 211 yards per game through the air on a team that played from behind the entire season. This is down from 3,898 yards, or 299 yards per game, in 2017 on a run-first Lamar Jackson-led squad.

Part of Louisville’s wide receiver unit issues were certainly inconsistency at quarterback, and from the team as a whole- there’s no denying that. But overall, Louisville’s receiving unit regressed in 2018. Receivers found themselves open a lot less, as a result of play-calling and coaching. There was a complete disconnect in 2018 that a lot of people, ourselves included, didn’t see coming.

Louisville needed a complete change in the wide receivers room for the better. Enter new Cards wide receiver coach Gunter Brewer. Brewer has over 30 years of coaching experience, and spent the last year in an unsuccessful stint with the Philadelphia Eagles. Brewer spent over a decade at North Carolina and Oklahoma State, among others, and coached an impressive group of players. He spent two years in the receivers room with Randy Moss at Marshall and Dez Bryant at Oklahoma State. Additionally, he was the primary recruiter for, and coached former OSU star Justin Blackmon. All three receivers are former Biletnekoff Award winners.

Probably of most importance for Louisville though, is the change of pace that Brewer brings to the locker room. Former receivers coach, and Co-OC, Lonnie Galloway did a little with a lot in his time at Louisville. The Cards stocked up on incredible talent at wide out, but the more soft-spoken Galloway was never able to get the unit anywhere close to where they should’ve been.

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Brewer brings with him the reputation of having disciplined, strong-handed receivers, but he also brings an incredible personality. On a receiving unit with strong personalities, Louisville’s “freaks,” as he prefers to call them, need someone to instill confidence in work ethic. It seemed at times in 2018 that Louisville’s receivers personalities were more dominant than the coaches. In the pre-season, Dez Fitzpatrick turned heads when he said that every Louisville receiver could beat Alabama’s secondary one-on-one. But, if we are being frank, the Cards’s receivers rarely beat anyone one-on-one, let alone the Alabama’s and Clemson’s of the world.

Louisville was in need of a guy who could match the intensity and personality of the modern day wide receiver, and that’s what they are getting in Brewer.

“He has great high energy,” Philadelphia recevier Bryce Treggs said of Brewer in 2018 training camp. “It’s hard to come in and be dragging around, not be in a good mood as soon as you come into the meeting room, he has the most energy in the room and he’s the oldest dude in the room. So for him to have that energy, we all kind of feed off of that.”

It’s that kind of energy that could turn an underachieving unit with tremendous upside into one that could turn some heads in 2019 and beyond.

Here’s Brewer conducting some fan day interviews with one-time (for 6 days) Louisville running backs coach Chad Scott back in 2016:

At Louisville, Brewer will get to coach All-American caliber talent Dez Fitzpatrick, veterans Seth Dawkins and DeVante Peete, speedster Tutu Atwell, and a crop of young receivers with tremendous upside.

Look for Brewer to make an instant impact at Louisville, just as he has so many times before.