Louisville football will have their hands full against Notre Dame

Outlook

Cardinal fans can’t be naive. It is less than ideal for Scott Satterfield to start his tenure at UofL with this game.

This Cards team is going to be a work-in-progress all season. That’s just the way things will go as they undergo the massive transformation from the product we saw on the field last year to what we hope we see by the end of the 2019 season.

I fully expect the team to come out ready to roll in this game.

It’s also worth mentioning here that Scott Satterfield has consistently competed at the highest level against Power Five schools during his tenure at Appalchian State. We know about the upset of the Mountaineers over Michigan back in 2007, when a relatively unknown FCS school shocked the world. While Satterfield wasn’t the coach of that team, he was on staff as the offensive coordinator.

More recently, App State put a scare into Penn State just last season, taking the Nittany Lions into overtime before dropping that one by a single touchdown.

An upset here is very unlikely, but that doesn’t mean the Cards won’t compete at a high level.

For those that were in attendance the last time the Cards opened the season at home on Labor Day night in a marquee game, I know the fans will be at full-song come kickoff. This will be important as the team will look to feed off that energy early and often, especially if Notre Dame grabs early momentum with a big play.

My worry is with the ability of the offense to generate enough plays against the stout Irish defense to pull off the upset.

For the Cards to win, Satterfield is going to have to wave his magic offensive wand and create big plays with a balanced run/pass mix, sprinkled with a mix of trickery.

And I’m sure we will see plenty of both.

I’m just worried it won’t be enough.

There are games on the schedule that would have been much better for the Cardinals to open with, week two against Eastern Kentucky, for example. Seeing a team with legitimate College Football Playoff aspirations across the field in your first showing under a new coaching staff is not a recipe for early success. But competing hard and putting up a fight should give this team, the coaching staff, and the fans a lot of reason for optimism.

It is important for fans to remember, this team will not be a finished product in week one.

Prediction: Notre Dame-31 Louisville-21

Do you have a prediction? Let us know what you think in the comments!