Louisville football: What ESPN thinks about the 2019 Cardinals

ESPN put out its yearly predictions for college football teams with first-year head coaches. For Scott Satterfield, the four-letter network doesn’t have much hope for a quick turnaround.

As the Louisville football season approaches, national publications are putting out a lot of predictions for the 2019 season, and we are eating them up.

The most recent article that caught our eye was an ESPN article diving into what to expect from each new college football head coach.

There are obvious takeovers that probably won’t be rebuilds. Ohio State’s Ryan Day- once considered for the Louisville job- is expected to immediately be a national contender, while it appears that the cupboard was not left bare at Appalachian State, who is still favored to win a conference title.

Other schools need some work, says ESPN, but they are likely bowl-bound. Teams like Texas Tech, Kansas State, Maryland, and West Virginia are under the guidance of first-year head coaches but are already on track to potentially finish the season above .500.

Louisville football finds themselves on the part of the list that you never want to see: Year Zero. Here’s what ESPN had to say about Satterfield’s Cardinals:

"Satterfield saw incredible success at Appalachian State, where he had previously played quarterback and spent more than a decade as an assistant. He took over for legendary head coach Jerry Moore, and after an initial stumble (he lost 13 of his first 18 games), he finished 46-11 in Boone.How much of that success was due to the App State culture and his familiarity with it? How much will translate at a school that just witnessed one of the most rapid-fire collapses you’ll ever see? Bobby Petrino left smoking wreckage behind in Louisville, and Satterfield’s first starting lineup could feature as few as six to eight seniors. The QB group lost all confidence last fall. There are certainly some exciting young athletes — QB Malik Cunningham, WR TuTu Atwell, CB Anthony Johnson, DE Jarrett Jackson, etc. — but Satterfield has to build a new culture from scratch. That’s not usually an overnight task."

“Smoking wreckage,” eh? Nice.

We already saw this week in an Athlon article where coaches said a Bobby Petrino-ditched program “comes at you in waves,” with some anonymous coaches spelling out the work that lied ahead for Satterfield and company.

ESPN thinks that this is such a rebuild for Louisville that may take up to a few years.

We’ve detailed at BRL just how much young talent is on this team, and the new staff has done a tremendous job of jumpstarting a turnaround. However, if ESPN is onto something, perhaps Louisville football fans’ tempered expectations are valid.

Still, predictions like this should do nothing but help Louisville football in the long run. These publications are probably right. Louisville isn’t going to go from 2-10 to national contention overnight. It takes time to build a program, implement a system, and most importantly sustain a winning culture.

All of those things are in the works. Until then, it’s nice that Louisville is beginning the 2019 season with the national bar set extremely low. If there’s one thing we’ve detailed this offseason, it’s that Louisville is in position to exceed those expectations.