How Louisville football is becoming who they’re “meant to be”

Change within the Louisville football program is something that’s necessary, and by way of positivity and accountability, the coaching staff is making it happen one day at a time.

New Louisville football head coach Scott Satterfield fully intends to change everything, especially when it comes to morale, effort, positivity, and accountability. These are things that shouldn’t be hard to fix either.

Every coach and player within the football program has been successful somewhere before Louisville or they wouldn’t be here.

Effort every down is a great place to start. “We’ll have 11 guys who will play extremely hard every snap,”  Satterfield told Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports.

Playing hard was a major issue with Louisville football in 2018. Games that could’ve been two touchdown losses turn into five touchdown losses when you’re not giving it your all from the first to the last whistle.

Satterfield guarantees that this team will flip the script when it comes to that. It takes every player, every snap, every game doing everything they can for each other to develop a highly successful program within the ACC. With the new coaching staff aware of that, and preaching it every single day expect to be very impressed when it comes to the effort department in 2019.

While last season is something you wanna think about when it comes to being positive, it also can serve as motivation to this hungry young Cards football team.

“That’s not what this program is meant to be like. We’re not like this. That was pretty embarrassing to people who went to school here. It wasn’t a good look for us. We’re going to pick it up,” said star offensive lineman Mekhi Becton per Tim Sullivan of the Louisville Courier-Journal.

These are the things you want to hear from the leaders of this team. I think the most important sentence from that quote is the last, “we’re going to pick it up.”

Regardless of the sour taste last year may have left within the program, Becton and the rest of the squad wholeheartedly believe things are going to improve. They know they are the ones with the responsibility of changing things in the immediate future. This level of accountability screams that this team could and should be different than last years, even being only a season away.

Last season, something that was difficult to be positive about was the quarterback position.

As fans, we didn’t know who was gonna start some games or even play drive to drive at times. Change is something that is going to be necessary for Louisville to get back to where they are capable of being.

Standout wide receiver Seth Dawkins seems to think that’s happening, at media day over the weekend he asked about the differences in Jawon from last year to this year. He said:

"“Puma did not talk. Puma usually doesn’t talk. But now he’s speaking up, being more vocal. Everybody is hearing the quarterback talk, and I feel like on every great team you need to hear the quarterback talk, because he’s the leader of the team and especially the offense. We didn’t really have that last year.”"

Since football became a thing, quarterback leadership has been prevalent on winning teams. Between not having a player ranked in the top 12 in quarterback efficiency in the ACC to not being sure who’s going to be at the helm for the next drive, last season didn’t exactly go well.

This year, with quarterback guidance being a priority, were bound to see improvement.
Jawon Pass looks like the clear starter for week 1 and it’s his job to lose at this point. He wants things to go differently than they did in 2018 more than anyone. A positive mindset is a great place to start.

Speaking at media day to a group of local reporters, Jawon Pass said:

"“Just our approach, overall, people’s attitude, people’s mindset, we’re just a whole different team. … The whole atmosphere, just the energy, you can feel the difference.”"

Media day made one thing clear, Pass wasn’t having fun last year and so far this season, he is. He’s ready to fill this role as the starting quarterback for the new-look program and this coaching staff has already seemingly completely changed that attitude within the quarterback room and the entire locker room for that matter.

“Puma did not talk. Puma usually doesn’t talk. But now he’s speaking up, being more vocal.” – Seth Dawkins

Coach Satterfield has begun his tenure instilling positivity and hope throughout the program from top to bottom. Jawon figures to benefit in a major way from all of this. It’s inspiring to hear a young man talk about how almost nothing positive came from the season before, while also having unlimited positivity about what’s to come.

This is a program that’s been great before and will be great again. One bad season won’t change that. Hearing the way the new coaches talk about the program and the way our veteran players talk about how things are moving upward, there’s a lot to feel good about as a Cards fan.

New offensive coordinator Dwayne Ledford has this to say on Louisville football per Michael McCammon of 247sports.com:

"“Louisville has been held pretty high in the way that people perceive football in this conference. After we played them there was a lot of people just talking that this is a very good job. This place has a passionate fan base, they love their football here and there are a lot of good football players on that field, so somebody is going to come in and take this place by storm.”"

This is what you love to see. Louisville football has been a highly successful program this millennium. One historically bad season doesn’t change the view of the program’s potential from the outside looking in. Coach Ledford’s appreciation of the fan base and confidence towards what can be accomplished here is definitely something for Card Nation to be excited about.

There are countless moments and quotes from media day that makes you think Louisville football will be better than it was last season, and better off in the long-run under the new regime. The coaches want the players to have fun and be positive, but to also be accountable for the change that needs to occur for us to get back to the appropriate standard of Cardinal athletics.