Jawon Pass
Everything on Saturday night against EKU starts and ends with Jawon Pass. I 100 percent understand that the focus will still be setting up the run, and establishing dominance quickly over EKU – something they should do fairly easy seeing how they performed against Notre Dame.
While Javian Hawkins, Hassan Hall, and several other backs should all receive carries at a high rate, I still expect the offense to throw the ball upwards of 25 to 30 times in an attempt to continue building confidence in Jawon Pass.
Pass showed a significant amount of improvement on Monday night, especially in his decision making as well as with leading the offense overall. I thought you could really see a much more confident quarterback, especially standing in the pocket and attempting to let things happen.
Unfortunately, Pass still struggled to throw the football. He completed just 44 percent of his passes, going 12 for 27 overall, although his receivers did drop several passes.
This week he’ll have a real opportunity to show even more improvement and a big step forward in the passing game – possibly one of the biggest weaknesses we saw last season.
Against Notre Dame, we saw a couple of nice throws from Pass, including the first completion of the game to Seth Dawkins which was a beautiful sideline throw (one I don’t think he could make last season).
As the night went on and Notre Dame forced Pass to make plays, he struggled to do so. Eastern Kentucky won’t have the defense to stop an offense like Louisville, no matter where the Cards are in overall development.
A weak secondary and what will likely be another big night running the ball should present ample opportunities for Pass to throw the football. Louisville won’t go away from running the ball, as that will be their bread and butter in this new look scheme, but I’d have to guess that they know they need to build confidence in Jawon which means throwing more.
Eastern Kentucky does have a nice tandem in cornerback Leodis Moore III and safety Ben Bascom who could things challenging early, which of course will only go to help Pass in the long run.