Louisville football: 5 most important players vs. EKU

Edge rusher

Finally, we come to our last but not least most important player for Saturday against Eastern Kentucky, and as you can see it’s an entire position group.

Louisville’s defense was much improved against Notre Dame on Monday evening despite giving up 35 points 423 yards. The Cards were able to hold Notre Dame to just five conversions on third down on 12 total attempts as well as get pressure on Ian Book, capturing three sacks.

Judging the front seven’s performance is a bit tricky, as Notre Dame is one of the best and most consistent pass protectors across all of college football. In their first game playing under Bryan Brown and Cort Dennison, we saw signs of life when it came to rushing the passer that we hadn’t seen in nearly three years.

Guys were flying to the football left and right, oftentimes just coming short of making a big stop in the backfield. However, overall they didn’t have the horses to penetrate the offensive line and slow down the running game as well as create more sacks.

Against EKU, they’ll get a nice opportunity to really get the most out of their defense – especially off of the edge.

Without having advanced metrics I can’t tell you exactly how many of the Louisville quarterback hurries were from the outside. What I saw with my eyes from section 226 and what the stats told me is that it’s not enough.

Louisville finished with four quarterback hurries and three sacks but gave up plenty of big plays in doing so.

If guys like Boosie Whitlow, Ty Tyler, Nick Okeke (I now know it’s pronounced Okay-Kay not O-Ke-Ke, thanks to Sean Moth) Tabarius Peterson, and others are able to display their power five-speed and power, we should see an even bigger performance overall from the defense.

In a defense like Louisville’s getting pressure on the quarterback allows for the linebackers and secondary to put even more of a focus on creating turnovers, something we didn’t see much from Notre Dame on Monday.

Against Eastern Kentucky, that should change and we should see an even more aggressive defense that will resemble closer to what the finished product will look like by seasons end. Not to mention, in the latter parts of the game, Louisville should be able to feature more players which will only help with cultivating depth and experience for the remainder of the season.