Louisville football: Five biggest needs of improvement after bye week

Keeping the Playbook Diverse

Coming into the season we knew that head coach Scott Satterfield had more of a run-first offense. Against Notre Dame, it brought great joy to me watching Javian Hawkins rush through an elite defense for over 100 yards and I felt excited to have a legit rushing attack again finally!

On the contrary, against Florida State, the offense wasn’t as great to watch as the Seminoles basically stacked the box in the first half knowing Louisville was going to run it. A lot of the rushes were even toward the middle of the defense, which I couldn’t understand due to how much talent the Seminoles have upfront.

The game didn’t really change until Satterfield started calling more passing plays for Malik Cunningham, as Louisville was able to score on Florida State. The irony of this is that the first three games, Satterfield was mixing it up on offense a lot, doing some play-action, RPO, jet sweeps, trying to keep the defense off-balance. So this is something I would like to see the Cardinals get back to next week.

Overall, Louisville has run the ball 183 times versus passing 92. When you run the ball that many times it’s going to make it easier for teams prep for you if you don’t mix up the playbook. In addition to that, the QBs have shown the ability to get the ball down the field at times. Against Florida State Malik Cunningham threw a 74 yard TD pass against the Seminoles defense and against Eastern Kentucky Jawon Pass threw a 50 yard TD pass. Even Tutu Atwell threw a pass against Notre Dame in a trick play designed by Satterfield.

This shows not only that the receivers are willing to go out and make plays at times when given the opportunity but also that these QBs need more passing plays called for them. The only issue is that they aren’t as accurate at times when needed but that comes with time. The main goal for successful offense is to keep a defense guessing because in football that’s how these big plays happen.