Louisville football: Three reasons why the Cards will defeat Wake Forest
By Jacob Lane
Coming off of a big win against Boston College, Louisville football will look for their first road victory of the season against no. 19 Wake Forest.
Who’d a thunk in 2019 we’d see Wake Forest ranked in the top 25, after a 5-0 start to their season, while Louisville football looks for their first road win of the season? But here we are.
In fact – when Louisville travels to Winston Salem, North Carolina on Saturday to take on the no. 19 Demon Deacons, the Cards will be looking to an end an extremely ugly streak.
That will be to put an end to the five-game losing streak against ranked ACC teams on the road. Actually, a win against Wake Forest would be Louisville’s FIRST win against a ranked opponent within conference play since joining the ACC back in 2014.
Crazy enough, despite the big start for Wake Forest and Dave Clawson, Louisville will have a chance to pick up their first signature win on Saturday as they kick off a stretch of three games against top 25 teams.
The Wake Forest defense is statistically close to the same range as Boston College was heading into last week’s game, and well.. we all saw how that went. Micale Cunningham will be back after suffering an injury late in the game on Saturday and looks to be the starter despite the strong play from Evan Conley.
Much like last week, Wake Forest’s offense will test the improvement of Louisville’s defense, specifically in what Scott Satterfield calls “gap integrity” as well as stopping big plays through tehe air.
Dave Clawson’s weird-ish take on the popular run, pass, offense challenges defenses to be patient and trust their eyes, while simultaneously taping into a football player’s instincts of wanting to make a play. If Louisville’s not careful in paying patiently and staying within themselves, they could be susceptible to giving up a ton of big plays.
They’ve had a lot of success this season with moving the football through the air behind emerging star quarterback Jamie Newman and wide receivers Sage Surratt and Scotty Washington and I would expect them to take advantage of what looked like a bad secondary last week against Boston College.
Eliminating mental mistakes will help the secondary take a big step forward, but when it comes to eliminating big plays they’ll have to improve one-on-one coverage as well as having the safety help over top.
Although it’s Wake Forest, we shouldn’t discount what a top 25 win would mean to the direction and future of the Louisville football program. Despite the struggles I saw last week, I have a ton of faith that Saturday night for the first time on the ACC Network we’ll see Louisville pick up a program changing win.
Here’s how they’ll do it.