Louisville football: 5 burning questions for Cards vs. Mississippi State

Can Louisville football even slightly improve their run defense?

The last time Louisville tried to stop a team from running they gave up 517 yards and a total of six touchdowns. It was the biggest factor, although there was plenty that went wrong, in the Cards dropping to 7-5 and finishing the season on a rather sour note.

That loss, along with the four others (and seven wins) are behind the Cards and the only thing that matters at this point is getting better and showing improvement against Mississippi State, which could be a huge challenge.

As my cohort here at Big Red Louie Presley Meyer acknowledged during his initial reaction piece (you can read that here) to the bowl game matchup, trying to stop the high-powered run offense of Mississippi State comes at a less than ideal time for Louisville. Here’s what he wrote:

"“Despite being 6-6, Mississippi State has the nation’s 18th best rushing offense in 2019 averaging 226.9 yards per game behind the 13th leading rusher, Kylin Hill. With dual-threat quarterback’s Tommy Stevens (a player I once thought would be a good fit at Louisville) and Garrett Shrader and the dominant Hill, head coach Joe Moorhead has nearly completely turned to the running game this season and it’s been effective. While the team has struggled in other areas (particularly in the passing game), the Bulldogs have dominated the ground each and every contest, finishing the final stretch of the season with at least 210 yards or more three out of four times."

What I know is Louisville won’t run away from this challenge, despite their deficiencies in past games and they shouldn’t. Although they struggled with depth and consistency issues throughout the season, Louisville showed the ability to make crucial stops and get off the field as well as come up with big turnovers at opportune times.

We saw that against North Carolina State, where they held Zonovan Knight to just 61 yards and the entire Wolfpack running attack to 134 yards total. While I don’t expect Louisville to be able to contain Kylin Hill and the dual-threat quarterbacks Mississippi State has on the roster, I do think they can come up with a similar performance to what they did against Syracuse, Wake Forest, and even Boston College – teams that all demonstrated to run the ball fairly well.

Now Mississippi State will be a different animal than anyone outside of maybe Clemson & Kentucky, considering they are a top 20 rushing team nationally. The majority of that production has come from Hill, who finished as the SEC’s leading rusher overall with 1,347 yards and 10 touchdowns (averaged 5.7 yards per carry).

Throughout the 2019 season, Hill has torn up some of the SEC’s best defenses at an elite level and that’s why he’s on the radar of the NFL. In fact, Hill has already announced his intentions to declare for the 2020 NFL Draft following the bowl matchup, in which he says he has plans to play in (that remains to be seen).

Whether it’s Hill or not in the backfield, there’s still reason to worry. Lesser backs have proven capable of running on the Cards this season, as have dual-threat quarterbacks, which makes this matchup one to worry about. I have confidence in the team being able to turn things around but to what extent, I can’t say.

Louisville’s run defense was shoddy at best this season but they’ll get one last opportunity to prove that they can learn from mistakes and grow into a better unit collectively. If they can improve on the missed tackles, mental mistakes, and errors with the scheme they should be able to play at a level that at least will keep them in the game. At this point, that’s all you can ask for.