Louisville football: 5 position battles to watch for this fall
By Jacob Lane
Intriguing position battles for Louisville football.
We are just a few weeks away from when college football program would be expecting all players to report to campus for the beginning of fall camp. With almost all of Louisville football’s athletes on campus, the four-phase plan that was announced and is currently being implemented by Athletics Director, Vince Tyra, players should be allowed back into the facilities with the expectation of full, practices, scrimmages, and competitions being allowed by the NCAA/ACC guidelines.
While we still are awaiting on if the last part of the equation will actually happen things across the country have turned from what was a mostly positive outlook into one a little more bleak due to the numerous reported cases of COVID-19 across campuses by athletes and support-staff.
Things have been going swimmingly at Louisville, which leaves optimism that fall camp could potentially kick-off on time and that the program will be ready to go for their recently moved season opener against NC State on Wednesday, September 2nd.
Louisville was one of a few programs who were able to get in a “spring practice’ (I use that term loosely because seven practices isn’t a ton) before the pandemic wiped out the spring semester and all ongoing sports.
There have been a few updates, but not many, since then from the Louisville coaches and while we have a really good idea of what the team and roster will look like, there are still a lot of intruiging camp battles that will determine who steps into a few of the starting roles that are open for grabs.
After losing just a small number of seniors, the offense and defense will have some holes to fill but not many. Here are who I have locked into starting roles
Guaranteed to start: Micale Cunningham (QB), Javian Hawkins (RB), Marshon Ford (H-Back), Dez Fitzpatrick (Outside WR), Tutu Atwell (Slot), Adonis Boone (LT), Caleb Chandler (RG)
Likely starting: Cole Bentley (C), Robbie Guard (RG), Ean Pfeifer (TE)
Open: WR, RT
Guaranteed to start: Jared Goldwire (DT), Rodjay Burns (Card), CJ Avery, Dorian Etheridge (ILB), Chandler Jones (CB), Russ Yeast (S)
Likely to start: Tabarius Peterson (DE), Anthony Johnson/Marlon Character (CB)
Open: OLB, DE, S, CB
So with that in mind, I wanted to take a closer look at five of the most intriguing competitions that we’ll see come fall camp.