Louisville’s big mistakes are easily correctable
The story of the game for the Louisville football defense was how the Cards really lost the game on massive plays from Miami.
Three scoring plays for the Hurricanes accounted for 21 points and 197 yards of their 485 total yards gained. That’s 41 percent of Miami’s total yardage gained on three plays.
Miami averaged 66 yards per play on three scores and 5 yards per play the rest of the game. By contrast, Louisville averaged just over 6 yards per play for the game.
I get it’s easy to say that Louisville just takes away those three plays and the game doesn’t get so out of hand. That’s probably the low hanging fruit storyline of this game.
But, realistically, how difficult is it for the Cardinals to turn things around from this point?
To me, these are easily correctable mistakes, and that’s perhaps the biggest positive takeaway from the entire game.
Cam’Ron Harris 75-yard run
Miami’s response to Louisville’s first touchdown drive to open the second half was a simple misdirection outside run that somehow completely befuddled the Cardinals defense.
The Hurricanes sent the boundary receiver in motion to the far side of the field, clearing out Louisville’s entire secondary, then blocked and sealed the entire defense to the near sideline giving Harris a hole wider than Dixie Highway and the Miami back was gone.
This was a simple case of a missed assignment and Louisville failing to maintain gap integrity. The Miami offensive line forged its way into the second level way too easily and the Cardinals stood no chance of catching Harris.
Jaylon Knighton 75-yard pass from D’Eriq King
The next Miami score was once again an example of a horribly blown assignment.
I applauded Louisville’s effort in stopping King on the ground, but the Cardinals were so concerned with King’s legs on this play that Knighton snuck out of the backfield completely untouched. King hit him 10 yards ahead of any Louisville defender, and he was long gone. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything quite like that on the college level.
Again, a maybe once in a season type of missed assignment from the Cardinals defense.
Brevin Jordan 47-yard catch
The nail in the coffin that put Miami up by 20 in the fourth quarter was a third and long pass play.
This is the one that really frustrated me because of the complete lack of awareness by the defense and by whoever is responsible for catching this off the field.
Louisville lined up a corner and a safety on three receivers.
It’s about as simple as that. Freshman safety Lovie Jenkins tried to alert his teammates that he needed help on his side of the field while the rest of the team loaded 9 into the box on a third and long play.
Rodjay Burns floated over to help at the last second, but the tight end Jordan just ran right past him and had about 10 yards of space for maybe the easiest touchdown of the night.
The bottom line is that these are basic, silly mistakes. I’d give Miami props for taking advantage of Louisville’s miscues, but the mess ups were so bad and so obvious that it would have been tragic if the Hurricanes didn’t capitalize.
The positive takeaway here is that these are easily correctable miscues. It starts, however, with leadership on and off the field. Louisville has to be in the right place pre-snap, and players have to stay in their gaps and know their individual assignments.
On the sidelines, these are mistakes that the Louisville coaches have to notice and call a time out.
I’m all for saving time outs to salvage some clock at the end of a game, but you won’t even get the opportunity to do that if you let the opponent just walk into the end zone a few drives earlier.
Knowing Satterfield and the Louisville coaching staff, things are going to get better. I highly doubt we see mistakes of this magnitude as the season progresses.
It sucks now, but hopefully Louisville uses these moments as a learning tool and this game is a wake up call going forward.