Key areas where Louisville football must show improvement
By Jacob Lane
Lack of big plays
The big play is what made Louisville football’s offense so special and dynamic last season, and it’s why many believed that the Cards were set to take a massive leap in year two under Scott Satterfield.
Thus far, that’s not always been the case. In fact, it has been more of a Jekyll and Hyde thing with the offense showing flashes of big plays and sprinkled in intermediate chain movers while other times looking completely underwhelming.
Louisville finished in the top 20 in yards per play last season thanks to their ability to stretch the field with big plays, both in the passing and running game. Even with a condensed number of teams playing in 2020, Louisville has dropped to 37th nationally with 5.6 yards per play, which may not seem like a significant drop but shows part of why they sit at 1-2.
Last season the big play is what defined this offense and so far in 2020 we’ve seen defenses begin to limit those opportunities. Through three games, Louisville has just three plays over 50 yards, two of them passing plays (Dez Fitzpatrick, 70/Braden Smith, 63) and one running (Javian Hawkins, 75).
Chalk it up to the offensive line struggles, issues at quarterback with Cunningham, or defensive coordinators having more time to prepare and get familiar with the Satterfield offense. Whatever it is, Louisville has to figure it out.
Against Miami we saw more of an intermediate passing offense, with Cunningham connecting on passes of 36, 33, 21, and 20 yards – but at a lot of that came in garbage time. Overall, Cunningham was able to complete 26 passes out of 36 tries for an average of 8.5 yards per pass, and the offenses ability to make those plays kept them in the game longer than they should’ve been following giving up so many big plays.
Against Pittsburgh, it was a completely different story in both the passing and running offense. Going up against one of the most feared front four’s in college football, Louisville should’ve been doing everything in their power to replicate the game plan from Miami – including short to intermediate passes, screen passes and check downs, mixing in jet sweeps and other unique running plays, all designed to get away from the D-Line.
That didn’t happen and Pittsburgh’s defense dominated, holding Louisville to just one big running play of 75 yards and limiting them to 5.1 yards per pass and 3.9 yards per run. YIKES.
In four quarters of play, Louisville’s offense accounted for just four plays over 15 yards (27, 22, 21, 14), including going 1/11 on third down, essentially rendering themselves useless. Despite those struggles they were able to stay in the game up until the very end, and just one or two more “big plays” could’ve swung the pendulum in Louisville’s favor.
Out of 74 available teams, Georgia Tech’s defense currently ranks 55th nationally allowing 441.3 yards per game and a total of 13 touchdowns through three games. That means that Louisville’s offense is going to have every opportunity to get back to their big play ways.
If they show no improvement on the ability to connect on big plays, or even an improved intermediate offense, than we can really start talking about bigger issues.