Three burning questions for Louisville football entering Notre Dame week

Does Louisville football have talented youth?

You can’t fault the coaching staff for wanting to not only put the best players on the field but also put the most experience on the field. In fact, during a rebuild– not just of the team, but the culture as a whole– Louisville football would be wise to leverage experienced leadership to help bridge the gap.

However, at what point do you have to throw that experience game plan in the garbage and just start fielding your most talented players.

Based on Satterfield’s comments during his Monday presser, he sounds like a man conceded to the fact that there is a lot of work left to do in developing depth, and that starts with getting younger players significant in-game reps.

I think you obviously have to look at everybody and we’ve told the young guys,” Satterfield said on Monday. “It’s not like I had him on wait for next year, I mean you guys need to be preparing yourself to play right now. I mean there’s no question about that. I mean (Ja’Darien) Boykin was in the game, you mentioned Dezmond Tell. I think once, some of these young guys will get opportunities, there’s no question about it.

“A lot of this comes back to practice how are they practicing. We don’t want to put them out there and they don’t look really bad, but I think these guys have ability and we need to put them out. Let them get some plays under their belt and they’re going to make some mistakes while they’re out there. Obviously, they don’t have the kind of experience that you’d love to have, but once they get out there, they do have ability to make plays. You will see more guys getting out there that are young that maybe hadn’t played as much.”

If we get to see more glimpses of some of the younger players, you can probably bet that they are along the offensive and defensive lines or in the secondary– Three areas where Louisville has struggled the most and where the coaching staff focused most of its attention in the 2019 and 2020 recruiting classes.

Players like the aforementioned Tell and Boykin, offensive linemen Kobe Baynes and Luke Kandra, and safety Lovie Jenkins could be prime candidates as freshmen to see some clock in the coming weeks.