The good, bad, and ugly from Louisville football’s loss to Notre Dame

The ugly

The team is 1-4 at the end of the day. The expectations for this team were through the roof following an 8-5 campaign that seemed to represent Scott Satterfield was one of the best up-and-coming coaches in the country.

With the team not losing a ton of personnel from last season, it is very confusing why the team has looked so rough especially considering the personnel continuity should have given them an advantage in the strangeness that is the “COVID year” in sports.

This team has a lot of work to do.

Bad trends being set

The bad of this team is not the same from week-to-week in all cases. The offense was keeping the team in the game through the first two games. Specifically, the offense had to do a lot to keep the Cardinals afloat against Miami.

That is now starting to turn a bit. the Cardinals defense held the Pitt offense to 23 points. If it were not for mental errors, the Cardinals defense would have had a nice day against Georgia Tech.

Now, the defense plays the best game they have played since the 2017 season when Peter Sirmon (now the defensive coordinator at Cal) was the defensive coordinator. The defense and offense are going in opposite directions.

Quite honestly, that is a trend that does not make much sense. The only player that the Cardinals have lost of true significance is NFL first round pick Mekhi Becton. Yes, that’s a massive loss for the team and Adonis Boone certainly is not Becton. However, he is not so bad that the offense has fallen off this much in 2020.

The offense and defense have not played a combined good game between the two of them all season. The team has not shown any signs they can turn that around quite yet either.

Playcalling remains questionable

Before, it was Bryan Brown that was the topic of discussion by fans for poor playcalling and missed assignments on defense. Now, Scott Satterfield is feeling a little bit of that heat.

The Cardinals, as mentioned earlier, have not been able to hit deep throws over the past three games. The run game has been stalled against Pitt and Notre Dame so much so that the Cardinals are forced into long situations on second and third down.

My biggest issue comes when run plays are being called in second and eight or longer. Running on second and eight or longer when this team gives up as many penalties and negative plays as they do seems like a recipe for disaster. It sets the offense back.

The play action calls are also questionable. There are too many times on bootlegs that route trees end up running into each other. Satterfield likes to use “levels” concepts to stack defenses and give Cunningham easy reads to make a quick throw into an intermediate area.

These have not been working all season. The intermediate areas are being clogged. The offense seemed so open for Cunningham in the first couple weeks of the season. Now, it seems that the playbook has somehow shrunk.

I am not going to put all blame on Satterfield. He is a brilliant offensive mind. However, this team needs a refresher in the playbook. Cunningham succeeds on seam routes where he can put the ball on a line vertically. I would like to see that installed more into the gameplan.

This team is a work in progress. There is talent on the team to win, certainly. Putting that all together into a proper gameplan and finding an identity will be of huge importance for the last six games of the season for them.