Why the Florida State game was different for Louisville football

Defense

The defense gave up 400 yards again this past weekend. The Seminoles did run 81 plays on offense so that number is a bit misleading. The defense is playing more sound football. But what are they doing so well that they were not doing before the past two weeks.

Confidence

Honestly, this is a huge component to the success of the defense. Personally, I know this team has the proper talent to compete consistently with most of the ACC (minus Clemson). Two people are leading that charge with others also being very vocal and energized during the game.

Monty Montgomery and Kei’Trel Clark are playing with swag and confidence every single week. That is absolutely huge for a unit’s mentality. As “rah-rah” as this sounds, it can entirely boost the level of play across the board.

When Clark or Montgomery make a big play, people know and see it. They know that they are confident leaders of a defense trying to make themselves respectable in the ACC.

Whether certain players have had bad games early in the season or not, those same players are now making plays and doing it confidently. It’s so impressive to see and fans should be excited about this element (even if it is not related to x’s and o’s).

Personnel

In this odd COVID-19 season, finding the right personnel on defense was always going to be a challenge. It was near impossible to find out which young players were primed to be contributors in a year essentially completely rid of spring football.

The Cardinals have made the proper adjustments. Players like Dezmond Tell coming on is something that was likely a challenge to see without seeing him in the Spring. Defensive line rotations are massively important and finding the right ones is hard in a regular year but even more so in this one.

They have done that and figured some things out there. Given the general lack of talent upfront due to the botching of recruiting by Bobby Petrino late in his tenure, the staff is getting a lot out of the guys up front on the line. That is surely encouraging.

Assignments and mental processing

This is still just the second year that this defense has been installed. Last year, the players looked two steps behind what the system was made to do. The Spring would have helped greatly with that development.

However, they did not get that and, thus, there was a lot of on-the-fly installment in the first handful of games of the season. There were a ton of mental mistakes and breakdowns in assignment. The worse of it being against Miami in a game that would make anyone that is a fan of defense want to pull their hair out.

There has not been any sort of massive mental lapses that we saw early on in the past couple of weeks. That has been huge for the Cardinals and it was huge on Saturday against the Seminoles.

Sure, some players are probably still filling the wrong hole and in the wrong place on defense. No unit is perfect. However, it’s not the “how the heck does that even happen” situation that had been occurring since 2018.

Weather the Storm

The Cardinals knew they were going to have to contain Florida State’s run game and they would be fine. Jordan Travis, former Louisville quarterback (and current Florida State starter) is not a complete passer of the football yet.

The Seminoles have gotten a huge portion of their passing yards off of massive chunk plays. Louisville was going to do everything to prevent that by keeping everything in front of them on Saturday.

The Cardinals were so good against the pass that they set a program record for pass breakups in a game with 12 (!).

You could nitpick and say that there should have been multiple interceptions by the defense that were missed opportunities. And while that is true, let’s appreciate the steps this team has taken. They had a goal to limit the dangerous Florida State run game led by Travis and they achieved that with flying colors.

Summary

The Cardinals are showing improvements on defense and the offense showed some fight this past Saturday. Overall, fans should be pleased from what they saw against Florida State and should have optimism they can carry some of the things they have been successful at into the rest of the season.

At 2-4, the Cardinals will need to make up some ground to make it to .500 on the year. The team is trending in the right direction to give themselves a shot.