Louisville football: 3 takeaways from senior day win over Wake Forest

The Louisville football team went out of 2020 on top after a significant win over Wake Forest.

They really did it. Somehow, the team made it to the finish line amidst many doubts it could ever happen in 2020 due to the abundant Covid issues sweeping the country.

This was the kind of significant victory for Louisville football that fans were looking for on senior day. Really, it’s the performance fans have been looking for all year long.

Louisville played the game without a significant amount of contributors on the offensive side of the football.

Unfortunately, there were four seniors who were unavailable for the game that were assumed to be a mix of Covid and injury issues.

With three key offensive line contributors out, Louisville had to adjust the interior line quite a bit. Freshman Austin Collins and redshirt freshman Joshua Black got the start at center and right guard respectively.

Wake Forest was without a few key starters including star edge rusher Boogie Basham and starting receiver Donavon Greene. Those losses proved to be rather large for the Demon Deacons in the matchup.

It was a good day to be a fan of Louisville and a sweet moment for the seniors  who got the opportunity to go out on top in what has been a very rough season. Dez Fitzpatrick got the going-out-party he deserved and the team rallied from an early deficit to end up victorious.

With all of this being said, there are three things that we took away from Louisville’s season finale victory over Wake Forest.

Louisville finally won the turnover battle

For the first time in 2020, the Cardinals won the turnover battle in their 11th game of the season.

Coming into the game, Wake Forest had only turned the ball over once all season. In this one, Wake turned it over twice and it could have easily been more than that with several dropped interceptions by Louisville on defense.

Louisville had been one of the worst teams in the country in turnover margin and winning that battle today proved to be a huge difference. It makes you really think about what this team could have been if they had not turned the ball over so much all year.

The lone blunder that gave Wake good field position was a failed punt attempt in which Ryan Harwell could not handle a snap and failed to run for the first down off of the broken play.

The offense really never put the ball in harm’s way and the Cardinals themselves did not put the ball on the ground for the first time all season.

Louisville forced a couple of turnovers on the day. One was on a ball that pinball’d around and eventually ended up in the hands of Monty Montgomery; the other came on a botched handle of a kickoff return by Wake.

Turnovers have been an area of critique with this team in Scott Satterfield‘s second season at the helm. Finally, the team looked prepared to take care of the football and were rewarded with the win for it.