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

Young offensive linemen step up

A rough start for the offensive line was turned around after freshmen Austin Collins and Joshua Black got their feet under them.

Austin Collins looked to be in for a very rough day after he failed to reach his block on outside zone runs a multitude of times and a few faulty snaps. Joshua Black was solid all day against the decimated Wake line.

Collins recovered nicely once the nerves faded and his snaps increased.

It was nice to see a group of freshmen delivering consistent success playing center, right guard, and right tackle throughout the entirety of this game.

In fact, Satterfield seemed to target many of the second half runs toward the right side of the offensive line trusting that Renato Brown and the young freshmen would finish their blocks to create rushing lanes for Jalen Mitchell and company.

Louisville ran 47 times for 254 yards in the game and a lot of that can be attributed to the young players stepping up. Late in the game, Collins started to get way more comfortable and even finished off a few pancakes.

Malik Cunningham was being pressured a lot in the first quarter. Those pressures went away in large part because of the way the young players composed themselves and showed their mental toughness to continue competing and improving as the game wore on.

I was impressed with that effort from the young guys and it is a great sign of things to come in the program.

Co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford is quite good at his job and it looks like more good offensive line play can be expected moving forward into 2021.