Louisville Football Falls Hard in 17-Point Loss to Pitt
By Caleb Hall
Louisville can’t overcome offensive struggles in loss on the road to Pitt
#14 Louisville went on the road at 6-0 to take on 1-4 Pitt and lost by 17 points.
The Cardinals started the game good with a defensive stop and score to go up 7-0, Pitt fought back and the Cardinals scored before half to take a 21-14 halftime lead. Louisville would not score the rest of the game and Pitt would dominate defensively and do enough offensively to outscore Louisville 24-0 in the 2nd half.
Louisville came into the game as -7.0 favorites and lost by 17. They looked lost offensively and couldn’t make the plays defensively when they needed too. While the Cardinals did play bad, Brohm is mostly to blame for this loss. The team dominated Notre Dame at the line of scrimmage last week and ran the ball all over them, this was not the case against Pitt. They only had 80 total rushing yards and not having Jawhar Jordan was a huge loss for the Cardinals offense.
Jack Plummer also did not look very good tonight. He went 29-52 for 350 yards, 1 TD, and 2 interceptions. He couldn’t complete passing on 4th and 3rd down when Louisville needed them, and seemed to just overthrow a lot of balls where the Cardinals had open receivers. Also on some throws he would complete, they were not lead at all, and if they were the Cardinals may have had bigger plays. One play comes to mind where Jamari Thrash was wide open, and if Plummer just led the ball a little more it could have been a touchdown. Not to mention the turning point of the game: a pick six in the endzone by Jack Plummer. That really was the story of the game. They couldn’t do the little things right, and Brohm didn’t have the team ready to play. Plummer needed to put the Cardinals on his back to win and he couldn’t do it.
All Louisville fans were scared of the Jeff Brohm hangover game, and it came true tonight. Everytime Brohm took down a top 5 team he would lose the very next game every time. It was no different tonight and it is extremely disappointing. This Louisville team is good and more talented than Pitt, and they really had no reason to lose this game. Jawhar Jordan being hurt was not good for the Cardinals, but they still should have won this game.
The Cardinals defense also looked below average against this lowly Pitt offense. Their new starting quarterback Christian Veilleux went 12-26 for 200 yards and 2 TDs and Pitt carved up the Cardinals defense for 488 total yards. A 1-4 team shouldn’t do this to a top 15 team. Louisville just wasn’t focused and it showed against Pat Narduzzi’s Panthers.
Pitt looked electric tonight in the 2nd half, and Louisville looked like they were a completely different team. While Louisville most definitely could have played better, they did have several bounces not go their way that were just unlucky. There were some just blown pass interference calls by the refs in the game, unclucky drops, and one the worst ones was a play where a Louisville receiver was open but dropped the ball and was picked off by Pitt. It’s just college football being unpredictable.
Louisville was simply outclassed last night and Pitt’s final touchdown pass just put a knife into the slim chance they had into winning this game. They will have a lot to think about going into the bye week this week. They will have to regroup and Brohm will have to get them ready for a good ranked Duke team on October 28th.
Louisville and Jeff Brohm can’t forget this game and they have to learn from it if they want to avoid losses like this in the future. This team can still be special and if they can learn from this loss and continue to improve, this can still be a great season for Brohm and the Louisville Cardinals.