Lincoln Riley held the championship belt as college football’s preeminent quarterback whisperer for years as he produced three Heisman Trophy winners between his tenure at Oklahoma and the start of his time at USC. Now, Jeff and Brian Brohm are making a run at the title, not only attempting another reclamation project with their third transfer QB in as many years at Louisville.
This time, it’s Riley’s former QB, Miller Moss, who was benched midway through last season at USC after inheriting the job from Caleb Williams. Coming from such a quarterback-friendly system in LA, it won’t be the easiest task to get more out of Moss in the ACC, but if anyone is up to the challenge, it’s the Brohm brothers.
His brother Jeff’s longtime offensive coordinator and quarterback’s coach, Brian, laid out the blueprint the duo always follows with a new QB after Louisville’s second scrimmage of fall camp on Wednesday.
“It’s our job as coaches to play to our quarterback’s strength,” Brohm told the assembled media at L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium. “So whatever these guys are really good at, we need to do more of that, and less of what they’re not as good at.”
It sounds simple, but plenty of coaching staffs attempt to force square pegs into round holes, believing they can mold the quarterback to fit their system, not the other way around. With the pass-catchers and running backs that the Cardinals have around Moss for 2025, it shouldn’t be difficult to build an offense that plays to his strengths.
And Brohm laid those strengths out. “Very accurate, very smart, he can handle a lot of volume on offense. Very accurate with the football and likes to get the ball out of his hands quick. I think he’s a guy, you surround him with weapons, you surround him with pieces, I think he can be really good.”
Miller Moss is a new challenge for the Louisville braintrust
The numbers back up Brian’s assessment. Last season had a near-even split between dropbacks of under 2.5 seconds and dropbacks over 2.5 seconds, and while he wasn’t necessarily the most aggressive when getting the ball out quickly, averaging just a 4.8-yard average depth of target, he completed over 70 percent of his throws and finished with 12 touchdowns to just three interceptions (according to PFF).
On the extended dropbacks, not a particularly creative player outside the structure of the offense, Moss connected on just 57.1 percent of his passes with six touchdowns to six interceptions and had produced nine of his 12 turnover-worthy plays for the season. Moss wasn’t sacked at a high rate last season, but that’s a credit to his quick trigger more than any mobility because he scrambled just one time all year.
All of Riley’s QB success stories, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Caleb Williams, and even Jalen Hurts, were exceptionally mobile, either in the designed game, as a scrambler, or as an off-platform thrower outside the pocket. Moss is not that style of player, and Riley, who was also dealing with roster talent deficiencies as USC made the jump to the Big Ten last season, couldn’t bend his system to maximize that style.
You can argue that the Brohms already did, leading Tyler Shough to a breakout campaign in which he ran for just 19 total yards. But despite his pressure sensitivity, Shough was more adept at throwing on the move than Moss, so this year’s offense will look different in Louisville.
Miller Moss is set up to succeed in Jeff and Brian Brohm’s offense as fall camp winds down
The key to constructing an efficient offense around a player of that archetype is to have a strong running game (check) and receivers who can create with the ball in their hands (check). There’s no need to litigate the efficacy of Louisville’s backfield; Isaac Brown and Duke Watson are one of the country’s most dynamic tandems, but let’s dig into the receiving corps.
With Ja’Corey Brooks in the NFL, returners Chris Bell and Caullin Lacy figure to be Moss’s favorite targets in 2025. Both have a knack for making plays with the ball in their hands. Last season, Bell averaged 7.2 yards after the catch per reception, which ranked ninth in the ACC, and though he struggled with injuries in 2024, Lacy is still only one year removed from a 9.3 YAC/rec season at South Alabama with 842 total yards after the catch.
In many ways, the Louisville offense will go as those four players (Brown, Watson, Bell, and Lacy) go. If they’re as elite a playmaking group as the program suspects, then Moss is the perfect captain for that ship, a true point guard, disrupting the ball quickly and setting up his teammates to make a play. Yet, whether Moss can do enough to elevate the unit against the toughest competition on the schedule remains a huge question.