Louisville football fans, we are officially just one week away from the Cardinals' season opener against Ole Miss. Jeff Brohm and the Cards had a busy offseason, replacing nearly their entire offense and secondary, but thanks to the Transfer Portal, he did a phenomenal job.
Louisville had a top-five Transfer Portal class in the nation, and now enters the season ranked in the AP Poll for the first time since 2017. While the offense is nearly completely new, there is a lot of excitement, and a recent ESPN article made that clear.
ESPN is trying to predict who could be the next Indiana and who could be college football's next first-time national champion, and Bill Connelly has the Cardinals ranked high on the list.
Louisville football could have a very special season
The Cardinals are starving for an ACC Title and a College Football Playoff Title, and Brohm made it clear earlier this offseason that Indiana and Curt Cignetti showed schools like Louisville the blueprint for winning the whole thing and major conference titles.
They paved the way,” stated Brohm in an interview with On3 Sports. “If the right pieces are there and people are doing their part at every level, from the head coach all the way down, you can have success. The fact that we’ve been able to win big games shows that we can do it. Doing that consistently every week is what you have to figure out the perfect sauce for that. That’s what we have to do, is figure out the consistency part of it.”
Now, the Cardinals are going to try to do exactly that this upcoming season and put together a full season and, hopefully, not just make their first CFP appearance, but go on a run. ESPN ranks Louisville No. 6 as a potential first-time national champion in 2026-27, behind only Oregon, Texas Tech, Ole Miss, Iowa, and Missouri.
"Louisville has won at least nine games for three straight seasons and in seven of the past 14. Under Jeff Brohm, the Cardinals have been consistently explosive and exciting, with quarterback play somewhere between solid and great. Brohm is also a major player in the transfer portal and could come up with just the right alchemy for an ACC title run soon. The school also produces Big Ten- or SEC-level athletic revenue, which is a key reason there's a lot of potential and it is on this list."Bill Connelly
The Cardinals have the talent to compete for an ACC Title, and they have the coach; now they have to put together a full season, as Brohm said in the interview. They have shown they can beat elite teams like Notre Dame, Clemson, and Miami, but now they have to find ways to win the games they are supposed to win in November, like last year against Cal and Clemson.
The Cardinals have a huge chance to send a message to the nation in their Week 1 showdown against Ole Miss. If Louisville can upset the No. 9 Rebels, coming off a CFP semifinal run, everyone will know Brohm’s Cardinals are the real deal and a major threat in the ACC.
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