The 2025 Louisville Cardinals open ACC play on the road in Week 4 against Pitt. Last season, Louisville rolled to a 37-9 victory over the Panthers at home in the penultimate game of the regular season as Pat Narduzzi’s team limped to the finish line.
Week 4 will be the first major test for Jeff Brohm’s Cardinals in 2025, especially if Pitt plays like it did during its 7-0 start last season. That version of the Panthers was a problem for everybody in college football, but what version will Louisville face this season? And what is the biggest problem that Brohm’s team will have to solve?
Can the passing game create enough explosive plays?
Pitt got off to a red-hot start last season before collapsing down the stretch with major regression on both sides of the ball. The Pitt passing defense was eminently gettable, especially in the second half of the season, but creating explosives through the air could be the biggest challenge for Louisville in Week 4 because of what Pitt was able to take away on the ground last season.
The Panthers lost leading tackler Donovan McMillon to the NFL, but returned much of their deep linebacking corps and plenty of defensive line talent for last season’s trends to carry over. Particularly with Pat Narduzzi’s defensive conceit revolving so heavily around stopping the run.
Last season, Pitt’s defense finished 84th percentile in explosive rush rate and 96th percentile in stuff rate. With multiple reliable tacklers at the second level, they rallied to the ball quickly and didn’t allow opposing running backs to get free. Conversely, Pitt’s defense was third percentile in explosive pass rate. If you’re going to get a big play against the Panthers, it’s going to be through the air.
That defensive structure is a particularly difficult matchup for Louisville, an offense led by two dynamic running backs in Isaac Brown and Duke Watson. If that duo is kept in check, or at least prevented from breaking off 20 or 30-yard runs multiple times on the road in Week 4, then Miller Moss will need to take the game into his own hands.
Last season, USC’s offense finished 45th percentile in explosive pass rate, with a notable uptick once Jayden Maiava took over after Moss was benched. Just 10 percent of Moss’s passes traveled beyond 20 yards downfield, with nearly 23 percent behind the line of scrimmage. His average depth of target ranked 147th out of 165 quarterbacks.
Jeff Brohm is an expert and dialing up deep shots, so he may be able to manufacture a more aggressive passing game than Lincoln Riley did with Moss, who relies primarily on quick-hitters in the RPO game. However, it won’t just be about hitting deep balls; another option is for Louisville’s playmakers on the outside to create explosives after the catch.
Last season, Watson led Louisville in yards after the catch per reception, but among receivers, it was Ja’Corey Brooks, now with the Washington Commanders. Caullin Lacy finished 17th among 19 Louisville pass-catchers in yac/rec, but a season prior, when he was with South Alabama, Lacy was one of the best yards after the catch players in the country. In 2023, Lacy ranked 11th out of 520 wide receivers in the country (with at least 25 targets) at 9.3 yac/rec.
If Lacy is healthy in 2025 and recaptures that form, he could be the solution to Louisville’s explosive passing game in Week 4.