It’s week two of the college football season already and the no. 22 ranked Louisville Cardinals are back in action against Jacksonville State (0-1), who’s had some solid success over the past couple of seasons.
The Cardinals were looking to build off an impressive showing in their first game and they did just that, as Jeff Brohm’s offense continues to shine. Jacksonville State put up a fight for some time, but Louisville’s offense started becoming too much to handle as the game progressed. A question mark for this team coming into the season was could they come close to replicating the production they got from the running backs unit a season ago, but they’ve looked more than good as a whole so far.
Usually it’s the pass that’s more effective for Louisville, but today it was the run that was getting it done early. All of their 28 points in the first half were from rushing touchdowns and that’s the first time it’s happened since 2016. This unit is the right mix of experienced guys and young talented freshmen that are ready to play right now and they’ve shown that for the second week in a row.
Tyler Shough had himself another great day, finishing with 349 yards, two passing touchdowns, and he’s still yet to throw an interception through these two games. It’s not hard to tell that this guy has the talent and ability to make plays. His decision making has been on point to begin the season and he’s had no problems consistently hitting the easy throws, which is an underrated aspect of playing quarterback. After the running backs finally cooled off, Shough made play after play to keep Louisville’s foot on the gas. Outside of Miami’s Cam Ward, no other quarterback in the ACC has looked better than him so far and if he keeps it up, this team will only get better as his best target Caullin Lacy is expected to return in a little over a month.
Coming off a dominant shutout last week, the defense got tested a little bit by this Jacksonville State offense, especially in the second quarter. The Gamecocks scored two touchdowns in that period and they had a couple explosive plays that had the Cardinals’ defense on their heels. After they gave up a touchdown just before halftime, Ron English’s unit was able to hold up and keep them from scoring for the rest of the game. They bent a little bit, but they got key stops when they needed to and that led to more points scored by the offense.
"In order to be a great football team, you have to be able to throw and run the ball, said Brohm. You can't be one-dimensional, and, if you are, then you have the best players in the world and a great defense,— You play both of them off each other, you figure out what the defense is doing and take what they give you to a certain extent. But if you're good at both, then they have to make a decision about what to do. That's what we want to do.” -Jeff Brohm
Overall it was a great afternoon for Louisville and they were in control of this game front start to finish. This team has the potential to be even better and they’ll get the opportunity to show how good they are, because this schedule gets a little bit harder. The Cardinals have a bye week coming up, but they return back to the field with a matchup against a very solid Georgia Tech team, with a showdown against no. 5 ranked Notre Dame in South Bend the week after. Ironic that both of those teams lost today and likely will go down in the rankings, but they’re not to be overlooked nonetheless. Jeff Brohm will have to prepare his team to go into battle, but these first two performances give them confidence to come away with wins.
Louisville will have a tough matchup at home two weeks from now against the Georgia Tech Yellowjackets (2-1), but they’ll be ready to roll after a bye week.
