Time’s flying by pretty quickly as the biggest home game of the season is already here for Louisville. The Cardinals were coming off an impressive comeback win against Virginia last week, but the Hurricanes from Miami are a much better team that will require a much better performance if they want to win this game.

The backend of Louisville’s schedule doesn’t get any easier, with tough road matchups against Clemson and Kentucky looming large. The confidence that this team gives me is dwindling by the week, because the defense hasn’t shown any improvement whatsoever, in fact, they might’ve regressed.

Miami almost started blowing the doors off of Louisville, until a couple of huge plays got them right back in the game. Give credit to the Cardinals for coming back and making it a fight for some time, but it ultimately wasn’t enough as the defense just couldn’t stay off the field.

The story of these remaining games on the season will be how well did the defense play and if they did enough to help out Louisville’s offense, which has been pretty solid all year.

In this game, the defense didn’t do nearly enough to make the task more manageable for Tyler Shough and the offense. The drop off from last year’s defense and this year’s defense is nothing short of astronomical, to say the least. Everything that Jeff Brohm could hang his hat on last season is the complete opposite this year. Preseason All-American pass rusher Ashton Gillotte has essentially gone missing and the rest of the defensive line doesn’t generate enough pressure, which allows quarterbacks like Heisman Trophy candidate Cam Ward to have a field day and that’s exactly what he did.

Ward continued to make back-breaking plays that extended the Hurricanes drive and the offense was humming so much so that Louisville didn’t have a clue on how to defend it. The Cardinals didn’t get off to the worst start in this one, as they held Miami to a field goal and turned right back around and scored a 43-yard rushing touchdown from freshman sensation Isaac Brown, but after that point on it was all Miami.

The Cardinals offense did everything they could to matchup with Miami’s, but the Hurricanes unit is obviously on a different level led by number one.

Down by two scores late, Louisville rose from the dead with a 100-yard kickoff return from Caullin Lacy, who’s looking healthier and healthier by the week, and the struggling defense finally made a play when they forced a fumble and recovered it. It got to third and goal, but Tyler Shough was able to find his favorite target in Ja’Corey Brooks to tie the ball game in a stunning turn of events. From this point on, it was anyone’s ball game and if the Cardinals defense was going to wake up, it was going to be right then and there.

Sadly, they went back to the same defense everyone saw before forcing that fumble and Miami marched down the field with relative ease for the rest of the game. The defense did end up forcing another fumble and returned it for a touchdown, this time on Cam Ward, but the ACC officials overturned it, stating that Ward’s arm was going forward and that he had control of the football. That’s something I strongly disagree on due to the fact that the ball was moving before Ward began his throwing motion, but these officials have overturned or missed a couple of huge calls in Miami’s favor recently.

The defense had one more chance to get a stop, but they were no match for Miami. They struggled to tackle as a whole down the stretch as well, which isn’t going to bode well against a top six ranked team. Ron English has to get his unit to play better, it’s as simple as that, and if he can’t, this Louisville team could very easily find themselves at 6-6 when the season ends. The offense will be fine, even though they aren’t perfect, but they can get the job done.

No improvements on defense will result in no wins against good programs.

Louisville’s next game will come next Friday night on the road against Boston College (4-3) at 7:30 P.M. (ET), one that won’t be easy by any means.