INDIANAPOLIS, March 31, 2013 – After witnessing a Rick Pitino-led Cardinals team bounce back from Kevin Ware’s devastating injury and ultimately rout his second-seeded Blue Devils by 22 points, Coach Mike Krzyzewski sat down and tried to put into words what had just happened.

“I thought we had a chance there, and then boom,” he said. “That’s what they do to teams. They boom you.”

In an instant these words became synonymous with the magical 2013 national championship and the Louisville men’s basketball program.

But if you remove the context of these words and pair them with what we’ve seem from Scott Satterfield’s offense this season, the words are just as impactful. They boom you.

Louisville’s new offense under Satterfield is not terribly flashy. It’s not Mike Leach’s Air Raid, it’s not Sonny Dykes’ trick offense, and it’s not even old-school flashy like the option-heavy military academies. What it is is a carefully balanced offense that relies on establishing the run early with standard dive, counter, and option plays. Once the run game is going, this allows the offense to open up the rest of the attack with play-actions, RPOs, and standard passing plays usually out of the pistol.

It’s nothing outlandish. But when it goes off, opposing teams feel it.

Currently, Louisville ranks 20th in the country in yards per play (y/p) with a 6.64 average. Ed Feng digs a little deeper on The Power Rank where he shows us that Satterfield’s offense ranks 12th in yards per pass (ypp) with 8.16 ypp and 30th in yards per run (ypr) with 5.64 ypr.

These are solid numbers for an offense that currently ranks 36th overall in SP+’s offensive efficiency rating.

But how does a team in its first year, with depth concerns at virtually every position except receiver, operate at such a high level without running any sort of a “gimmick” offense?

They boom you.

This is also known as “explosiveness.” But how does one quantify explosiveness? No one better to explain than one of the NFL’s most famous statisticians and directors of research, Mike Eayrs, who became known in the inner circles of the NFL as the “secret weapon” of the Green Bay Packers during Brett Favre’s prime due to his “Moneyball” approach to football and his (unofficial) invention of “explosive plays.”

In a 2001 interview with Jason Wilde, Eayrs explains the concept. "What we looked at was, what is the minimum yardage you need on one play to significantly affect the scoring probability of that possession?" Eayrs explained. “So we did a formula called a linear regression, and what the results of the study revealed was, to significantly affect the probability of scoring on a single drive, you needed a passing gain of 16 yards or greater and a running gain of 12 yards or greater. So that became our line of demarcation."

Based on his findings, Eayrs was able to prove that explosive plays dramatically increased the odds that a drive would end in a score. “A single explosive play increased an offense's chance at points to 40%. Two bumped the odds to a near-certain 80%.”

Long story short, more explosive plays = more points.

After digging through all 610 plays of Louisville’s season thus far and applying Eayrs’ standards for explosive plays, it’s safe to say that Satterfield believes in this concept.

In total, Louisville has gained 4053 yards of offense. Of those 4053 yards, 2674 of them have been via explosive plays (95 of them, to be exact). This means that 65.98% of UofL’s offense is pure explosiveness. That’s a lot.

Of the 95 plays that fall under the category of “explosive,” only 33 of them have been on drives that didn’t go for scores. So, on drives with at least one explosive play, Louisville has a 65% chance of scoring.

In news that will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, the Boston College and Wake Forest games were two of the high points of Satterfield’s dedication to offensive detonation. In these games Louisville had 25 plays that were bonafide explosions. These plays accounted for 749 of the Cardinals’ 1,184 yards of offense. Of the 34 completions, the quarterbacks had 12 passes that went for 20 yards or more, averaging 34.93 ypp.

After the Wake Forest game Satterfield said, “We have some explosive guys. When you look and see what both of those guys (Hawkins and Hall) have been able to do. They're not huge but they get one little crease then they are able to make plays.” He continued, “You can't stop it all, is the thing. If you're going to stop one part of the offense, then something else should be able to have a lot of yards.”

This is partially true. While Satterfield is not wrong that the offense typically is able to switch between their strengths when the other is down, this does not mean that it leads to wins.

In three of Louisville’s four losses, only one game (Miami) did the offense average more than 20 ypr on explosive runs. And according to Bill Connelly’s advanced box score, 36% of that game was played in garbage time. So, feel free to throw out those 43- and 58-yard runs in the second half that skew the point I’m trying to make.

With an offense built on wearing opposing defenses down until the “big one” comes open, there are few clear indications as to how many explosive plays need to be made, how many plays should be run, or how many yards per passing play should be averaged in order to win.

The most important indication as to the success of this offense is the success of the running attack. Average 20 yards or more in explosive runs and you’re in the clear. Average less than that, and things get ugly pretty quickly.

But all of this is not to say that short gains and chunk plays are not important. There’s no better illustration of this than the Miami game.

Last week Louisville ran 64 plays against the Hurricanes for a total of 496 yards. Of those 496 yards, 449 of them came on explosive plays (14 of them). This means that on the other 50 plays of the game Louisville averaged a whopping 0.94 yards per play. Woof.

The key to the balance of Satterfield’s offense, as he carefully explains, is that even with the uppercuts and right hooks there need to be those small jabs. In games where Louisville has averaged at least 3 yards per non-explosive play they are 4-0. In games where they averaged less than 3 yards per non-explosive play, they are 1-4.

With the right combination of big hits and papercuts, they’ll boom you.