What if: Bobby Petrino Beats FSU in 2018?

The offseason has always been a time for reflection, and unfortunately we are in the most boring offseason of our lives which has allowed us to get real weird with our retrospectives. As the ACC’s lead Ninja, John Swofford, put kindly yesterday, “"We can get terribly hypothetical in all this."

Indeed, we can! And we shall!

Today I’d like to dive into the dark universe that is Bobby Petrino. We’ll skip past all the fun stuff in his world like quitting an NFL gig in the middle of the season by leaving notes in lockers or falling off a motorcycle to become an instant meme. Instead, we’ll venture into one of his most bizarre accomplishments: destroying a program in a single season.

Okay, maybe one season is a bit of a stretch as there were many warning signs we should have noticed prior to the 2018 season. But we must give credit where it’s due and taking a program that was firmly in the College Football Playoff conversation for the entirety of the 2016 season with a Heisman Trophy Winner to ten losses in such a short amount of time is terribly impressive.

And with any disaster there was a turning point. But where? Some will say the turning point was when Lamar Jackson left for the NFL Draft. Others will say when he hired his third defensive coordinator in as many years. Or when his father passed away right before the season.

All are valid, and all certainly carry some weight. However, where things inarguably and undoubtedly went sideways for good was on a single play on September 29th, 2018.

All offseason no one could put their finger on Louisville. Would they face a huge setback without Lamar Jackson or would they continue forward with DC Peter Sirmon’s replacement, Brian Van Gorder, and the promising young talent in Puma Pass? And the first three games of the season didn’t provide many answers, either.

Getting the snot kicked out of us by Alabama made sense. Struggling against Indiana State for three quarters was slightly concerning but it was excusable due to the monsoon that took place during the game. Narrowly escaping a loss to WKU was more than concerning, but we had the feeling we’d worked some of the kinks out and were heading the right direction.

Then Louisville scored 3 points against Virginia. Okay, yeah. Something might be wrong.

Sitting at 2-2 with a Florida State team coming to town who had been blown out in their opener against Virginia Tech, barely escaped a home loss to Samford, and who had been routed by Syracuse, Louisville was ready for a “get right” game against a familiar foe who was reeling. It was as close to a must-win game as you can have in September.

Fast-forward through three quarters of uninspiring football between two teams that used to be good and Louisville has the ball up 24-21 with 2:01 left on the clock. The Cardinals are in the drivers seat as they have the ball on the FSU 21-yard line on first down. ESPN's win probability tracker gives Louisville a 99% chance of winning at this moment.

What any ordinary coach would do in this situation would be the obvious: run the ball.

But Bobby Petrino is not ordinary. No. He left ordinary behind in the Georgia Dome eleven years earlier.

Instead of doing anything that resembled a rational thought, Bobby Petrino opted for a passing play. With the lead. On first down. With 2:01 left on the clock. On the opposing 21-yard line. With a 99% of winning.

What happened next is exactly why you NEVER call a passing play in that scenario:

That's right. FSU’s A.J. Westbrook jumped the tight end Mickey Crum’s damn hitch route to intercept the ball. FSU would score four plays later on a 58-yard pass from Deondre Francois to Nyqwan Murray.

After the game Petrino summarized his stroke of genius in saying, “I look back at it, obviously, I should have ran the ball.”

So, the Seminoles win a game they had no business winning and the Cardinals are sent into a tailspin that wouldn’t end until Scott Satterfield arrives on campus three months later.

BUT! What if? What if Bobby Petrino pretends to be normal for just one solitary moment and decides to run the ball?

There are two timelines in this alternative universe.

Timeline #1:

Louisville ices the game away and takes its third consecutive win against the ‘Noles. Morality and faith in the coaching staff is somewhat restored. At least enough to not melt down and perhaps steal one or two wins in the three-game stretch that followed against Georgia Tech, Boston College, and Wake Forest.

In reality athletic director Vince Tyra did not seem close to even considering firing Petrino after the FSU debacle with so much of the season still ahead of them. So, if Bobby Petrino is able to win four or five games, in what was predicted by many to be a down season, it’s highly likely that Petrino keeps his job for another season to prove that it was just one bad year.

Except 2019 ends up being even worse than the year before as poor roster management and constantly replacing his defensive coordinators finally catches up to Bobby. Petrino ultimately gets fired a year too late as the thin/mis-managed roster continues to detoriate.

Louisville misses out on the far superior coaching class of 2018-19 that included Scott Satterfield, Neal Brown, Les Miles, Chris Klieman, and Mack Brown (I know, I know). Instead, Louisville has to compete with a much tougher field of job openings with one of the most lackluster coaching classes we’ve seen in years.

Who does Louisville settle for? Lane Kiffin? Mike Leach? Eliah Drinkwitz? Yikes.

Timeline #2:

Louisville gets a much needed emotional victory over intra-divisional rival FSU. But the fun is short lived as Coach Paul Johnson exacts revenge on Brian Van Gorder a week later in one of the most incredible/embarrassing displays of how the triple-option is supposed to work.

Getting blow out is bad enough for morale. Getting 63 points hung on you by a team running an offensive scheme invented before the Korean War Era is catastrophic.

The good feelings from the FSU game fade into oblivion and the 2018 Cardinals finish 3-9 with Bobby Petrino getting fired shortly after an embarrassing performance against archrival Kentucky.

However, with Vince Tyra late to the coaching carousel he loses valuable time pursuing Purdue’s Jeff Brohm ultimately to have Brohm turn Louisville down and also have his Plan B, Scott Satterfield, hired away before Tyra can get him on the phone.

Louisville ultimately hires former UK assistant Neal Brown, which is a solid hire, but first year AD Tyra loses booster and fan support because this rivalry is petty as hell.

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So the first timeline is nightmare fuel and the second actually isn’t bad at all.

But if we had the chance to do it all over again, I think we let Bobby pass the ball on first down.

Have an opinion or another alternate timeline? Join the discussion.