Mark Ennis made an interesting point on his show with Biscuit Monday that almost had me changing my mind about this season. This ended up being a down year for Louisville, but his point was that in two years under Brohm they beat Notre Dame, they won at Miami, they made the ACC Championship game and they put to bed the two biggest losing streaks we have tied to the Program--the albatross that was Clemson and the dreaded five game streak with UK. And in those last two instances resoundingly and with no questions asked. None of those things happened under Satterfield--or Petrino if we're being fair to the Record--though I maintain we owe Satterfield a lot more than we care to admit with who he left for Brohm to utilize versus what he inherited which was complete and utter disarray outside of three good wide receivers and Mekhi Becton. He was the right guy to get us out of the Ditch, he was the wrong guy to get us into the ACC's Top Four.
But I would retort...we lost to a Pitt that went 2-6 in ACC play and Stanford who went 2-6 in ACC play under Brohm. We keep having these one score games against teams that should be the ones asking questions of themselves at halftime. I can't reconcile that because that was a Satterfield issue too.
I think we missed a Golden opportunity this year and if you ask me why I'd say because we had the personnel criteria to be playing tomorrow night. We took the field against Miami--with Caullin Lacy and Jamari Johnson--with the best skill position group at our disposal going back to the Governor's Cup in 2006 (we had Michael, and we didn't have the running back quality complementing Teddy Bridgewater and were probably carried more by Lamar than we had quality at WR and RB in those years). Our offensive line eventually flourished in all of the games after Miami. We had two high quality cornerbacks but that probably had as much to do with us losing at Notre Dame and against SMU because Riley was out and Thornton was wearing the oven mitt. We had what I perceived to be a deep defensive line that when it was all said and done probably lacked a consistent pass rusher opposite Gillotte, which contributed to his high pressure number but half the sack total. We got sometimes game changing production out of our special teams units.
Moving forward preseason next year I'll be looking to see how many NFL draftees we legitimately have on the defensive side of the football. I think you have to have four a year and when it's all said and done we did have four in the Spring with Thornton, Riley, Gillotte and Tyler Barron, but Barron was sent packing to Miami (which I'm not debating, he was a Cancer). I could have made an argument for MJ Griffin pre injury last year because he was the best DB in Fall Camp in 2023. My fear as it pertains to next season is we realistically only have one and that's Stanquan. We've had multiple years now where our cornerback tandem was going to play in the NFL on back through Kei'trel Clark with Quincey and Jarvis Brownlee and with Storm Duck last year who is in the NFL and this year with the Thornton/Riley tandem. We aren't starting with that in 2025 and are completely starting over. Something drastic is going to have to happen in the Portal at Defensive End and in the Secondary to be in the ACC hunt next year, and it's one reason why I think English is out anyway. We need a wholesale injection of talent, we consistently saw communication and alignment breakdowns from the safeties even against UK and we need a quality Safeties coach every bit as much as a new DC. That might be unfair to English to say that he was a single point of failure, but he was the common denominator.
So I will be looking at the ACC Title game tomorrow with that gnawing feeling that we'd have beaten both of them if we were there.
Truth. This is a year of "what might have been".
And next year will take some rebuilding to be competitive, with a schedule that is as tough as this past year's.
There is something else to factor in.
A Brohm trend that bears watching ....
-- Loss to 3-9 Stanford in '24
-- Loss to 3-9 Pitt in '23;
-- Loss to a good Penn State team in '22 ...
BUT clinging to a 31-28 lead, and forcing two punts (one 3 and out, one 4 and out), Purdue threw 9 incomplete passes .... allowing Penn State the opportunity to save clock, and score the winning touchdown. Which they did in an 8 play 80-yard drive in a minute and a half. OUCH.
-- Loss to 3-6 Rutgers in '20;
-- Loss to 3-9 Vandy in '19;
-- Loss to 7-6 Eastern Michigan in '18
So in addition to the roster rebuild, the coach needs to get better too.
EDIT: Rereading my post, it comes off as pretty harsh toward Brohm, which was not my intention. I want Brohm to be the viewed as the best coach in the country. I want him to be the best coach he can be. He's still learning, and he can get better. There are enough data points that he should see ways he can improve as a play caller, and coach in general. I am hoping for that.
