A long 2024 Postmortem

[CardHack]

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.

 

[Guardman]

28 points.

 

[Thecycle27]

I agree it was a missed opportunity. I tend to lean they had really bad luck with injuries, spring transfers and head scratching calls that were all 50-50 calls that went the wrong way.

The reality is they don’t have the quality depth at all the key positions. The Stanford and Pitt losses frankly don’t make any sense but they happened. They were fluke performances. The UK and Clemson wins weren’t flukes they won the line of scrimmage.

Here is what I am confident in if this staff can land legit personnel they can compete for the playoff especially offensively. The defense no clue on the path to success. Talent wise this was a talented group but they didn’t consistently perform at that level. In fairness they played against good QB’s that were on good teams. My main concern is the blown coverages on a regular basis and the inconsistency. The Clemson, Pitt and UK game excellent. The Stanford game disappears.

Again next year success is how do they handle the portal on the defensive side.

 

[Pervis_Griffith]

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.

 

[TheRealVille]

For me, it's mostly just bad luck that we're not playing in the ACC championship game. Of course there were mistakes and inconsistent coaching, but if just a handful of things hadn't happened, we would have overcame them to win.

Notre Dame: Louisville is the best team the Irish faced this season and if it weren't for at least two decisively horrible officiating calls, the Irish would have lost.

Had the Cards won this game, it would have propelled them into the top 10.

SMU: We all saw how this game ended. The replay review reversal was bullshit and it directly led to the SMU win. Now maybe Louisville would have lost anyway, in overtime? Who knows? But everyone knows the reversal is what cost the Cards the game.

Now think where Louisville would have been if their luck was good and not bad. Top 5?

Everything would have been different when we played Miami. It would have been a top 10 matchup. GameDay would have most likely came to Louisville.

Now maybe the game would have ended the same way it did, but with all that energy and momentum and ESPN there, I believe Louisville would have won. A loss however wouldn't have knocked the Cards out of the ACC title game.

That would be determined against Clemson. Now would the Cards have still laid an egg at Stanford? I can't believe they would have but who really knows? Brohm hasn't been upset every single time after upsetting a ranked team the game before.

Louisville would be in control of its ACC title game appearance. Even with one loss to Miami, they would be in by winning out, so the Stanford game would have had a more urgent attention than he did.

Louisville should be 11 and 1 and probably playing Clemson in a rematch. They would have been a playoff lock. However, those two early losses that could have easily been wins, left us with once again, disappointing what ifs?

 

[CardHack]

I'm always hesitant to ascribe end results to intangibles like luck or momentum, believing both to be byproducts of the tangible things like matchups or mismatches and the opportunity to exploit that that comes with combinations of good coaching, good scouting and the guts to pull the trigger when those mismatches are spotted. Jeff has demonstrated that he's a good coach and it's struck me as rare in his two years that we look like we're caught off-guard offensively or unable to move the football for more than one half; we're clearly prepared. If I would give myself a second's pause to say we lost a single game that just looked offscript it was against Notre Dame; the field position cost of fumbling a kickoff (that we recovered but deep in our territory), the great playcall springing Shough for 40+ yards that he botched fumbling the football staking us to a 14-7 first quarter deficit and the bad snap on the punt on the subsequent drive.

But as I said then, that's where Jeff has one big blemish like the Penn State game cited and a game at Syracuse I recall; Notre Dame we came up empty multiple times with a bad combination of poor personnel executing a play...Chaney was the last of our five running backs capable of getting the edge on a 4th and 1 and beyond that it was against one of Notre Dame's true defensive strengths. That's not luck. Luck is making that pitch to Chaney and a Gale force wind blows the football behind him.

...all of that said, I agree with you Real, those two losses back-to-back don't happen if we executed the 4th downs better against ND and SMU and that crew got the fumble right. The season becomes a hell of alot different.

 

[TheRealVille]

Of course we had our share of mistakes and bad coaching decisions that had nothing to do with luck. Without those the Cards would probably have overcome the bad breaks.

However, it's not plausible to think we're going to play close to a perfect game, and mistakes are going to happen. The ineptitude on 4th down has just been mysterious, especially with #25 back there in the backfield.

The bad luck I'm referring to is mostly the officiating but there was some unlucky bounces like Brooks not catching a perfect pass that deflects right into the hands of the defender. The error was Brooks not catching the pass, but if only the ball hit the ground like they usually do.

Shoughs fumble after his long run was another unlucky break. That ball could have easily went out of bounds, he was so close to the sideline, but it didn't.

The ND game was the game Louisville needed to win on so many levels, but the win was taken from them due to the incredibly bad officiating. We hate to say it because all fans blame the refs, but they do that because there are clear examples of that being the case.

The ND game was one of those.

 

[beantowncard]

For me, it's mostly just bad luck that we're not playing in the ACC championship game. Of course there were mistakes and inconsistent coaching, but if just a handful of things hadn't happened, we would have overcame them to win.

Notre Dame: Louisville is the best team the Irish faced this season and if it weren't for at least two decisively horrible officiating calls, the Irish would have lost.

Had the Cards won this game, it would have propelled them into the top 10.

SMU: We all saw how this game ended. The replay review reversal was bullshit and it directly led to the SMU win. Now maybe Louisville would have lost anyway, in overtime? Who knows? But everyone knows the reversal is what cost the Cards the game.

Now think where Louisville would have been if their luck was good and not bad. Top 5?

Everything would have been different when we played Miami. It would have been a top 10 matchup. GameDay would have most likely came to Louisville.

Now maybe the game would have ended the same way it did, but with all that energy and momentum and ESPN there, I believe Louisville would have won. A loss however wouldn't have knocked the Cards out of the ACC title game.

That would be determined against Clemson. Now would the Cards have still laid an egg at Stanford? I can't believe they would have but who really knows? Brohm hasn't been upset every single time after upsetting a ranked team the game before.

Louisville would be in control of its ACC title game appearance. Even with one loss to Miami, they would be in by winning out, so the Stanford game would have had a more urgent attention than he did.

Louisville should be 11 and 1 and probably playing Clemson in a rematch. They would have been a playoff lock. However, those two early losses that could have easily been wins, left us with once again, disappointing what ifs?

I’m convinced that the bye week after Clemson broke our momentum. Brohm doesn’t like Bye weeks and I agree.

 

[Thecycle27]

There aren’t many teams that play great out of a buy week. It takes teams out of their routines. It probably helps the teams that are struggling more that rolling.

 

[Knucklehank1]

This is a good thread. Everyone knows their stuff on here. A couple of thoughts:
agree 100% about needing NFL talent, especially on defense. Not sure how many NFL caliber guys will be in portal. Need to develop some younger dudes. We definitely blew the Stanford game. We did start the ND game with a fumble recovery on the opening kickoff, so that could be viewed as luck on our side. The UVA and BC games both came down to the wire. Ultimately, I think we probably were a 9-3 team with an 8-4 record. We only had 6 home games and next year that goes to 8. I’m excited for the future. Having the Clemson and UK albatrosses off our neck is part of the upward trajectory process.

 

[Guardman]

This is a good thread. Everyone knows their stuff on here. A couple of thoughts:
agree 100% about needing NFL talent, especially on defense. Not sure how many NFL caliber guys will be in portal. Need to develop some younger dudes. We definitely blew the Stanford game. We did start the ND game with a fumble recovery on the opening kickoff, so that could be viewed as luck on our side. The UVA and BC games both came down to the wire. Ultimately, I think we probably were a 9-3 team with an 8-4 record. We only had 6 home games and next year that goes to 8. I’m excited for the future. Having the Clemson and UK albatrosses off our neck is part of the upward trajectory process.

A reasonable and fair assessment.