* I was making the point preseason here and on Twitter that the player I was most looking forward to seeing on the field for Louisville wasn't an incoming transfer, it was Stanquan Clark. Saturday vindicated that for me because he was fantastic. Antonio Watts was right there with him and appears to have fully supplanted Ben Perry at that Rover position.
We talk a lot about whether a position group is better from one year to the next thinking that we were going to have a deep defensive line group with Gillotte being the clear headliner and a talented secondary which has shown to be a good tackling group on the corners but seeing clear breakdowns from the safeties that I think can probably be schemed out (I must have watched the 1st quarter TD pass twenty times last night and still trying to figure out just what the coverage was; we used to call it invert when I was in HS but it looked like our DB on the slot was drunk running into the CB). Linebacker is better than last year, and that was a pretty good group losing only Alderman to Miami; Clark's play is giving some indications as to why he left. I didn't expect it to be this good.
* Speaking of position groups and players leaving, for the most part we haven't really seen the negative side of losing a player in the Portal even though there are ALOT of contributors throughout the Power 4 conferences that are ex-Cards. Greedy Vance and Kani Walker are starters at CB at Southern Cal and Oklahoma respectively. Caleb Banks is starting at DT at Florida and Jermayne Lole has been at Texas. I noticed Jordan Watkins returning punts for Ole Miss against UK Saturday. Jackson Hamilton and Jaylin Alderman are playing at Ga Tech and Miami.
But someone we'd love to have back because he not only is at a position where we are most deficient, he's damned good and that's Luke Kandra at UC; who was all-Big 12 last year and he is rated as a first round draft pick as one of the top 3 guards in the upcoming draft. Put him with our current group and the possibility of sliding Collins in at Center and we have a very different looking outlook. It points out the toughness traditionally of recruiting offense linemen at Louisville; it still baffles me that we don't see offensive linemen coming out of Trinity and St. X to the extent they come out of the high schools in Lexington
* I have also made the point that our Senior Day is going to look like the Million Man March and it's so big they could probably divide it into three separate groups recognized in the remaining home games to save time on Senior Day festivities; that said, you can't help but be excited about what we've seen from the last two recruiting classes from among Clark, Isaac and Keyjuan Brown and Jamari Johnson in particular. You don't see many RBs put into a designed rollout for a wheel route/fade into a corner at any level of football like Isaac Brown's 1st quarter TD grab. And he looked as smooth as an NFL WR executing the route, the catch and the footwork. The route combination isolating Jamari Johnson on an LB up the right seam for 27 yards on his reception was also a very well designed and well executed play. For me the biggest takeaway was it was very fluid because a lot of tight ends seem to jerk at the ball rather than making a straight hands catch on the dead run; Johnson is physically completely transformed from where he was when he got on campus last year. I was concerned he was going to have to become an offensive lineman to see the field.
Adonijah Green at the DE normally manned by Tramel Logan got some reps so it looks like he's starting to earn the trust of the defensive staff.
* One guy I'm happy to see turn it around from where he was at the end of last year is Brock Travelsted; a changed breeze direction from hitting a 60 yarder against Georgia Tech and a nailed 56 yarder in South Bend which was a huge kick that would have kicked dirt over our grave if he missed it down 10.
Lastly, SMU worries me. Really well executed RPO offenses are bad enough, but the way we've had total breakdowns in coverage from our safeties leaves me really concerned. We blew coverages against Jacksonville State and was bailed out by a call deemed incomplete that looked like a botched call, we had two clear busts against Ga Tech and a minimum of two against Notre Dame. SMU may well have a better receiving corps than what we've seen so far. I don't want a shootout, but I'm afraid that is what we might have Saturday.
We talk a lot about whether a position group is better from one year to the next thinking that we were going to have a deep defensive line group with Gillotte being the clear headliner and a talented secondary which has shown to be a good tackling group on the corners but seeing clear breakdowns from the safeties that I think can probably be schemed out (I must have watched the 1st quarter TD pass twenty times last night and still trying to figure out just what the coverage was; we used to call it invert when I was in HS but it looked like our DB on the slot was drunk running into the CB). Linebacker is better than last year, and that was a pretty good group losing only Alderman to Miami; Clark's play is giving some indications as to why he left. I didn't expect it to be this good.
* Speaking of position groups and players leaving, for the most part we haven't really seen the negative side of losing a player in the Portal even though there are ALOT of contributors throughout the Power 4 conferences that are ex-Cards. Greedy Vance and Kani Walker are starters at CB at Southern Cal and Oklahoma respectively. Caleb Banks is starting at DT at Florida and Jermayne Lole has been at Texas. I noticed Jordan Watkins returning punts for Ole Miss against UK Saturday. Jackson Hamilton and Jaylin Alderman are playing at Ga Tech and Miami.
But someone we'd love to have back because he not only is at a position where we are most deficient, he's damned good and that's Luke Kandra at UC; who was all-Big 12 last year and he is rated as a first round draft pick as one of the top 3 guards in the upcoming draft. Put him with our current group and the possibility of sliding Collins in at Center and we have a very different looking outlook. It points out the toughness traditionally of recruiting offense linemen at Louisville; it still baffles me that we don't see offensive linemen coming out of Trinity and St. X to the extent they come out of the high schools in Lexington
* I have also made the point that our Senior Day is going to look like the Million Man March and it's so big they could probably divide it into three separate groups recognized in the remaining home games to save time on Senior Day festivities; that said, you can't help but be excited about what we've seen from the last two recruiting classes from among Clark, Isaac and Keyjuan Brown and Jamari Johnson in particular. You don't see many RBs put into a designed rollout for a wheel route/fade into a corner at any level of football like Isaac Brown's 1st quarter TD grab. And he looked as smooth as an NFL WR executing the route, the catch and the footwork. The route combination isolating Jamari Johnson on an LB up the right seam for 27 yards on his reception was also a very well designed and well executed play. For me the biggest takeaway was it was very fluid because a lot of tight ends seem to jerk at the ball rather than making a straight hands catch on the dead run; Johnson is physically completely transformed from where he was when he got on campus last year. I was concerned he was going to have to become an offensive lineman to see the field.
Adonijah Green at the DE normally manned by Tramel Logan got some reps so it looks like he's starting to earn the trust of the defensive staff.
* One guy I'm happy to see turn it around from where he was at the end of last year is Brock Travelsted; a changed breeze direction from hitting a 60 yarder against Georgia Tech and a nailed 56 yarder in South Bend which was a huge kick that would have kicked dirt over our grave if he missed it down 10.
Lastly, SMU worries me. Really well executed RPO offenses are bad enough, but the way we've had total breakdowns in coverage from our safeties leaves me really concerned. We blew coverages against Jacksonville State and was bailed out by a call deemed incomplete that looked like a botched call, we had two clear busts against Ga Tech and a minimum of two against Notre Dame. SMU may well have a better receiving corps than what we've seen so far. I don't want a shootout, but I'm afraid that is what we might have Saturday.
