Big Plays Continuing to Haunt Louisville's Defense
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - At this point in time, it's not exactly a secret that Louisville is far from a perfect football team.
Self-inflicted wounds such as penalties, an underwhelming passing game, and the inability to finish games in the fourth quarter are only a few reasons why the Cardinals are currently 2-3 on the season and winless in the ACC. A team which had preseason aspirations of maybe having an eight-win season now currently finds themselves not only in an uphill battle to finish the year with a .500 record, but has their head coach firmly planted on the hot seat.
But out of all the factors that have contributed to Louisville's poor start, you can make an argument that the single-biggest reason that the Cardinals currently have a losing record is because they have struggled mightily to contain big plays from opposing offenses.
"Those are backbreaking plays, those big plays," head coach Scott Satterfield said. "You can stop somebody for 70 plays on defense, but if they hit six of them, you are going to have a hard time winning. You can't have those. You have to get them down."
When you take a look at the basic big play stats, it paints a pretty good picture of how bad Louisville has been at allowing game-breaking, momentum-shifting plays. The Cardinals are currently ranked 85th nationally when it comes to allowing plays of 10 yards or more at 69 total plays, and it only gets worse from here.
Louisville has given up 31 total plays that have gone for 20 yards or more, which is the seventh-worst mark in all of FBS. The only Power Five team who is worse in this regard is Colorado, who just fired both their head coach and defensive coordinator.
They're also tied for 99th out of 131 FBS teams in allowing plays of 30 yards or more at 11, tied for 117th out in allowing plays of 40 yards or more at eight, and tied for 115th out in allowing plays of 50 yards or more at five.
If you take an even deeper dive into the stats, it only becomes more alarming. Through five games this season, Louisville has allowed 56 plays that have either gone for at least 15 yards passing or 10 yards rushing. On these 56 plays, the Cardinals have allowed 1,359 yards of offense.
For the season, Louisville's defense has given up 1,848 yards of offense on 321 total plays. That means that 73.5 percent of their total yardage allowed has come on just 17.4 percent of their total snaps. This stat right here is the biggest indictment of Louisville's struggles not just on defense, but for the team as a whole.
The biggest factor as to why the Cardinals are giving up so many explosive plays is, quite bluntly, pure schematic failures. Sure, there have been a handful of moments where a complete breakdown in effort or execution by a Louisville player (or players), or simply opposing players just making great plays, have lead to a lot of these chunk plays. However, many of them, particularly the longest one, have been due to momentary lapses in defensive scheming.
"We have to do a better job, I have to do a better job, of calling the game at times to make sure we have guys deep," defensive coordinator Bryan Brown said. "To have, as we call it, an umbrella in the backfield. If we can do that and make teams drive it, we're actually pretty good defensively when we do that. ... But I gotta do a better job of putting those guys in situations to do what they do best. If we can do that, I think we'll be a lot better defensively at not giving up those explosive plays."
He's actually not wrong. In fact, if it wasn't for the prevalence of big plays, you could make an argument that this is the best defense of the Scott Satterfield era.
Let's go back to the last stat. While 73.5 percent of Louisville's total yards allowed have come on just 17.4 percent of their snaps, conversely, they have only given up 489 yards of offense of the remaining 265 of their defensive snaps, which is 82.6 percent of the time they are on the field.
A better way to frame this is that 82.6 percent of the time that Louisville's defense is on the field, they are only allowing 1.85 yards per play to opposing offenses. The current national leader in opponent yards per play, Alabama, is allowing nearly double this at 3.61 yards per play.
By no means am I trying to compare Louisville's defense to that of Alabama's. But, if it weren't for the amount of explosive plays that they give up, you can make a case that Louisville would be 4-1 on the year right now even with the other issues they have. Even with the insane amount of yardage being allowed on big plays, the Cardinals still have the 66th-ranked defense in FBS at 369.8 yards allowed per game, and the 60th-ranked scoring defense at 23.4 points allowed per game.
"The biggest thing that I’ve seen really good defenses do is that offenses can move the ball," Satterfield said. "It is not about the yards, you can give up 500 yards but if you give up 17 points, you have a great chance of winning. ... If (teams) have to drive the ball and (they) have a 14-play drive and are just scratching and clawing just trying to get a touchdown, you can't do that six times in a game. It just doesn't work out, it's just hard. But the one and two play drives, that's where you have to eliminate those.”
Big plays are part of the reason that Satterfield announced earlier this week that he would be more involved in the defensive game plan moving forward. If Louisville can cut down on the amount of breakdowns that lead to big plays, it will be a sizable first step in terms of not only turning the season around, but also cooling off the hot seat in which their head coach is sitting on.
“The bottom line is if we're down, and we want to be a pressure defense, but if you're down at seven yards, eight yards, and they get past that there's nothing else there and once you get past that it’s a touchdown," Satterfield said. "We have to do a better job of planned pressure defense but also having that umbrella back there where we're keeping everything in there. You have to know when to call that stuff and when.
Louisville will get their first chance to get back on track defensively and start containing more big plays when they travel to Virginia this weekend. Kickoff between the Cardinals and Cavaliers as set for Saturday, Oct. 8 at 12:00 p.m. EST at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Va.
(Photo via Jamie Rhodes - USA TODAY Sports)
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