Jeff Brohm Happy With Louisville's Progress Early in Spring Ball

The Cardinals are now two weeks into their five-week long spring practice.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Just as quickly as it kicked off, spring practice for the Louisville football is quickly reaching the halfway point.

On Friday, the Cardinals conducted their sixth practice of spring ball, concluding their second week of the five-week long spring practice period. Louisville has nine more spring practices left to go, with it all culminating on Friday, Apr. 19 at 7:00 p.m. EST with the program's annual spring game from L&N Stadium.

As expected with the early goings of spring ball, head coach Jeff Brohm has seen plenty to be excited about as well as plenty to need to work on. But overall through the first two weeks of spring practice, Brohm has been happy with the progress he has seen out of his team.

"I think to this point, we've got a lot of good work in," Brohm said. "With the new pieces, we're throwing as much at them as we can, and you got to be able to learn. You got to be able to grasp things, got to be able to comprehend everything we're doing so that we can be creative and play aggressive.

"At this point, there has been a lot of good things on the field that I have seen. Without question, certain position we have more depth. We have to continue to push that forward and aggressive as we can. But these guys are doing a good job. We got three weeks left, we've been able to keep most people fairly healthy, so it's been a good two weeks."

In year one under Brohm last season, one which Louisville went 10-4 and appeared in their first ever ACC Championship Game, the Cardinals were primarily powered by an incredibly efficient defense. Louisville finished with the No. 1 red zone defense, the No. 9 rushing defense, and the No. 21 total defense.

Louisville brings back nine defensive players with at least nine starts, including All-American edge rusher Ashton Gillotte and All-ACC cornerback Quincy Riley. Additionally, several of Louisville's top transfers in from their No. 1 portal class are on that side of the ball, such as cornerbacks Tahveon Nicholson and Corey Thornton. Plus, the defensive staff has been slowly putting in new facets to the scheme that they learned from studying other teams - both at the college and NFL level.

Put it all together, and Brohm has been incredibly impressed by what he has seen out of the defense so far in spring ball.

"Well, I like our defense," he said. "Without question, we have a lot of depth. In the secondary for sure, without question there's depth at the corner position and at safety. We're pressing that four on the defense line, even though there's some guys out now, when it's all said and done for fall camp, we'll have depth there. I think we have some linebackers that have played quite a bit, with some youth mixed in, which is good.

"We've thrown a lot at them. The package is not exactly the same. It's gonna add some new wrinkles. The ability to get after the quarterback and create turnovers, we got to continue to press that forward. That has looked good to this point, so I like it. Our defense should be a strength, I expect it to be a strength. We've got to continue to press forward with that, because I just think we have quite a bit of depth and quite a bit of really good playmakers."

Going back to last season, while Louisville did put together a good offense, it wasn't what you would typically expect from a Jeff Brohm offense. The Cardinals were fueled by a good rushing attack, posting the No. 37 rushing offense in football, while their passing offense came in at No. 56.

That side of the ball heading into the 2024 season has a lot more newcomers than the defense. Texas Tech transfer Tyler Shough is taking over the reigns at quarterback, the wide receiver and tight ends rooms have a plethora of newcomers, Louisville has a new one-two punch at running back, and the offensive line has some fresh faces as well.

The offense might not be coming as far along as the defense is because of the amount of newcomers, but Brohm has seen some collective progress from this group.

"I think we've made strides," he said. "There's a whole lot of people getting repetitions, so we haven't been able to get in a super great flow. But I think Tyler (Shough) has done a really good job, we're improving that position. I think we're going to be able to run the football again, and I think just being able to develop the ability to throw the ball vertically, to have a potent passing attack is something we just got to continue to press for. That means receivers got to step up, quarterbacks got to be accurate, tight ends got to own the middle of field.

"We still have a ways to go there, but there's progress. I'd like go a little bit faster with it, but we are making slight progress."

(Photo of Louisville Players, Jeff Brohm: Scott Utterback - Courier Journal / USA)

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