Louisville Coaches and Players Bullish on Defense for Upcoming Season

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Whenever fans or pundits have a discussion revolving around the Louisville football program's upcoming 2025 season, the bulk of that discussion usually revolves around the offense - and for good reason.

From Isaac Brown and Duke Watson, to Chris Bell and Caullin Lacy, the Cardinals are stacked with talent at the skill positions. Give quarterback Miller Moss the keys to the car and put him behind a good offensive line, and UofL has the potential to have one of the best offenses in the sport.

While the offense is why Louisville will win the majority of their games, what will determine their ceiling in 2025 is the defense. Unfortunately, a lot more questions surround this unit.

Louisville is coming off of a 2024 season where their defense was tremendously disappointing given the talent at their disposal. They finished the year allowing 24.1 points and 368.7 yards per game, which ranked 56th and 64th, respectively, in the FBS. Then you add the fact that the Cardinals lost a lot of veterans from that squad, such as Ashton Gillotte and Quincy Riley, and questions only continue to persist as to how good Louisville can be on that side of the ball.

But as we approach the new season of college football, both the coaches and players for Louisville are high on their defensive capabilities in 2025.

"The few starters we have back on defense, I expect them to play very well," head coach Jeff Brohm said during the program's annual media day.
"They've been our best players to date, and they've learned from our mistakes, both as players and coaches, and how that we got to improve on that. We have some new additions. They're not aware of some of the things that happened before that, but they've watched it on film and learning from it.

"I think it's a good nucleus of hungry new pieces that want to come in and compete, that are challenging our guys, and then some veterans that have been here and know: this is how it's done, we've played against these guys, we've got a good feel, and that shows up quite a bit - the experience factor of those certain guys. I feel confident that we'll play well, and I want all of our segments to expect to play well every week.

The biggest question is without a doubt the secondary, as Louisville allowed 236.2 passing yards per game last season, which was 100th in the FBS and 12th in the ACC. On top of Riley, other impact guys such Tahveon Nicholson, Corey Thornton, Aaron Williams, and Tamarion McDonald also concluded their Louisville careers.

So far in spring ball and fall camp, Louisville's new-look secondary is seemingly preparing for a bounce back. Transfers JoJo Evans, Rodney Johnson Jr. have both excelled in practice, fellow incoming transfers Jabari Mack and Corey Gordon Jr. have also done will, rotational returners D'Angelo Hutchinson and Tayon Holloway have embraced their new roles, while others have made a handful of plays as well.

"We look good," Hutchinson said of the secondary. "We look way better since day one. Everybody coming along, everybody making plays each day, every DB making the play. Just building confidence, and just getting guys to come up and just make plays that we know we can make. I feel like the DB rooms have been great so far in fall camp."

Not only did the Cardinals not get a great showing from their secondary, the front seven - particularly the defensive line - had a very slow start to the season. Sure, while they finished 28th and 30th nationally in tackles for loss and sacks, respectively, they struggled early on at the point of attack and had trouble containing mobile quarterbacks.

While Gillotte, Ramon Puryear, Dezmond Tell and a host of others in this group have moved on, this is still a unit that has a good amount of fresh faces running it back. This includes tackles Jordan Guerad and Rene Konga; linebackers Stanquan Clark, T.J. Quinn, Antonio Watts; plus edge rusher A.J. Green. Not to mention the front seven was bolstered in the portal by prized addition Clev Lubin, underrated edge Wesley Bailey, plus tackles Denzel Lowry and Jerry Lawson.

The talent, both returning and incoming, is enough the believe that Louisville can do a much better job around the line of scrimmage. But more importantly, they seem to have adopted a much more violent mindset, so that they don't a slow start or fall into lulls.

"I feel like as a defense, period, you got to be able to play violent," Bailey said. "Whether that's communicating, being aggressive when you strike first against the pulling guard or a receiver, whatever it is, you always got to play violent. Making sure guys are communicating, being physical and getting to the ball, and just having a violent mindset when on that field."

Not only do they have a much-needed violent mindset that last year's squad seemingly lacked to start out the year, the group as a whole doesn't appear to have any egos. Players are not concerned with individual stats or accolades, and are only focused on making sure that the team is what is thriving.

"I like the fact that they are unselfish, that they like each other," defensive coordinator Ron English said. "I think they trust the coaches. I think they try to do what we ask them to do. I think they put a lot of time and effort into football, lot of it. Because, again, we've thrown a lot at them. I just like them as people.

"I think, in life, in any field, when you have a group of people in an organization that care about each other and are unselfish, you got a chance. They're playing together as a unit, and that's always strong in playing as one."

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