Defense Shines in Louisville's Spring Game

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - With Jeff Brohm taking over as the head coach of the Louisville football program, it's natural for fans to get excited about their capabilities and potential on the offensive side of the ball. During his time as the head man at both Purdue and Western Kentucky, his calling card was undoubtedly a high-flying offense that lights up the scoreboard.

But if the spring game on Friday night was any indicator, the Cardinals are going to have a pretty good and surprisingly deep defense as well. It was that side of the ball that emerged victorious in the offense vs. defense format, coming out on top with a 51-30 win at L&N Stadium.

"I want our defense to play well," Brohm said after the spring game. "The defense here at the University of Louisville played well the last half of the season last year, and we want to find ways to build upon that. We want to try to become a dominant defense, and I think you can if you are doing things right, if people are disciplined, and you are aggressive in your approach."

Of the 21 offense vs. defense drives that were played in the spring game, only six of them resulted in points by the offense, and just three were touchdowns. That side of the ball didn't score until the third drive of the game when James Turner drilled a 24-yard field goal. That was then followed up by a 12-yard touchdown pass to tight end Josh Lifson from Jack Plummer for the first endzone trip of the game.

After three more stopped drives by the defense, the offense did start to find a bit of a rhythm in the second quarter. They scored on four straight drives to end the half, with running back Maurice Turner rushing for a 42-yard touchdown, Lifson adding a 30-yard receiving score from Plummer on a double reverse flea flicker, and Turner connecting on 45- and 23-yard kicks.

The offense held a 30-15 advantage at halftime, but after that, it was all defense from then on out. None of the 10 second half drives made it past midfield for the offense, with the defense snagging three interceptions in the fourth quarter alone. By game's end, the defense had logged 3.0 "sacks" and a whopping 16.0 tackles for loss.

"We got stops, but I thought we gave up some big plays at times early, which is not good," Brohm said. "Some of it was a lack of discipline and intelligence on some of our plays. But, we have good players on that side of the ball, and I do think that we have some good young players on defense as well that have shown up this spring. Plus, sometimes it takes a while on offense to learn this system, to learn the ins and outs. We got a couple guys that are that are new to our team and the offensive line is green and young. We just got to improve quite a bit."

What made this defensive performance so impressive is that most of the first team players on both sides of the ball sat out for the second half. Not to mention that projected starters like safety Josh Minkins and cornerback Quincy Riley didn't play at all due to injury, so a lot of reps were given to either young or relatively inexperienced players. While the depth at offensive line did play a factor into the defense's overall disruptiveness, the defense made plays more often than the offense simply allowed them to happen.

Linebacker was arguably the most thing position on the defense heading into the spring, but that group shined in the spring game. T.J. Quinn finished with a team-best eight tackles plus one of the three interceptions, Jack Reger had seven, plus true freshman Stanquan Clark had six as well as a team-best 1.5 tackles for loss.

In the secondary, Derrick Edwards III had an interceptions of his own, plus walk-on Daniel Martens had the other as well as seven tackles to tie Reiger for the second most in the exhibition.

Louisville is coming off of a 2022 season in which the defense was the driving force behind going 8-5 overall and securing a 24-7 win over Cincinnati in the Fenway Bowl. However, they lose Yasir Abdullah, YaYa Diaby and Kei'Trel Clark, all of which are expected to get selected in next week's NFL Draft.

The Cardinals are in the process of transitioning to a 4-2-5 defensive system, anchored by co-defensive coordinators Ron English and Mark Hagen. While there is still work to be done in terms of learning and getting used to this new system, the players have come a long way since the beginning of spring ball when it comes to actually executing this scheme.

"I feel like we came a good long way," safety M.J. Griffin said. "We played a different defense last year, so everything's new this year. I feel like we've done a really good job picking up the scheme and the concepts of the defense, especially for these 15 practices that we have, because every day you're learning something. It's not every day that you're not learning. You're gonna have to learn something. So I feel like we're doing a pretty good job with that."

The spring game concluded spring ball for the Cardinals, and now Louisville will have the next few weeks off before summer conditioning starts next month. Their 2023 season opener against Georgia Tech in the Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Classic at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga. is set for Friday, Sept. 1.

(Photo via Jared Anderson - Louisville Report)

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