What a Dream, Realistic and Disappointing Season Looks Like for Louisville in 2025

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - While the Louisville football program did not make a return appearance to the ACC Championship Game in year two under head coach Jeff Brohm, the 2024 season was still a successful venture. The Cardinals went 9-4, including wins over Clemson and Kentucky, plus a victory over Washington in the Sun Bowl.

As we head into year three of the Brohm era, Louisville has been generating elevated hype both at the local and national level. So what does a dream season, realistic season and disappointing season look like for the Cardinals in 2025? We break it down here:

Dream Season

While the ultimate dream would be to go a perfect 12-0 this upcoming season, we're going to stay grounded in reality here. Looking the collective talent that they have coming back, and what they have brought in via the portal and high school, going 10-2 or better is what a dream season would look like for Louisville in 2025.

Sure, in order to do this, Louisville will have to play complimentary and consistent football on both sides of the line of scrimmage. But the most likely path to a dream season would be behind an offense that is one of the best in the sport.

Aided by an offensive line that is able to take an all-around step forward, the one-two running back punch of Isaac Brown and Duke Watson powers one the best rushing attacks among the power conferences, with Brown performing close to or at a First-Team All-American level. Then in the passing game, quarterback Miller Moss commands the offense at an elite level, flashing the playmaking ability as previously seen in the 2023 Holiday Bowl, while also displaying a confidence that was absent in his final month at USC. The wide receivers would produce elite play at the top between Chris Bell and Caullin Lacy, and gets good production from the next 3-4 wideouts behind them. They'd also either have a go-to All-ACC caliber tight end, or a very good tight end by committee approach.

While the defense lags behind the offense, in a dream season, there would be position groups live up to their potential while others exceed expectations. The defensive line, which sports a very good two-deep across the line, avoids a slow start like last season and helps the team crack the top-25 in sacks and tackles for loss. The linebacking corps, led by Stanquan Clark and T.J. Quinn, continues to excel at defending the run, but also showcases much-improved collective abilities in pass coverage. Then in the secondary, they prove to not be the Achilles heel that many people view them as, and finish the season with a secondary that ranks in the top half of the ACC.

If Louisville is to achieve this dream season, at the very minimum, they cannot have any major hiccups such as Pitt in 2023 and Stanford in 2024. In fact, they would likely have to pull off a clean sweep against the nine teams on their schedule that are generally regarded as being ranked lower than them. As such, the Cardinals would have to take down at least one of the following teams: Clemson, Miami and SMU. The Tigers are by far the hardest team on the schedule, but Louisville faces them at home, while the other two are on the road.

Realistic Season

Now let's come back down to Earth a little bit. If we're talking about realistic expectations for the Louisville football program heading into the 2025 season, that likely sits at the 8-4 mark. Maybe 9-3 depending on how the schedule shakes out.

While Moss doesn't have quite the arm strength that Tyler Shough does, he does still have playmaking capabilities, as evidenced in spring ball. As previously noted, he also possesses the leadership intangibles to help keep the offense on schedule, and plays his best football when letting his weapons do the bulk of the damage. In this situation, Louisville would still get great production consistent from Bell and Lacy, with mixed game-by-game results amongst the other receiver and the tight ends. Even in a "realistic" season, Brown still puts together a rushing season that is worthy of First-Team All-ACC status (maybe All-American honors), and Watson has an excellent season as well. What could be the main determining factor in the offense's capabilities is if the offensive line can perform a little better than the advanced stats say they played at last season.

Over on defense, Louisville has a starting defense that, on paper, is fairly serviceable across the board. Depth is where questions start getting asked. Even in this situation, the Cardinals have a defensive line that should help set the tone despite losing guys like Ashton Gillotte, Ramon Puryear, etc. - it's just a matter of starting strong. The linebackers still assist in a good rushing defense/front seven, but mobile quarterback could still be a threat at times. Not to mention that only a couple players at linebacker have regularly shown that they can play consistent pass coverage. The secondary is the biggest question perhaps on the whole team. The top end guys like Rodney Johnson Jr., JoJo Evans and D'Angelo Hutchinson have shown that they can play at a fairly high level. But behind them is a ton of youth or inexperience at the high-major level that could get exploited at times.

Louisville has the talent and coaching to be able go toe-to-toe some of the tougher teams on their schedule, but they will still be difficult to win nonetheless. Especially considering two of their three toughest games and four of their top five (Pitt, Virginia Tech) are on the road. While their home schedule is very manageable, it bares repeating that Brohm-led teams are routinely subject to at least one inexplicable stinker by year.

Disappointing Season

Considering Louisville does have the pieces on both sides of the ball to potentially make a run at getting back to Charlotte, or at the very least remain in the hunt for the majority of the season, a 7-5 record or worse seems like the benchmark for a disappointing season.

In this case, we would probably see both sides of the ball struggle to in some capacity, or one side of the ball does an abhorrent job of doing so. That, or Louisville's transfer-heavy approach, which Brohm and Co. already starting to shy away from when it comes to roster construction for 2026, doesn't pan out like it did in 2023 and 2024.

It's hard to imagine a world in which Brown and Watson don't do significant damage on the ground, unless we see some serious regression out of the offensive line. In a "disappointing" season, on offense, the passing game doesn't live up anywhere close to their potential. Moss has good moments, but looks more like his form in his final month at USC, where the decision making was touch-and-go. Bell and Lacy give good (but not great) production, and no other pass catcher - wide receiver or tight end - really establishes themselves as a consistent or reliable option.

On the other side of the line of scrimmage, the front seven does a solid job at containing the run, but doesn't live up to their potential and likely gets taken advantage of vs. the top teams on the schedule. Then between the linebackers and the secondary, we see shades of what we saw last season when it came to pass defense - the latter being a massive all-around liability, while the former still coming up short when dropping back into coverage.

Given the talent level of the team, 6-6 seems like the absolute floor for Louisville. In this scenario, they'd fall completely flat against the top three teams on their schedule, and also fail to really impose their will against the other nine. Anything less than that, and something probably went horribly wrong, whether that be rampant injuries or coaching malpractice.

Dream Season

Realistic Season

Disappointing Season

More Cardinals Stories