Five Takeaways from Jeff Brohm's Introductory Presser
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Jeff Brohm is officially the next man to lead the Louisville football program.
The ULAA Board of Directors formally approved his contract Thursday afternoon, and was subsequently introduced as the Cardinals' head coach in the Angel's Envy Bourbon Club at Cardinal Stadium.
Here are five of our takeaways from his introductory press conference:
Compared to 2018, Brohm felt like this time around was the right time to come home.
As many people know by now, this was not the first time Brohm had been the frontrunner for an open Louisville job. Following the firing of Bobby Petrino towards the end of the 2018 season, then-AD Vince Tyra made Brohm his No. 1 target. However declined the job out of loyalty and respect to Purdue, where he had only been at for two seasons.
"As a lot of people know, you develop relationships with the team, people you work for, and recruits," Brohm said Thursday. "Those things matter and after one year when the opportunity came about, I’m sure my family wanted me to come home (in 2018), and rightfully so, but the timing wasn’t right. It wasn’t easy telling my family that, but it wasn’t right, I didn’t feel good about it."
Fast forward to the present, and the Boilermakers are in a much, much better state than when he first got there in 2017. Purdue is 17-9 over the last two years, and this season made their first appearance in the Big Ten Championship since 2000.
"I felt like we accomplished a lot of our goals at Purdue," he said. "I can look myself in the mirror and know that I gave it everything I had. We made progress. We achieved great things together, but now it’s time to take on a new challenge.”
Plus, at the end of the day, Brohm couldn't pass up the job. As a native of Louisville and someone who played for and was an assistant for the Cardinals, it simply meant more to him than any other job in college football.
"This is not a job to me; this has been a way of life for my family since I was born. While in my career, I have coached at many different places, some near and some far, but I never really left Louisville. My heart was always here."
Brohm will bring a style of play that resonates with Louisville, and he has adapted over the years.
Historically speaking, when you think about Louisville football and what type of on-field product it puts on display, the first thing that comes to mind is typically a high-octane passing attack that lights up the scoreboard and isn't afraid to take risks when needed. Brohm is bringing this back to the Derby City.
"We want to be a team of substance with a system and a plan," he said. "We will go for the win, and we will not wait for things to happen. Our style will be aggressive and occasionally risk-taking because that is how I learned the game here."
It was a style that was on full display during his three years at Western Kentucky, especially in 2015 when Brandon Doughty threw for 5,055 yards and 48 touchdowns. Once he got to Purdue, it forced him to adapt in some areas, and it only made him better as a coach.
"When you get to the Big 10, it’s a defensive, physical league," he said. "I learned quickly that you better have some really good defense and you better be able to run the ball occasionally if you need to. So, over the years, to be honest with you, I think I’ve grown as a head coach because we have found a way to be better on defense, we have found a way to score multiple ways, and I do understand the importance of making sure you check the boxes."
Because of that, Brohm isn't going to handcuff himself to just one style of offense. Depending on the strengths and weaknesses of his future players, he is more than willing to put adapt to that, as well as other trends in modern football.
"You have to take the talent on your team and try to mold that so you know what, there may be years maybe the quarterback’s a runner and you have a lot of good running backs," he said. "We’ve been around the opposite where we’ve had guys that can throw the football and I’m not complaining because I think it’s a lot of fun to throw the football and score points. I study film. That’s kind of what my hobby is, whether it’s pro teams or college teams, we try to adjust things every year.
He's already hit the ground running when it comes to trying to keep the current recruiting class intact.
As expected, the Louisville football program has already experience a couple decommitments from their highly-ranked recruiting class since Satterfield left for Cincinnati, including one from five-star running back Rueben Owens II
However, there are still several high-four star prospects who have yet to back off their verbal pledges to the Cardinals, such as DeAndre Moore Jr., Pierce Clarkson and Madden Sanker. Even before he was officially announced as the next head coach, he was already hard at work trying to keep those guys in the fold.
"That process has already started," he said. "It’s going to be an exhausting process here for the remainder of the time until signing day because I do have to make sure to get in communication with all of our recruits. One’s committed and one’s not – that process, believe me, has started. I’ve talked to numerous people.
The Early Signing Period is just under two weeks away, starting on Dec. 21, and Brohm knows that the coaching upheaval will be a sticking point to other schools and coaches trying to flip his guys. That being said, he's not going down without a fight.
"Every young kid is going to have questions about change," he said. "You just have to make sure that you explain to them what you’re about, what you think you can get done for them, how you can help them achieve their goals, and how great of a place this can be. I do think I have experience in knowing that.
"You’re going to miss on some and you’re going to hit on some. But we want to try to piece this thing together as well as we can, get our coaches and myself to actively be aggressive as we can, and make sure that we’re turning over every stone."
Brohm wants to rebuild the local recruiting pipeline.
One of the biggest complaints regarding former head coach Bobby Petrino, and even to an extent Satterfield, was Louisville's lack of interest when it came to recruiting some of the best prospects in the city of Louisville and the state of Kentucky. Brohm wants to reverse this trend.
"Without question that’s always important to me," he said. "I think there has been a lot of great football teams here at the University of Louisville that were built around a lot of great in-state players and players from this city. I have a relationship with a lot of the coaches throughout the state, probably a lot of the coaches that are coming will as well."
Of course, Louisville has had a lot of recent success from a national recruiting standpoint, especially when it comes to Southern California, Florida and Georgia. Brohm is going to make sure that remains intact as well.
"With that now, there’s national recruiting and there are relationships built across the country. We’re going to make sure that we try to get the best talent in here that wants to be a part.”
The search for a new head coach lasted far longer than just this week.
When looking at it in vacuum, Louisville's coaching search progressed extremely quickly. Satterfield bolted for UC on Monday, and Brohm was made official three days later on Thursday.
However, the potential to Bring Brohm Home wasn't relegated to just this week. In fact, athletic director Josh Heird revealed that, after Louisville kicked off their season with a 2-3 record, he started to prepare for a potential Satterfield firing.
"I wouldn’t call it a list of one," Heird said when asked if Brohm was his only candidate. "You guys have heard the stories, you always have that short list and you make sure you update that. Obviously, the way the season was going at the beginning of the year I had spent a lot of time working through what that list looked like.
Thanks to some of those early efforts, it helped Heird zero in on Brohm once the Louisville job actually opened up.
"When you’re looking for a head coach it has to work both ways," he said. "They want to come here, and you have to want them. So, I didn’t know Jeff (Brohm) was interested, I assumed that he would be based on the history. From there, you say who’s the most qualified, who are we able to get, who would be willing to look at this job. From that, you realize that Jeff (Brohm) rose to the top of that list pretty quickly.”
(Photo of Jeff Brohm: Matt Stone - The Louisville Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK)
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