Louisville Not Showing Complacency vs. Ole Miss Defense
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - There's hardly any doubt as to what the calling card is for Ole Miss. In their first season under head coach Lane Kiffin, the Rebels sported one of the best offenses in all of college football, averaging 555.5 yards and 39.2. points per game during the 2020 season. Their M.O. is to light up the scoreboard with their high-flying spread offense.
The problem was, the defense was allowing almost as many points as the offense was putting up.
In fact, that side of the ball was one of the worst in college football, surrendering 519.0 yards and 38.3 points per game. Statistically speaking in terms of pure yardage, it was actually worse than Louisville's much-maligned defense from 2018 (483.6 YPG) - the final year under head coach Bobby Petrino.
At face value, it seems like Louisville's offense will be able to score at-will against such a porous defense. But even if this was the case, the team is not heading into the matchup with this mindset.
"Complacency is not a thing that we've been thinking about," quarterback Malik Cunningham said. "We know that's a good opponent, great defense led by some good guys. We just got to go in there like every game is the last game, take what the defense gives us, try to limit those mistakes, and capitalize those mistakes that they're going to make."
Cunningham cites their own performance on offense last season as a reasoning to not act like points will just be given to them. While Louisville did generate 444.2 yards per game last season, which ranked 29th in FBS, their 24 turnovers - the fourth-most in the nation - held them to just 29.5 points per game.
Plus, Ole Miss does boast a ton of experience on that side of the ball. Out of the eleven defensive starters listed on their pre-game depth chart, nine are upperclassmen and seven are seniors. Plus, co-defensive coordinators D.J. Durkin and Chris Partridge are too good of coaches to let the defense be this bad for a second straight year.
"They're very experienced on the defensive side," Cunningham said. "We know they're gonna give us all they got, and we're gonna give them all we got. From a defensive standpoint, those guys fly around. They make good plays, they got some athletes, so we just got to capitalize off the mistakes that the team makes."
Even though he is very complimentary regarding their defense, Cunningham knows exactly what to do to beat it, and this game plan doesn't actually start with him. He believes that if Louisville utilizes their stable of running backs to get the run game going early, it will set up for big passes later via play action.
"We run the ball very well, we hit teams with play action a lot," he said. "We got to get that run game established in order for us to pass the ball, and work on play action. We establish the run game early, it's gonna be a good day for us."
Kickoff against Ole Miss in the annual Chick-Fil-A Kickoff Game, down at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga., is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 6 at 8:00 p.m. on ESPN.
(Photo of Tylan Knight, Whop Philyor: Douglas DeFelice - USA TODAY Sports)
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