Louisville Striving to Play More Complete Football Going Forward
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Just a few weeks into the college football season, Louisville finds themselves in unfamiliar territory - at least under the current coaching staff.
After securing a season opening win against Western Kentucky, the Cardinals (1-2, 0-2 ACC) then dropped back-to-back games against Miami and Pitt for their first losing streak under head coach Scott Satterfield.
The issue, however, is not that Louisville is playing bad football. It's that they have yet to play a game in which they excelled in all phases of the game.
"If we do what we are supposed to do, we look like a pretty complete football team," Satterfield said. "We have not been able to put it all together and that's the one thing that we are looking to do this week and moving forward."
Against Miami, some of the defense's struggles from last season were put on full display as they struggled to contain the big play against the Canes. Louisville would surrender 485 yards of offense en route to a 47-34 defeat.
Fundamentally, knowing where you are supposed to be defensively and playing to the ball, not getting out of your gaps," Satterfield said. "These are things that we talked about; we have to make the offense earn it."
The next week, the script was flipped. Louisville's normally high-flying offense had their wings clipped against the Panthers, as Pitt tallied seven sacks, 12 tackles for loss and held the Cards to just 223 yards of offense in a 23-20 defeat - their lowest total since gaining 217 against Boston College on Oct. 13, 2018.
"Offensively, we know last game was a very poor outing by us, to say the least," Satterfield said. "We got whipped up front, we did not make plays in the passing game. We were not in sync at all offensively, and when that happens against a really good defense you are going to look really bad."
As for special teams, well, it hasn't looked great at any point - particularly against Western Kentucky. Louisville has lost the field position game in every contest up to this point by an average of 12.6 yards. The saving grace in this phase is that placekicker James Turner is perfect on both field goals (4-4) and PATs (11-11).
While the Cardinals have yet to excel in all three phases of the game for a single contest this year, Satterfield knows that there are plenty of plays to be made by his team and that in the end it will simply come down to execution.
"I think that if we are able to put everything together and get our guys do what they are supposed to do, then we are going to be fine," he said. "I think the effort is there and our guys are playing hard, but they are not doing what they are supposed to do at times and that is what we have got to get cleaned up moving forward.”
Louisville is coming off of their bye week and are set to resume their three game road trip this weekend when they travel to Atlanta to face the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Kickoff is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 9 at 7:00 p.m. EST on ESPN.
(Photo of Hassan Hall: Atlantic Coast Conference)
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