First Glance: Louisville Cardinals
Notre Dame and Louisville square off this weekend as the fourth-ranked Fighting Irish host the 1-3 Cardinals. We’ll kick off our coverage of Louisville with a first glance at the Cardinals.
Game Date: Saturday, Oct. 17
Start Time: 2:30 PM (Eastern)
Network: NBC
Early Line: Notre Dame -17.0
Now let’s look at the Cardinals.
SCHEDULE/RESULTS (1-3)
Western Kentucky - Won 35-21
Miami - Lost 47-34
at Pittsburgh - Lost 23-20
at Georgia Tech - Lost 46-27
STATISTICAL OVERVIEW
STATISTICAL LEADERS
RUSHING YARDS: RB Javian Hawkins - 468 yards, 3 TD; RB Hassan Hall - 144 yards; QB Malik Cunningham - 84 yards, 3 TD
PASSING YARDS: QB Malik Cunningham - 73-124, 58.9%, 986 yards, 9 TD, 5 INT
RECEIVING YARDS: WR Tutu Atwell - 25 catches, 281 yards, 4 TD; WR Dez Fitzpatrick - 13 catches, 234 yards, 1 TD; WR Braden Smith - 7 catches, 177 yards; TE Marshon Ford - 11 catches, 128 yards, 3 TD
TACKLES: LB Dorian Etheridge - 27; LB C.J. Avery - 25; S Russ Yeast - 18; LB Monty Montgomery - 16; LB Nick Okeke - 16 tackles
TACKLES FOR LOSS: LB Dorian Etheridge - 8.5; LB Monty Montgomery - 4.5; LB Yasir Abdullah - 3.0; LB Rodjay Burns - 3.0
SACKS: LB Dorian Etheridge - 2.0; LB Monty Montgomery - 2.0
INTERCEPTIONS: LB C.J. Avery - 1
HEAD COACH
Scott Satterfield is in his second season at Louisville. He inherited a team coming off a 2-10 season but turned things around quickly, leading the Cardinals to an 8-5 record in his first season.
Satterfield was the head coach at Appalachian State from 2013-2018. The Mountaineers went 4-8 in his first season and 7-5 in year two, which came after he took over for Hall of Famer Jerry Moore. Appalachian State went 40-11 in his final four seasons and won three straight Sun Belt Championships. He finished his career at Appalachian State - his alma mater - with a 51-24 record and a 38-10 conference record.
OFFENSIVE OVERVIEW
The offensive coordinator for Louisville is Dwayne Ledford, who also coaches the offensive line. He was the offensive line coach and run game coordinator at NC State from 2016-18, but from 2012-2015 he was the offensive line coach and co-offensive coordinator at Appalachian State.
Louisville runs a shotgun based spread offense. They can push the tempo but aren’t an up-tempo team. It is a run-based offensive system that builds around its zone schemes, especially the stretch/outside zone. It will use a lot of tight ends, motions and shifts to set up the run, and the pass game will utilize a lot of play-action throws.
The Cardinals have a versatile pass scheme that will be aggressive attacking downfield, and they like to use concepts to spring players loose for big play opportunities, with both vertical and horizontal stretches.
DEFENSIVE OVERVIEW
Louisville’s defense is run by Bryan Brown, who ran the Appalachian State defense in 2018 and was the corners coach there from 2012 to 2017.
Brown has a strong reputation as a bright young coach, but his Cardinal defense has struggled thus far. Despite the return of 10 starters, the Louisville defense has been gashed this season.
Louisville runs a 3-4 defense, but it’s not like the 3-4 scheme Notre Dame ran from 2010-13. This scheme is built around allowing athletic linebackers to roam and make a lot of plays. You can see from the stats above that Louisville’s linebackers produce a big chunk of the tackles and the disruptive plays.
It’s an aggressive defense, but at Louisville, Brown’s defense has been prone to a lot of assignment mistakes that result in far too many big plays.
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