Jeff Brohm’s default setting is to let it fly. The Louisville coach was a quarterback, after all, and sufficiently skilled to earn employment with six NFL teams.
Yet as much as Brohm prefers airing it out to grinding on the ground, he does not shrink from smashmouth football when there’s an opportunity to shove the ball toward another team’s tracheas. Indeed, Saturday’s 41-14 drubbing of Kentucky not only ended a five-game streak of futility against U of L’s chief rival, but also brought the added benefit of being stylistically satisfying.
This was not a game for precision passing or gadget plays, but of physical dominance and breakaway speed. Louisville ran the ball 51 times for 358 yards – both figures the highest of Brohm’s two-year tenure – with Isaac Brown and Duke Watson becoming the first pair of U of L freshmen to exceed 100 yards in the same game.
Brown finished with 178 yards on 26 carries, including a 67-yard score, and surpassed Lamar Jackson for the school’s freshman rushing record with 1,074 yards during the regular season. Watson carried just six times, but amassed 104 yards with touchdown sprints of 58 and 24 yards. Kentucky contributed to the Cardinals’ cause with five turnovers and failed to convert any of its seven third-down opportunities, but the enduring image on this chilly afternoon at Kroger Field was of Louisville backs running to daylight and into the end zone.
“Watching them on video, it is a really good defense for teams that try to throw the ball out there,” Brohm said. “. . .You are going to have to run the ball to keep them honest.”
Put less politely, you are going to keep running the ball for as long as the other guy can’t stop it.
“We didn’t do very good at (run) support,” UK coach Mark Stoops said. “. . .Late in the game, we moved a little bit, trying to create a negative yards play and one (defensive) lineman goes too far, it looks horrible and they are running the ball. The coach did that because earlier they captured the edge on us a little bit and got an eight-yard run. We solidified the edges and moved inside and (overran) it. Bottom line, it looks worse than it is and it was by no means very good at times.”
It looked, for the most part, like the Kentucky team that lost its last six games against power conference opponents after a startling upset at Ole Miss. For Louisville fans, Saturday’s dominance was both a delight and a somewhat wistful win. Coupled with the Cardinals’ emphatic victory a week earlier against Pittsburgh, and the relative ease with which they handled Clemson, the regular season ends with the nagging sense that this team hit its stride too late to earn a spot in college football’s first 12-team playoff; that its potential ultimately exceeded its production.
“We worked through a little adversity during the season, without question,” Brohm said. “That is part of it every year and you try to play as clean as you possibly can, but football is football and when you play a good team then things are going to happen. . .
“Everybody, pretty much every year, loses games. You’ve got to be able to handle it and bounce back as fast as you can. I think our guys work hard and would love to have some close losses back, but we won some close games, too, so that happens. You’ve just got to continue fighting. But to finish the season with two convincing wins, where all three segments played much cleaner, feels rewarding — a really good way to go out.”
There’s still a bowl game to be played – speculation Saturday centered on the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl in Jacksonville on Jan. 2 – and the continuing challenge of preventing star players from being poached. If higher-profile programs feared Brown and Watson were not built for the rigors of big-time football – “Everybody said we’re too small,” Brown said – their statistics argue otherwise.
Both averaged over seven yards per carry. Together, they have totaled 20 touchdowns. Given the current state of the game, between the lure of NIL dollars and the opportunities available through the transfer portal, Isaac Brown could be bound for a bidding war if he is so inclined.
Brohm said Brown “wants to be back and I definitely foresee him being back,” but college football has never been more fluid. Until universities are willing to bargain collectively with their players, to create structure and curtail constant movement, continuity will continue to be as elusive as is Brown himself.
“He’s a special player without question,” Brohm said. “His future is unbelievably bright. The best thing about him is he works. The guy hasn’t missed a rep of practice, runs hard, he never complains. There’s nothing ever wrong. He just comes to work.
“For a freshman running back to do that, it’s more than impressive. I wanted to start him off slow this year. I didn’t want to throw a lot at him. I didn’t want to ruin his confidence picking up blitzes, picking up linebackers and safeties. Protecting the ball and being good in the passing game is not easy. There’s a lot of things that go into that, and this guy just continues to shine every week.”
Jeff Brohm might prefer the passing game, but you don’t have to be a genius to give the ball to a guy with an extra gear.
This article appears in Nov 20 – Dec 3, 2024.