The second quarter of Louisville’s game against Wake Forest may just be the worst quarter of football Jeff Brohm has seen from his defense during his time here. Blown coverages, missed assignments, mental errors, missed tackles, and untimely penalties led to Wake absorbing what was a very good quarter from the Louisville offense. I clipped some plays and added my thoughts.
Louisville hasn’t had much success playing Cover 3 this year, but this is exactly what you want to see from the corner on this play.
DJ Waller has twins to his side, and they both run vertical routes. Waller splits the difference while also getting depth to keep up with the receivers. He also does well to keep his eyes on the quarterback so that he can make the correct break on the ball. Finishing this off with a perfectly timed hit to separate the receiver from the ball was really great to see. A perfect rep for Waller.
This one is a two-for-one to show just how a blown coverage came about when the Cards could have forced a punt. In the first clip, you can see the immediate confusion once Wake motions the running back to the outside. Initially, no one knows who should walk out to the outside. Then you get roughly 13 seconds of two players looking at each other, arms out, for varying lengths of time.
Someone on the sideline should be calling a timeout at this point. Gio Lopez is looking at the sideline for a lot of this time, waiting for the play call. There’s also a strong possibility that Wake made their play call based on the confusion they’re seeing.
As for the second clip, it looks to me that the Cards are in Man Free with a single high safety in the middle of the field and man coverage elsewhere. Stanquan Clark appears to be in a short zone coverage to take away intermediate throws and to help make a tackle if a pass is completed.
The two guys who were confused? They end up playing zone, which allows the sole threat in the passing game for Wake to run right down the field for an easy explosive play. These guys have been practicing together since the spring. They have also had multiple blown coverages this season. The communication should not be this bad in game four.
Just want to give another example of how easy the straight drop throws to the outside were in this game. At this point, this type of play was automatic, except for one play where they had some window-dressing play-action that threw off the timing. Wake is perfectly fine allowing you to make this throw over and over again. They are depending on you to get bored and try something else, which is when they close things down. This played a factor later in the game.
I’m not sure if anyone is better at calling plays inside the ten-yard line than Jeff Brohm. On the first touchdown, he brought in five tight ends and spread them out before running Lincoln Kienholz. This time around, he swaps out one tight end for Isaac Brown while keeping the tight ends inside for a wishbone formation.
I think the motion here with Dylan Messman is a nice subtle aspect of the play to get the defense moving to the left. It helps to sell the run motion, and the Wake defense bites on it. For the second time, Brody Foley goes out for a pass but turns into a blocker, as he throws a nice block to get Linc in for a score.
UofL had another coverage bust that can really be chalked up to TJ Banks having bad eyes. The defense adjusts to the motion well, with Blake Ruffin shifting over to the two-receiver side of the field with Banks replacing him as the deep safety. The Cards are playing Cover 3 here, which means the two corners are responsible for the outside thirds of the field while the deep safety is responsible for the middle of the field.
While the seams are hard to cover at times, we saw DJ Waller do something on the first clip in this post that Banks fails to do. You have to ensure that the receivers don’t get behind you in Cover 3. His eyes end up in the backfield, but he fails to continue getting depth. He just freezes in the moment and fails to identify where the receiver is.
One could also have questions for Jabari Mack on this play, as he passes off the receiver to cover the shallow receiver who enters his zone. It may be fair to wonder if he should allow Ruffin to take that receiver and he stays with the deeper route. I’m not sure how they coach it, but I personally think they should have had specific rules for Carlos Hernandez to track him through the play.
Kienholz made his first mistake of the season, and while this is a completely unacceptable decision, the pass blocking may be worse. Anwar O’Neal gets whipped on the left side by a basic speed rush. Linc can’t just step up, because the defensive end is able to bend completely around the block to get a hand on him. This play is dead before it gets started because of the quick pressure that is allowed.
Linc has done a great job of improvising this year, which has led to a few touchdowns and big plays. On this play, he needs to bail immediately and try to get to the sideline to get a few yards. It’s first down in plus territory, which demands ball protection. Once he realizes that he can’t beat the defender, the ball needs to be in the stands. Not only could the Cards have gotten a touchdown out of this drive, but they could have also drained the clock as well.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been madder about a play in a game than I was about this one. UofL got a negative play on first down. Gio Lopez completes a pass behind the line of scrimmage. Louisville is in the perfect call to stop the play. Jabari Mack is right where you want the corner to be when the catch is made. Then Jabari Mack forgets how to play football for some reason.
Mack is squared up with Hernandez with outside leverage. His job here is to keep his outside leverage to make sure Hernandez can’t break contain. Mack does the opposite and falls for a juke to the inside, which allows Hernandez to get to the sideline where none of Mack’s teammates are because they all expected him to not allow Hernandez to break contain.
This just can’t happen. The veteran players on this defense can’t make freshman mistakes. If Mack makes this tackle, or at least forces him inside so someone else can make the tackle, the Cards might force a punt, and they have plenty of time to go down and score. This game wasn’t lost because of a few bad calls. It was lost because of undisciplined plays like this one.
Louisville slants the line again, which opens up a lane for a linebacker to fill to stop this run. However, the defense isn’t lined up in time, so the two linebackers who would be responsible for the gaps on the left side of the play are out of position on the right side of the play when the ball is snapped. Throw in some poor tackling, and you have an explosive run play that nearly scores.
This is the longest play Wake Forest has allowed on the season, by nearly double the yardage. This is a Cover 2 look from Wake with their boundary corner responsible for his half of the field. You can see the safety on the other side drop towards the hash on his side, while the corner on the other side of the field sits. This view gives a really good look at how it all comes together, with the linebackers all bailing to their respective zones as well.
Wake does what they are coached to do, but the corner (#2) fails to identify the route combination while also somehow not reacting to the throw. My guess is that he is looking elsewhere at the exact wrong time and he just misses Linc throwing the football. Either way, he allows Jaleel Skinner to get loose down the sideline, and he is so out of position that he can’t catch up to make the tackle.
Kudos to Skinner for avoiding the tackle on this play and keeping his balance as he goes in. This felt like the play that was going to turn things around, and I wonder if it had come early in the third quarter, if it would have worked.
