Season Two of the Weekly Newsletter covering the Cards most recent contest. Double clicking on the newsletter will allow for full screen viewing and zoom functionality on mobile device.
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I was not a big roller coaster guy growing up, but in the last five or six years I’ve enjoyed jumping on some “thrill rides” with my kids as they want to experience some new things when visiting amusement parks across the region. I quickly leaned that while fun, the old man needs some Dramamine from time to time. Big
hills and loops can get the stomach moving, but nothing gives me nausea like the 2026 Louisville football team. Now that we’re halfway through the year you can usually get a decent read on who we are and what to expect. I have no clue. Not even game to game, but quite literally half to half we look like a different team each time they roll the ball out. If we had Miami (new #1) next week I would not be any more nervous about that game than I am for Stanford in two weeks. The offense, statistically, can be considered one of the best in the country, and then at times we appear to forget how the game of football works. The defense on the other hand often forgets about the invention of the forward pass but then strings together two stops and a couple turnovers to actually win games. I don’t think this team is an ACC Championship caliber squad with what we have seen thus far, but all they can do, and we can do as fans, is take it a game at a time and hope for some chaos to happen to get us back in the driver’s seat. I’m not allowing my hopes to get too high yet, but as long as the Cards still have a chance, and with the schedule ahead of them, stranger things have certainly happened. Grab the Dramamine.
OFFENSE In the heat of the moment, right after the game finishes, I often get a gut feeling about how things went overall on both sides of the ball. The Jekyll-Hyde nature of this team can make that difficult at times, but I really felt like the offense played pretty well overall. I believe the stats and the scorecard would agree with me. Yes, we had a dud of a second half, with one lone exception, but four of the first six drives went for a touchdown, and I think you take a 66% touchdown rate every day of the week. This game, outside of the 80+ yard scramble, was likely Lincoln’s worst game of the year in terms of decision making, ball security, and accuracy. He wasn’t at his peak, despite saying afterward he was at 95% or greater from a health standpoint. Syracuse wanted to stop the ground game, so Brian mixed it up enough by taking some deep shots and hitting guys underneath or in the flats. On the drives that stalled I felt like we never got any rhythm as all six drives ending in a punt were 4 plays or less. We tried something, it failed badly, we punted. My opinion is we leaned on the ground game very heavily early in most drives. If the guys break one to stay in front of the chains, we put something together, but if we’re looking at 2nd and 10 or 2nd and 8, the drive rarely goes anywhere. If you look at numbers below this is a Top 25 offense nationally. Tough to argue with the overall results.
DEFENSE Another week, another player going “career game” mode on UofL for 200+ yards. This week Hatcher cashed the paycheck and took the Cards to the tune of 224 receiving yards and touchdown. His friend Miller put up 123 on the ground, and Nelson eclipsed 300 yards passing. They went full UPS on this defense seeing success on the ground and through the air. If you want me to praise this group for their second half performance, well here is the one sentence bringing it up, but tough to puff our chest on any level after nearly letting the other team break 500 total yards on offense. It’s like my kid eating candy all night while out trick-or-treating and then wanting acknowledgement that he only had one piece once he got back home. Those wrappers in the bucket still count brother, no matter where they were consumed…and this Syracuse team consumed mass quantities of candy early in the night. While we placed our hope from last week in wristbands and press boxes, this week seemed to stare us in the face and remind us we are one of the worst defenses in division one football, from a statistical standpoint, and that quite honestly should never be acceptable, much less during a year where you brought back so much talent on the roster on that side of the ball. I hope there are more “tricks” up their sleeve, or most teams will continue to “treat” us like the defense we are.
SPECIAL TEAMS I usually throw some jokes in this section to keep things light as I’m not about bashing “kids” or calling for coaches’ jobs. These are real people, with real feelings…..who just aren’t very good. At some point I either need to accept that no changes will occur and move on or keep banging the drum that segments (not all) of our special teams have been borderline horrendous for multiple seasons now, and something must be done. If I meet Niall or Carson on the street, I’d shake their hand and say nice to meet you, and be genuine about it, but we can’t average 39 yard punts and have another missed extra point. If we’re winning or losing by 20, we shake it off, but we’ve lost more one score games than nearly anyone in the country in the last few years, and this is a contributing factor. Enough.
