By Derek DeBurger
This Saturday, Oct. 14 at 6:30 p.m. the Louisville Cardinals will play the Pittsburgh Panthers in what can only be described as a trap game.
Last Saturday, the Cards had a statement win against Notre Dame in the biggest game of the season. Pitt will be the most important game of the season.
Keeping the momentum in the rankings
After improving to 6-0 on the year and 3-0 in the ACC, Louisville is now ranked No. 14 in the most recent AP poll and No. 15 in the coaches poll. Louisville is not only a legitimate dark horse contender for the ACC Championship game, but the College Football Playoff. If Louisville loses to Pitt, those hopes don’t die, but they certainly do dim.
That’s why this game is so important.
In 2006, after Louisville won their top-five matchup against West Virginia, the Cards turned around the next week and lost their only game of the year to Rutgers. The loss to Rutgers ended up being the only reason the Cards didn’t compete in the National Championship game that year against an inferior Ohio State team.
Jeff Brohm is well-versed in letdown performances following historic wins. He was 0-3 in each of the weeks following his wins over top-five teams while at Purdue.
He addressed this directly in his press conference Monday, saying “We’ve got to get back to reality and get back to work and understand that if we don’t put the work in, we’re not going to win. We just have to concentrate on one game at a time.”
Pitiful Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh has been a woefully bad team this year. Their 1-4 record is backed by a lone win over FCS opponent Wofford.
An abysmal offense
On the ground, Pitt’s running backs collectively are averaging less than 100 yards per game behind what Pro Football Focus (PFF) ranks as the 111th-best run-blocking offensive line out of 133 schools at the FBS level. The passing attack has been equally as bad. Pitt’s leading receiver, tight end Gavin Bartholomew, only has 258 yards and one touchdown in five games; their O-line’s pass-blocking ranks 110 with PFF.
The cherry on top of this abysmal offense is that their quarterback, Boston College transfer Phil Jurkovec, has been benched and moved to tight end. Taking his spot is backup quarterback Christian Veilleux, a former four-star recruit from Penn State that Jeff Brohm actually recruited while he was at Purdue.
Backup quarterbacks, even when they have not looked impressive, are always scary to play against due to all the unknowns surrounding them and the lack of film you can use to prepare with. Veilleux played just as poorly as Jurkovec when he got in the game against North Carolina, completing just 39% of his passes with two interceptions and a fumble.
A decent defense
Pitt’s defense, however, has been good this year. They haven’t been great like Pitt fans have become accustomed to under head coach Pat Narduzzi, but they’ve been good. Defenses of the past have had game-wreckers in the front seven that can snuff out a running attack or bully a quarterback. This year, Pitt has not been able to pressure opposing O-lines, which has added huge amounts of stress to their secondary as the design of the defense is to leave corners in man-coverage situations a lot.
If you’re not worried about getting sacked as a quarterback, one-on-one coverage looks pretty appealing. Pittsburgh will still have one of the better defenses Louisville will play this year, but if the Cards can get the running game going with standout running back Jawhar Jordan they should have no issues dictating the terms of engagement on offense.
Pittsburgh is bad. This should be a game where Louisville dominates and looks to work out some of their kinks in the process. However, the historical context of this type of game should force the Cards to take this matchup very seriously and play their most fundamentally sound game of the season.
While I am very nervous about this game, I’m expecting Louisville to move to 7-0 on the year for the first time since 2012, and 4-0 in the ACC for the first time in school history to keep the magical season alive.
File Photo // Tate Luckey, The Louisville Cardinal
