While Louisville football navigates an early bye week and heads into prep for Bowling Green, Vince Lococo looks back on JMU and gives thoughts on how the Cards can improve.
Welcome inside the lines for writeups that I will be posting weekly on Louisville Football. The purpose of these articles is to help you, the fan, gain a better understanding of the next opponent… and, also, to beat any and every allegation that fullbacks can’t read/write.
Louisville football escaped last Friday with a tough 28-14 victory over James Madison.
The win wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though. The Cards struggled to get things going offensively, while JMU took full advantage of bad eyes and guys not playing within their technique.
Coaches love to say, “this is the best type of win going into a bye week” and honestly, it’s true. There is a lot to clean up before we play Bowling Green and get into conference play. Let’s dive into some things we can expect the team to be working on during this bye week.
First off, there is a big difference going into a bye week with a victory opposed to going into the bye week with a loss.
Coming off a loss, you can expect the bye week practices to look a lot like what the guys did during fall camp. Which after going through fall camp, two weeks of game prep, and two games is certainly not fun.
Coming off a win, things are significantly more positive, practices are easier to clean up because the coach probably just has you in shells, and you just enjoy the week more.
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The Offense
Offensively, there is plenty for coaches to look at and say, “we can get better here, here, and here.” The OLine in particular was not good at all Friday night vs JMU.
Losing Trevonte Sylvester during fall camp has turned into a big loss. Co-Host of From the Pink Seats Podcast, Keith Arutoff, was at every open practice during fall camp. He noted there was a different offensive line starting each practice. At the time, we said the O-Line is probably just deep and we want to see how guys look in different spots.
Clearly, that was not the case as the guys struggled vs the James Madison blitz. The second thing coaches will be looking at regarding this O-Line is why guys are getting beat across their face so much?
While reviewing my game notes from our latest podcast recording at Burn Boot Camp (Prospect, KY), I noticed guys were not stepping right. Yes, they were going in the right direction when it comes to the play call, but overstepping a defensive end just to get beat across your face is not stepping right.
To me those are easy things to fix for offensive line coach Richard Owens and the rest of the guys. You put a PVC pipe on the ground, have the end line up in his 5 technique, and have him step to half his man. You do that for multiple periods/practices until it becomes muscle memory.
Regarding the blitzes, that comes with game prep. I believe the O-Line will get better with blitz pickup with the more film that comes out of our opponents.
The Defense
Defensively, Louisville football will be without starting linebacker Stanquan Clark for a decent amount of time. To me, that is problem number 1 for the defense.
Who is the next man up there? Can he do it every down? Can we trust him enough to run the plays correctly? All questions Cards fans around the country will be asking.
In the game vs JMU Clev Lubin, Rene Konga, Wes Bailey, and the rest of the defensive front dominated. My worries come more from the inside linebackers and the DBs. Multiple times in the game you saw guys having eyes in the wrong spot.
The first James Madison touchdown is one that stands out to me right now. Secondly we need to get lined up right, and early. You could clearly see a difference when the defense gets set late opposed to early in the snap count.
Thirdly, the alignment of some of the guys just doesn’t make sense sometimes. The one handed grab JMU had down the sidelines shouldn’t have been made had the DB correctly been in inside alignment and got hands on the receiver. How do you fix this? Repetition. Guys have to get multiple reps of the same look in order to get a better understanding of what to do and why.
For Louisville football, the sky isn’t falling.
Miller Moss played a decent game, had a phenomenal ball to Chris Bell and you have to love what we saw on the ensuing two-point conversion.
Isaac Brown is still that dude.
The defense was not as bad as people might have thought and in-game adjustments left a lot to be optimistic about.
Let’s get this offensive line cleaned up and get ready for a tough conference schedule.
As always, thanks for the read and Go Cards!
