5 things to know about Louisville

Mike Elko won the ACC coach of the year award last year for rejuvenating a dormant program in his first season.

Circumstances aren’t identical for Louisville’s Jeff Brohm, but the Cardinals’ new head coach has certainly breathed new life into a program that stagnated under Scott Satterfield.

Louisville is 6-1 with a win over Notre Dame. The Cardinals are one of four teams in the ACC with one league loss, along with Duke, that are likely to vie for a shot to reach an ACC championship game matchup against Florida State on the first Saturday of December.

Here are five things to know about Louisville ahead of Saturday’s game:

No, not a reference to any calls that go against Duke this weekend.

Brohm has been the preferred choice of Louisville fans since Bobby Petrino’s tenure nosedived in 2018. He’s from Louisville, was a quarterback at Louisville from 1989-93 and was an assistant coach for six seasons after his professional career ended.

After the peculiar four-year tenure of Satterfield, the Cardinals brought Brohm home and the honeymoon saw them win their first six games.

Brohm is one of 19 FBS coaches at his alma mater and one of three in the ACC, along with Georgia Tech’s Brent Key and Miami’s Mario Cristobal.

A lot of spring and summer attention was paid to transfer QBs in the ACC who weren’t Jack Plummer.

That was a mistake.

Plummer spent four seasons at Purdue (2018-21) with Brohm and was at future ACC member Cal last year. He threw for 3,095 yards and 21 touchdowns for the Golden Bears last season, after playing in 21 games for the Boilermakers and throwing 26 touchdowns.

He’s fit what Louisville needed in Brohm’s first season. Plummer is third in the ACC in passing efficiency (153.2) and passing yards per game (271.6).

Brennan Armstrong (Virginia to N.C. State) and Phil Jurkovec (Boston College to Pittsburgh) have already been benched. Plummer and Haynes King of Georgia Tech (previously Texas A&M) are the transfer QBs in the ACC who have stood out, as they’re third and fourth in passing yards per game, respectively.

Three players in the ACC average at least 7 yards per carry — one is Riley Leonard, another is Lawrence Toafili, FSU’s change-of-pace running back.

And then there’s Louisville’s Jawhar Jordan, with 41 more carries than Leonard and 54 more than Toafili.

“I think the Jordan kid is one of the more talented running backs in this league, if not the most talented,” Elko said. “And certainly the most-explosive, from a speed standpoint and a make-you-miss standpoint that we’ve seen to this point.”

Per Pro Football Focus, Jordan has 11 designed runs of 15 yards or more, the most of any running back in the ACC.

This might wind up being moot. Jordan is dealing with a hamstring injury that puts his status in doubt, with reports calling him “questionable,” to play against the Blue Devils. He only had two carries against Pitt.

Louisville’s coaching change has meant the Cardinals’ offense looks different.

The defense, though, has remained a constant.

Last year, Louisville gave up 19.2 points per game, held opponents to 134 rushing yards, and had 50 sacks.

This year, the points per game is in the same neighborhood (20.6), the rushing defense is better (97.1), and the sacks are down a bit (15).

For a while, Louisville has blended aggressiveness and athleticism on defense and it leads to some high-risk, high-reward situations. The Cardinals are susceptible to the big play — Pitt scored on passes of 46 and 31 yards — while creating big plays of their own, in the form of 14 takeaways, tied for the most in the ACC.

Both of these teams had an extra week to stew on their first loss of the season.

Duke’s loss to Notre Dame was followed up by a 24-3 win over N.C. State; Louisville’s last game was a 38-21 loss at Pittsburgh (which is currently 2-5) on Oct. 14.

There’s always an interesting balance of advantage and disadvantage for teams coming out of off weeks. The extra rest can be both blessing and curse, since teams can get healthier but also lose rhythm.

“The beauty of it is they have time that we don’t have. That’s what the luxury of coming off of a bye week gives them,” Elko said. “You obviously try to think about how they’re thinking about things. … You know what they’ve done, because it’s typical bye week stuff. They’ve had a more-thorough breakdown of us, looked at everything we’ve done.

“They’ve self-scouted themselves, and so to the best you can, you try to predict what the results of all that will become.”

Across the FBS this year, teams coming out of their off week are 44-38.