Jeff Brohm Aiming to Improve the 'Small Things' Following Louisville's Recent Sloppiness

The Cardinals have not played the most clean football since their increase in competition.

Sep 28, 2024; South Bend, Indiana, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish wide receiver Jordan Faison (6) chases down a mis-snapped punt as Louisville Cardinals punter Brady Hodges (93) also attempts to grab the ball on a Louisville punt attempt in the first quarter at Notre Dame Stadium. / Matt Cashore-Imagn Images

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - For as long as it took for college football to make its triumphant return, seemingly in the blink of an eye, we're already a quarter of the way through the regular season.

While Louisville might have seen their undefeated start to the 2024 season come to an end this past weekend, so far, it's been a solid start for the Cardinals. They're 3-1 overall, 1-0 early on in league play, and are ranked as the No. 22 team in the Associated Press Top 25.

Louisville had an easy start to their schedule, facing Austin Peay and Jacksonville State and out-scoring the two by a combined 111 points to 14. They've recently seen a notable rise in their competition, taking on Georgia Tech in their ACC opener and most recently traveling to Notre Dame for their first road game.

Considering how the first two games were a relative breeze, naturally, it's expected that Louisville was going to have to fight a little harder for victories when tasked with facing power conference competition. While the aforementioned is certainly true, during the last two games, Louisville has looked much sloppier than some expected.

"When you face good football teams, you're not going to win every play," head coach Jeff Brohm said. "There's definitely some things we could have done better. I thought we handled the crowd noise pretty well the last game, until till the end of the game when it got loud and and that. it screwed some things up for us."

In their ACC opener against Georgia Tech, while Louisville was able to secure a 31-19 win, it was far from a clean performance. The Cardinals committed seven penalties - with three of them negating 20-plus yard offensive gains, and one on defense that helped lead to a Yellow Jackets touchdown - and gave up a safety in the fourth quarter during a one-score game.

This past weekend against Notre Dame, where Louisville faced a ranked opponent on the road, there were much more impactful mistakes - both by the players and coaching staff. The Cardinals committed three turnovers, all of which were easily avoidable, turned the ball over on downs four times, and committed six penalties. By the end of the game, seven of their 13 drives ended in a turnover or turnover on downs, inevitably resulting in a 31-24 loss up in South Bend.

"There's all kinds of things to clean up, but you're going to have that now that we're facing really good football teams every week," Brohm said. "We just have to find a way to be sharper, win the turnover battle, eliminate big plays, execute in critical and timely situations, have a good plan for that as well, and be better. I just think it's a lot of small things that add up when you're facing good teams."

As Brohm noted, outside of the increase in competition, there isn't one over-arching reason as to why Louisville has committed as many mistakes as they have over the last couple games. A bad snap or miscommunication here, a missed assignment or busted coverage there, and after a while, all the little things begin to snowball into something much bigger.

Brohm believes that if Louisville can get some of the smaller issues cleaned up, it won't start to snowball on them. The Notre Dame game is a perfect example of this.

Louisville had all the momentum right out of the gates thanks to a fumbled opening kickoff. However, a myriad of minor miscues immediately after the Cardinals scored the first touchdown turned into a 21-point swing for the Irish, and it turned into an uphill battle for the rest of the game.

"I think you analyze every game, and you try to improve on your weaknesses, and things that you've made mistakes on," Brohm said. "We got some things going early, and then we had some critical turnovers that gave them the ball around the 50, then gave them the ball inside the 10 yard line. Next thing you know, it was 21 to seven. So now we've got to change a little bit of what we do, and have a little more sense of urgency, but we're still right in it.

"We didn't convert some key short yardage situations, so I need to do a better job there to make sure that we have the best plan, we're able to execute it. When you get in a situation where you have to pass a little bit more, you've got to be able to protect a little bit better, and that affected us there for a while until we kind of got that cleaned up. But those things happen."

Fortunately, Brohm believes that his team is not only able to learn from their mistakes, they have the adaptability to be able to adjust moving forward and prevent miscues from snowballing. He cites how last year's team was able to win five one-score games, and how this year's squad has already demonstrated the resiliency that the 2023 team did.

"I think we've got competitive players, and I think they want to compete and play," Brohm said. "Last year, we found a way to win a lot of close games. We're going to have to find a way to win close games this year, and that means doing a lot of the small things correctly."

Louisville will be back in action this weekend to host ACC newcomer SMU. Kickoff against the Mustangs is set for Saturday, Oct. 5 at 12:00 p.m. EST.

(Photo of Jordan Faison: Matt Cashore - Imagn Images)

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