Jeff Brohm Taking Lessons From Howard Schnellenberger Into Louisville's Opener

The head coach of the Cardinals is drawing on lessons from his own head coach as they prepare to take on Georgia Tech.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - At long last, game week is finally here. In just a couple days, the offseason will officially conclude for the Louisville football program, and the Jeff Brohm era for the Cardinals will be underway.

A lot of the elevated hype surrounding the program as a result of Brohm's hiring stem from the fact that he is a Louisville native and alum. Of course, some of that hype also comes from what he was able to accomplish at a place like Purdue, which included a berth in the Big Ten Championship game last season.

In terms of what makes Brohm the coach he is today, like most coaches in any sport, he draws a lot of inspiration from his own head coach during his playing days. During his time as a Cardinal from 1989 to 1993, Louisville legend and the late Howard Schnellenberger was his head coach for all five years. Even after his professional playing career ended, Brohm got to coach under Schnellenberger for a year as well, serving as his quarterbacks coach at Florida Atlantic in 2009. 

"I think Coach was great at preparing his teams to take on anybody," Brohm said during his weekly press conference on Monday. "We practiced hard, we practiced long. We got after it in practice, so that when we got to the game, it would come easy to us."

With Brohm about to follow Schnellenberger's footsteps and guide the Cardinals himself, he was asked if he still carries lessons from his old head coach into his own coaching style. While Brohm joked that "could talk for a long time about that," he followed that up with: playing harder, playing tougher and playing smarter.

"In the end, we narrow it down to just three things as we take the field, and that's three things that we think are visible to the common fan, and we have to win these three things no matter what else happens to have a chance," Brohm said.

In terms of "playing harder," that simply boils down to giving maximum effort when on the football field. As Louisville fans know, effort was something that teams under previous head coach Scott Satterfield struggled with at times, even to the point where it was glaringly obvious when watching in person or on the game broadcast.

"You can tell if a team is playing hard by watching on TV or in person," Brohm said.

"Playing tougher" goes hand-in-hand with "playing harder," but has an emphasis on doing so at any and all moments of the football game. Whether you're up big, down big, or neck-and-neck with your opponent, Brohm wants his players to play with the same tenacity on the final play of the game that they did on the first play.

"Guess what, it's not always going to go the way you want," he said. "Whether you're up at 10 or down by 21, are you still going to play hard? That's the ability to be tough throughout the entire game and never give in and never quit, and that's visible to the common eye."

Finally, "playing smarter" means not putting your team in a position where they have to overcome self-made obstacles. This includes things like committing a large or untimely penalty, missed assignments, and things of that nature.

"We can't have the 15-yard penalties. We can't have the things that set us back. We can’t have offsides and misalignments and false starts and things that really set you back and put you in a jam." Brohm said. "We have to be the smarter team."

Brohm knows that when Louisville kicks off their 2023 season against Georgia Tech on Friday, Sept. 1, it won't be easy to master all three considering the Yellow Jackets will be trying to do the same thing as them. But if the Cardinals can find a way to be the harder, tougher and smarter team at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Ga., it will give them the best chance to start his tenure 1-0.

"I think if you win those three things, which is visible to the common fan as well, if you win those three things, you're going to have a chance to win a football game," he said. "That's what we really want to make sure, as we get close to game time, that we find a way to get that done. It's not easy, because the other team is going to try to do the same thing, but you have to find a way to win in those three things."

(Photo of Jeff Brohm, Howard Schnellenberger: David R. Lutman - Special to Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK)

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