Depth and Experience Shining on Louisville's Defensive Line in Fall Camp

The Cardinals head into the 2024 season with an extremely deep and experienced defensive line.

The Louisville offensive and defensive line during practice / Matt Stone/The Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As many fans know by now, the Louisville football program is coming off of a successful 2023 campaign that was powered primarily by their defensive efforts. While these efforts did take a step back over the final month, the Cardinals still finished 21st nationally in total defense (317.1 ypg allowed) and 33rd and scoring defense (21.3 ppg allowed).

The catalyst for a lot of these efforts was upper tier play out of their defensive line. Louisville posted the top red zone defense (67.6 percent) ninth-ranked rushing defense (99.8 rushing ypg allowed) and tenth-ranked third down defense (29.8 percent) in part because of their ability to create chaos at the line of scrimmage.

Year two under head coach Jeff Brohm is now less than a month away, and Louisville is now roughly at the halfway point of their preseason fall camp. Up to this point in time through camp, the Cardinals' defensive line is still operating at a high level.

"I think the competition has been really good, and we've got a lot of good work," defensive line coach and co-defensive coordinator Mark Hagen said Friday.

Louisville heads into the 2024 season sporting a defensive line that boasts a plethora of team-wide experience. For starters, it's a group that is headlined by a former All-American in Ashton Gillotte. Other returners such as Dezmond Tell, Ramon Puryear, and Jared Dawson have also made their fair share of plays for the Cardinals over the last few years, and - based on how they have looked in spring ball and the first half of fall camp - are primed to potentially have productive senior seasons.

In addition to having a fair amount of in-house talent and experience, Louisville out-sourced some of it as well via the transfer portal. Additions such as Thor Griffith, Jordan Guerad, Myles Jernigan and Richard Kinley II have seen plenty of college football at this point of their careers, and those veteran presences have been crystal clear despite only being on campus for a short amount of time.

Put it altogether, and you have a defensive line that is teeming with experience. Hagen went as far to call said experience an "invaluable" asset to the position and team overall.

"Anytime you roll out a bunch of talented guys who don't have the experience, there's gonna be growing pains. Not that there's never growing pains, but the more vets you could put out there, the better," Hagen said. "Even though some newcomers weren't necessarily here with us this spring, the learning curve is not real big with those guys. These guys have been exposed to our package now for a number of months. ... The Veterans process it at a lot quicker rate. The aspect that we have a lot of older guys, is very beneficial."

What makes this defensive line so dominant is the fact that not only do they have plenty of experience, the majority of the players have played some high level football over the course of their careers. In fact, last season alone, Louisville's returners and incoming D1 transfers on the defensive line combined for 300 total tackles, 72.0 for loss and 36.5 sacks.

With all that position-wide impact production, Louisville has the ability to freely rotate players on the line and not have a massive drop-off in talent and potential - and that has been abundantly clear over the first half of fall camp. In a sport as violent as football where injuries are always bound to happen, this is a tremendous development.

Louisville's depth on the line is already starting to get tested. Both Griffith and Guerad have been limited early in fall camp due to respective injuries. Mason Reiger has to miss all of fall camp and might not be able to play the 2024 season at all.

Even with the aforementioned injuries, that hasn't proved to be a detriment to Louisville's defensive line in fall camp. At least not yet.

"We're really deep, and we can be even deeper moving forward, and that's important," Hagen said. "Because again, it's gonna be a long physical season, right? Guys are going to get banged up, and so you've got to have those next guys, and twos and threes that can come in. When you talk about true depth, you don't want there to be any fall off. We have guys on paper that can go in there. I've been excited about that. We put those twos and threes out there right now. there's not a whole lot of drop off, which is what you want."

Hagen even went as far to saw that this defensive line is "probably right at the top" in terms of where it stands among the best D-lines he's ever coached. This is coming from a guy who has coached No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick Myles Garrett, All-American George Karlaftis, NFL veterans Ryan Kerrigan and Cliff Avril, and several other noteworthy linemen.

"I think this group is right there on par," he said. "Now have we done it yet? No. The fact remains to be seen how we're going look when we go line up in game one against Austin Peay. That's our mindset right now: we want to be playing our best football on that opener."

(Photo via Matt Stone - The Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK)

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