Red Zone Defense & Turnovers stand out to DC Bryan Brown in First Scrimmage

Louisville's defense started slow but finished strong in the Cards' first scrimmage of the 2020 preseason, and their performance in the red zone and ability to create turnovers is the reason why.

When the Louisville Football program held their first scrimmage of the 2020 preseason, one of the more noteworthy takeaways from the nearly three hours at Cardinal Stadium was the defense's performance in the second half.

"Later on in the scrimmage, the defense really rose up in the second half of the scrimmage and did some really good things," head coach Satterfield said after the scrimmage had concluded.

Satterfield went on to note that the defense eventually forced "a couple turnovers" and held the offense from getting in the endzone "on several occasions". Considering the Cardinals sported the 102nd ranked defense in FBS a season ago, tidbits like this are what you want to hear during camp.

However it sounds like the second year head coach might have been selling his defense a little short. According to defensive coordinator Bryan Brown, their performance in the red zone and ability to create turnovers is what stood out the most.

"The guys got better as we went on and got a good bit of sacks and had like seven turnovers on the day," he said. "Ended up being pretty good in the red zone. I think they may have scored two out of the ten times down in the red zone."

While this may have taken place in a closed scrimmage and not an actual game, seeing the defense respond and make these kind of plays down the stretch with high frequency could be paramount to an overall defensive improvement in 2020. Last season, had the 71st ranked red zone defense (84.3%) and were 64th in turnovers gained (18).

Louisville placed an emphasis on playing a lot of their newcomers in the scrimmage, with Brown saying that 10 of the 11 players on the second unit were freshmen. But when the Cards put most of their ones in, he says they looked "pretty good defensively". 

"We've come a long way," defensive end Tabarius Peterson said. "Everything is looking great. We just gotta work on our technique and learning plays and things like that. We all get those guys together, defense should be amazing this year."

Louisville will return to the practice fields on Wednesday at 4:00pm, and are set to kickoff the season against the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers on Saturday, Sept. 12 at Cardinal Stadium.

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