College Football Playoff: Which Top 25 teams are contenders, pretenders?
The Louisville Cardinals have arguably been one of the biggest disappointments in all of college football in 2017. After having their then-sophomore quarterback Lamar Jackson win the program’s first Heisman Trophy in 2016, the stage appeared set for the Cardinals to finally make their run at the college football season in what will in all likelihood be Jackson’s final season on campus.
After watching their biggest ACC rivals, Florida State, lose their quarterback to a season ending knee injury in Week 1 of the college football season, it looked like this could finally be the year where Louisville could make it out of the ACC on top and represent their conference in the 2017 college football playoffs.
But in the team’s Week 3 heart-breaking defeat to Clemson at Papa John’s Stadium, it became abundantly clear that head coach Bobby Petrino’s squad simply didn’t match up to the best of the best that college football has to offer.
Much like last season, Jackson has accounted for over 70 percent of his team’s total offense and has led the Cardinals in both passing and rushing yards.
Even though the unit is currently ranked 8th in the nation in total offense, their lack of a true number one receiver or bell cow running back has made Petrino’s offense offensively one-dimensional. That has allowed opposing defenses to isolate Jackson with one-on-one matchups and forced him to win the game himself, an incredibly challenging task for a 20 year-old.
Even with a relatively easy schedule for the remained of the season, it will be virtually impossible for the Cardinals to win the ACC Atlantic division after losing to in-conference rivals Clemson, and have thus effectively been iced out of the college football playoffs for the fifth consecutive season.