Clemson Football: 3 takeaways from road rout of Louisville

2. Yes, Louisville was prepared

It’s not hard to sing the praises of Scott Satterfield and the job he’s done at Louisville in his first season. The most immediate impact of the culture he’s trying to instill at Louisville is the Cardinals come prepared every game. There are some personnel shortcomings the Cardinals have, but they give maximum effort every time they play.

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, their best simply wasn’t good enough.

They had a good game plan against the Tigers’ offense. Every passing down, the Cardinals would drop seven or eight in coverage and confuse Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence. It worked in the first quarter to the tune of Lawrence throwing two interceptions.

Offensively, the Cardinals used their star speedster Tutu Atwell as a decoy at times to get the ball to their running back Javian Hawkins.

It worked for a quarter and a half.

Eventually, the Clemson offense got the running game going and forced the Cardinals’ defense to bring more players to the line of scrimmage, and not drop eight players. When the Cardinals couldn’t drop eight, that opened the passing game for the Tigers. However, it wasn’t because they were overwhelmed or unprepared — Clemson just had the better players.