Is Louisville football poised for bigger leap in 2020 under Scott Satterfield?
Defense must improve for team to contend
As much as I gushed about the Cardinals’ offense, I can complain just as much about their defense. Louisville did not improve nearly enough on defense last season and making a leap on that side of the ball is paramount if the Cardinals want to challenge for a spot in the ACC title.
The encouraging thing about the defense is that a lot of starters are returning and a chunk of them are seniors, so the Cardinals don’t lack experience.
Jared Goldwire is going to lead the defense up front as the nose tackle and he has tremendous size at 6-foot-6 and 305 pounds. He finished the season with 22 tackles and two sacks and he is going to need to take a step up if the Cardinals plan on fixing the run defense. Tabarius Peterson needs to do better at putting pressure on the quarterback, as he recorded zero sacks last season.
The defensive line must step up in a big way this season, as it just was not very good last year and lacked production.
The unit that returns the most experience and production is the linebacking crew. C.J. Avery has been a contributor since day one at Louisville and he was the leading tackler on the team last season with 93 tackles and he also contributed three sacks. He will be joined by fellow senior Rodjay Burns, who was the teams second leading tackler with 83 tackles and two sacks.
Dorian Ethridge and Yasir Abdullah are also back and ready to increase their production even further. It is good to have this kind of experience back on your defense, but they need to improve vastly because this unit just could not get it done last year, but the hope is that in year two of this defensive scheme, there will be better results.
The secondary will be led by safety Russ Yeast, who had 63 tackles last season to go along with two forced fumbles and one interception. Chandler Jones should be the teams best corner and had 10 pass deflections and one interception last season. The big stat that popped out to me was that nobody in the secondary had more than one interception and that lack of playmaking is what led to Louisville’s defense struggling as much as it did.
The passing defense was at least above average last year and could be better this year, but I think if the team wants to contend in the ACC, the run defense has to get better after being one of the worst in the country.