Louisville football pulled off one of its biggest upsets in school history on Friday night, and it was a perfect blend of offensive brilliance and defensive playmaking. Jeff Brohm came in with a plan to confuse Miami with formations and personnel that he hadn’t used this season, while the defense started the game by making Miami work for every yard.
I clipped some plays from each quarter for a film review. Let’s get into the first quarter.
It took one play to realize that the Louisville offensive line was going to look totally different. The right side of the line completely collapses the Miami front, and Isaac Brown is able to do what he does best and burst into the second level while running past defenders.
Rasheed Miller takes the best run defender in the country and gets him on his heels before getting help with a chip from Jaleel Skinner to completely erase him from the play. Skinner then gets a nice block on the playside linebacker to give Brown the space to really make this play. The two biggest liabilities up front started the game with a message that they came to play.
We also got an early look at what the passing game would look like in this game. Jeff Brohm made a plan to negate Miami’s pass rush by getting the ball out quickly. Miami rushes four on this play with a man coverage look and linebackers dropping into zone windows.
This formation is great because it forces Miami to play off coverage on Chris Bell because he is so tight to the line. If they were to play him tighter, you have Caullin Lacy on a pick route into the flat against a linebacker. Then you throw in Bell making this catch while setting up his move to beat the corner after the catch. He gets his hands up late while hopping to his left just a bit so that he can stick his foot in the ground to turn up the field. Really savvy stuff right here.
This takes the crown as the best blocked run of the year, and I’m not sure it’s close. Every blocker on this play does their job, and they do it well. Trevonte Sylvester walls off the playside defensive end, and he may still be driving him to the sideline. Lance Robinson stones the defensive tackle and holds his block until Isaac Brown gets past him. Pete Nygra gets a down block on the other tackle while Rasheed Miller cuts off the backside.
Then you have Mahamane Moussa pulling around to take on the playside linebacker and taking him out of the play. Isaac Brown has an absurd amount of room to get to the second level, which is where he is at his best. He makes the backside safety miss with his speed while nearly simultaneously making the playside safety miss with a cut. Then he makes the playside corner look silly. This is what the run game was supposed to be all year.
The creativity and wrinkles Jeff Brohm deployed in this game mostly fell flat from a yardage standpoint, but this play shows how the plan worked. Brohm said that he wanted to make the Miami offense think with the formations and trick plays, which shows up here. You can see the four Miami players at the top of the screen on this play essentially freeze when Duece Adams and Keyjuan Brown run the option.
There is no threat to throw the ball here, and the Cards are pulling two blockers to this side of the field, but the defenders still struggle to identify the play, which has them playing on their heels. Adams ends up getting a few yards here, and the Cards end up getting a touchdown on the drive.
More kudos for the offensive line here as Pete Nygra clears out a huge path for Adams to get the first down. Robinson again does well to hold his block on his man to get the job done. The right side of the line also does well to kick their guys out of the play to make this play work.
Miller Moss has been killed by pressures from secondary players all year, but he is perfect on this play. Miami has a safety lined up behind their slot corner on this play, which is the universal sign that the corner will be blitzing. Moss’s eyes are key here as he keeps them on the incoming pressure to that side of the field. He identifies it, and then he makes a perfect throw to keep Chris Bell running on the shallow cross.
This is simple stuff, but it’s important to see the difference from Moss. Everyone runs this play, and it should be this easy to complete this play, but there’s a reason we haven’t seen this until now. This is preparation, planning, and execution linking up to play out just how you want it to.
I really liked this play design by Miami out of a bunch formation. The fake toss is used to draw the defense up, but the Cards don’t really bite on it. They have all three receivers to that side take outside releases, which helps to sell the fake as well as they look like blockers at the snap. Two guys go up the field, with the other running an in-breaking route to the middle of the field.
What I like about this play is that it can beat man or zone, and it makes the read easy for the quarterback. It also puts a defender in conflict as Tayon Halloway has to choose between keeping width on the outside receiver or closing the space with CJ Daniels, who makes the catch. Halloway splits the difference, and Carson Beck takes the easy throw down the seam. If Halloway closes the space, this is an explosive play down the sideline with Clev Lubin trying to cover a tight end.
Malachi Toney is everything he is hyped up to be, and as I pointed out in the W2W4 last week, Miami is just now figuring out how to use him. On this play, Toney and the receiver to the sideline switched spots after they lined up. I’m not sure who directed them to do so, but it was clear that they saw that the Cards were in man coverage with a single-high safety. That puts Toney on D’Angelo Hutchinson, and that’s an easy win for Toney.
Hutchinson doesn’t actually play this too poorly, with the ball being underthrown by Beck. But Toney uses a subtle and savvy pushoff as he goes up for the ball to separate and make the catch. If this ball is thrown where Toney can run underneath it, it’s a touchdown.