Jeff Brohm

Louisville coach Jeff Brohm at ACC Media Day in 2023. (WDRB Photo)

 ERIC CRAWFORD

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Jeff Brohm will not make this needlessly complicated.

No silly last-second mind games about who will start at quarterback for the University of Louisville football team. He announced Jack Plummer was the guy generations ago.

No mystery about the play-calling chain of command. The entire offensive staff creates the game plan, but the head coach will call the plays with his offensive coordinator, brother Brian Brohm, making suggestions from the press box.

But, in the end, Brohm plainly said you won't have to be Nick Saban or Kirk Herbstreit to understand what the Cardinals have to do to succeed this season, beginning with their season opener against Georgia Tech at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. (The Cards are favored by 7.5 points.)

At UofL, Brohm learned the game from Howard Schnellenberger, who recruited him and his older brother, Greg, from Trinity High School as UofL football began its program-changing ascent.

In those days, fall camp required three practices per day. Hydration breaks were an elective. (Really. And don't ask for too many.) If you got injured, you rubbed dirt on it before you saw the training staff. (Like Brohm did, of course, when he played with a painful thumb injury during a Liberty Bowl victory over Michigan State. But I digress.)

Those days are, rightfully, over. But when I asked Brohm what characteristics from the Schnellenberger era he cooked into the preparation of his first UofL team, this is what he said:

Play harder than the Yellow Jackets or any opponent.

Play tougher.

Play smarter.

"We've narrowed it down to three things when we take the field," Brohm said Monday morning at his weekly press gathering.

"And that's three things that we think are visible to the common fan. We have to win in these three things in order to have a chance.

"That is playing harder than the other team. And to me, you can tell if a team is playing hard by watching it on TV or in person.

"We've got to play tougher than the other team, which means — guess what? — it's not always going to go the way you want.

"So whether you're up by 10 or down by 21, are you still going to play hard? That's an ability to be tough throughout the entire game and never give in and never quit.

"And that's visible to the common eye.

"And then you've got to be smarter than the other team, meaning that we can't have the 15-yard penalties.

"We can't have things that set us back. We can't have off-sides and misalignments and false starts that really set you back and put you in a jam. So we have to be the smarter team.

"I think if you win those three things, which is visible to the common fan as well, you're going to have a chance to win a football game.

"And that's what we really want to make sure, as we get close to game time, that we find a way to get that done.

"It's not easy, because the other team is going to try to do the same thing. But you have to try to find a way to win in those three things."

I asked a similar question to Ron English, the Cardinals' defensive coordinator, who followed Brohm from Purdue.

Considering Louisville will be without six of its eight leading tacklers from last season and working with a new coordinator, I asked English if there was a question about his unit that he was eager to have answered on Friday night.

"I think, with any group of people, whether it be coaches, trainers or players, it's when you get uncomfortable and you feel pressure and when circumstances strike, how do you respond?" English said.

"So that's what we want to train them to do. We want to train them to respond properly to adversity.

"In fact, I'm going to meet with them.. And that's what that meeting is going to be about — mental toughness, which is really the ability to withstand, without tearing or breaking.

"That's what I want to see."

In fact, that's what everybody wants to see and will finally get a look on Friday night.

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