LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — That’s it. Not just the ACC title hopes. Not just the playoff talk. But the illusion.
The illusion that this Louisville team could grow out of its mistakes, tighten the screws, clean itself up and become something more.
On Friday night, under the lights, with every chance to be different, they were exactly who they've been all season. And it cost them again.
Clemson 20, Louisville 19.
Penalties. Missed kicks. Offensive anemia.
A one-point loss that felt like déjà vu wrapped in groundhog fur. Louisville outgained Clemson 385 to 308, averaged more yards per play, didn’t throw an interception, had two makeable field goal chances late for the win, and still walked off the field as if it had been mugged in prime time.
The theme of this season has been death by details. By turnovers. By penalties. By mistakes at the wrong times. And by the inability to make winning offensive plays in critical situations.
I try to provide some variety in these columns. It has grown difficult. We’re 10 games in. This team is what it is.
The shame of it is that Jeff Brohm and his staff built a defense good enough to get it to the playoffs. That was supposed to be the hard part. Brohm, the conventional wisdom said, can make offense out of a stack of rocks. Defense has been the long division in the mix.
This year’s team changed the equation. It had the defense. It had the run game. It had the schedule. But it has lacked the discipline. And the passing game.
They’ve been losing the same game all season. By a yard. By a flag. By a turnover.
Ten penalties. Eighty-four yards. Three unsportsmanlikes, a horse collar and a chop block — basically everything short of folding chair interference. That might win you a belt in pro wrestling, but it’ll get you flagged out of the ACC in a heartbeat, especially with an officiating crew that treated every stumble like a felony.
Still, Louisville got the ball at the Clemson 23 with two minutes left and a chance to win and couldn’t leave well enough alone. It got a false start penalty before ever running a play. The drive: 3 plays, minus-5 yards and a missed field goal.
Louisville's Clev Lubin celebrates a first-drive sack in the Cards' 20-19 loss to Clemson.
Here, Santa. You keep your fancy gift-wrapped win. We’re just fine here with our fruitcake.
Which brings us to the passing game. It’s done.
Against a Clemson defense ranked in the bottom 30 nationally against the pass, Louisville threw for just 214 yards. A lot of those – 48 yards – came on a screen pass to Caullin Lacy. Another was a nice throw by Miller Moss to Chris Bell that covered 37 yards and set up Louisville’s first TD. Two passes, nearly 40 percent of the passing yards. Everything else was dink and dunk. Outside of those two completions, Louisville’s longest was 15 yards.
Only three teams threw for fewer yards against Clemson this year, and two of those were Boston College and North Carolina, programs currently floating in a sea of quarterback uncertainty and broken dreams.
Louisville entered the night ranked 97th in passing offense in November. That’s down from 42nd in October. Marc Weinberg is off this week. But you don’t need a meteorologist to see the trend line.
As for Moss, Brohm tried to tell us. Looking back, all the way to preseason, I can see that now. He praised the effort, not the excellence. He spoke of work ethic, not wow factor. That was the tell. That was the red flag waving in a windless room.
“Miller wants to play well,” Brohm said. “He wants to be a winning quarterback.”
I want to get to bed before 3 a.m. tonight. It’s not happening.
You spend the money. You take the portal swing. And sometimes, you miss. It happens. Or, sometimes you spend a little less so you can spend more somewhere else, and count on being able to improve a guy enough to get by. In the pre-NIL days, I saw Rick Pitino take guys who were one dimensional but who he thought he could develop into useful players. It didn’t always work.
So, here’s where Brohm has been. Walking a tightrope. Defense has to hold. Running game needs to produce (and your All-American running back needs to stay healthy). Offense just has make a few plays and not turn it over. Everybody plays clean and you win tight games or occasionally win going away if you catch some breaks and don’t beat yourself.
That’s how it looks if you can’t win with your passing game. What we’ve seen from Louisville in its three losses is how it looks if you can’t play clean.
You’re 7-3 with three one-score losses – all winnable. And a couple of one-score wins that you could’ve lost.
The penalties aren’t flukes. The missed chances aren’t flukes. The mental mistakes, the self-sabotage, the skittish late-game calls, that’s who they are right now.
And maybe the hardest part is that they seem to know it.
Moss knows it. Brohm knows it, or at least he coaches like it at times. And if you watched them Friday night, you saw a team playing with one hand on the wheel and one eye on the ditch.
I do know enough about sports to know that winning changes things. If one of those field goals had gone through, there would be no recriminations right now. If Louisville wins at SMU and beats Kentucky, everybody will get ready for bowl season, not so much thrilled, but looking forward to it.
But right now, those wins are tough to envision.
Not because the opponents are unbeatable. But because Louisville hasn’t shown that it can stop beating itself.
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