CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB) — Every football season has its own soundtrack. Some are full of hope. Some hum with rebuilding. Some sound like a coach asking for patience.
Louisville's sounds like urgency.
Not panic. Jeff Brohm isn't coaching like a man trying to save his job. He just signed an eight-year deal worth $8.1 million per season. He's averaged better than nine wins a year in his first three seasons at his alma mater.
At the same time, nobody much outside Louisville is talking about the Cardinals and the College Football Playoff. Whether they make the preseason Top 25 is a toss-up. And yet almost every answer Brohm gave Wednesday at ACC Media Days carried the same undertone.
He talked about a vertical passing game that has to improve. He admitted he leaned too heavily on Isaac Brown after injuries changed Louisville's offense last season. He praised a defense he believes can become one of the program's real strengths. And he spoke openly about the College Football Playoff — not avoiding the question, but saying it's something the Cardinals have discussed all spring and summer.
There isn't time to ease into any of it. Partly that's the schedule. Louisville opens with Ole Miss, then turns quickly to SMU and a demanding ACC slate. Brohm has said before that the league schedule made it easier — not harder — to replace a comfortable opener with one that will show exactly where his team stands. Better to get the answers now than discover them after conference play has already started.
"I think naturally having a game like we do Game 1 gets their ears perked up and they understand what's ahead," Brohm said. "That can be a game that tests us for sure and show us how far we need to come — which can happen — or it can be a game that we find a way to win and really jump start this thing and get us going at a high level and put the pressure on us even more."
But this didn't start with Ole Miss. It started last November.
Louisville finished 9-4. It also finished 4-4 in the ACC. That's a strange season to evaluate — good enough to beat Miami, a team that came within one play of a national championship, but inconsistent enough to lose to Cal and a struggling Clemson team. The gap wasn't enormous. Which makes it impossible to ignore.
Brohm's answers Wednesday sounded less like a coach describing a new football team than a coach auditing the old one.
Asked about last season's offense, he didn't start with what Isaac Brown did. He started with what he did.
"I probably relied on him too much in the running game and wasn't as aggressive as I needed to be," Brohm said.
When Louisville didn't have Brown, the offense struggled — and Brohm said that part was on him. Coaches don't usually volunteer that kind of self-critique in July. He did.
Then he explained the correction. Louisville has to throw the ball vertically. "We've got to be able to make plays down the field," he said. "We've got to be able to score quickly." He likes his offensive line, but it has to become a line. He likes his receivers, but they have to prove it on the field, not in practice.
The defense is where he stopped auditing and started smiling. "I really like our defense," he said, before rattling off names — linemen, linebackers, defensive backs — from memory.
None of that is abstract. It's a checklist. Rely on Isaac Brown as a weapon, not a crutch. Turn the passing game from a threat on paper into a threat on tape. Build enough depth that one string of injuries doesn't undo a season again. Turn a defense he already believes in into one the rest of the league believes in too.
Nobody nationally is penciling Louisville into the playoff. Brohm isn't asking anyone to. But inside the building, they're talking about it, working toward it, and measuring every unfinished part of this team against it.
Hope may still be somewhere in the soundtrack. It just isn't carrying the melody anymore.
Urgency is.
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