LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Louisville’s first drive at Miami Friday night was a YOLO special. It was Improv Night at Hard Rock Stadium, and Cardinals’ coach Jeff Brohm was living his best life.
Brohm emptied his bag on that drive, on national TV.
It wasn’t football. It was jazz. It looked like the opening number at a South Beach nightclub. Trick plays, decoys, sleight of hand. The only thing missing was a tiger and a fog machine.
Eleven plays, 75 yards, seven points. And it was the key to everything that happened afterward in the signature win of Brohm’s Louisville tenure, a 24-21 shocker over a No. 2 Miami team that came into the game with an unbeaten record and a roster valued at $40 million.
The drive was remarkable because it was fun. It worked because it was fearless. A quick recap.
On the first play, Brohm trotted out two quarterbacks, Miller Moss and Brady Allen, then handed off to Isaac Brown up the middle for 11 yards.
On the next play, he employed what he called all week the “Three Amigo” package. Three quarterbacks. You could say he had a plethora of quarterbacks. They all went wide. None of them took the snap. Caullin Lacy, a wideout, took the snap and ran for a short gain.
A couple more short passes from Moss then Brown busted a 28-yard run up the middle. Deuce Adams ran on a QB keeper. After a short pass and an incompletion, Louisville faced fourth and 2 at the Miami 4. Rather than waste the good vibes Brohm sent out the field goal unit.
Except he didn’t. He had David Chapeau holding, and he took the snap and ran for a first down. He bounded off the field with his hands in the air – like he just didn’t care.
Moss dove into the end zone on the next play.
Stop the tape.
None of those plays worked because Brohm used a hundred quarterbacks. The biggest thing that happened on that whole drive was that a healthy Isaac Brown was able to run right at Miami and gain yardage.
But the power of those crazy formations was felt on multiple fronts. Maybe Miami was on its heels, just a bit. Maybe the thought, “This dude’s crazy,” entered their thinking.
Certainly, it got the attention of the nation. When you do that on your first two snaps, everybody is immediately saying, “Awwww -----. This is gonna be wild.”
But the primary value of those formations, of that creativity, is that Louisville’s players knew about it. They practiced it for two weeks. They walked into Hard Rock Stadium knowing they had something for Miami. They weren’t thinking about what happened in an overtime loss to Virginia. They were thinking about blowing Miami’s minds, if only for a play or two.
It wasn’t a drive. It was a pep rally in cleats. It was group therapy with helmets.
“I just thought it made the game fun,” Brohm said. “It made our guys get off to a fast start.”
It gave them confidence. It put them on the offensive. It made them think about blowing Miami’s minds instead of Miami blowing up their plays. And it was fun. Whether it worked or not, they were going to finish those plays smiling.
All of that matters. All of it takes audacity. And if Jeff Brohm has shown anything in his college career, it’s that he’s not afraid to take risks when the moment requires it. And he has done it to the tune of 4-0 against Top 3 ranked teams when his teams are unranked.
“I had to convince our offensive staff, saying, ‘The first play of the game, we're going to put three quarterbacks in,’” Brohm said. Coaches asked, “What's that going to do?”
“It's going to get Miami to think, ‘What's going on? They got some stuff here,'" Brohm said. "We just wanted to make them think and not be completely by the book.”
But it wasn’t just Miami’s psychology that was affected.
“I thought our guys were loose and relaxed," Brohm said.
I’m not trying to oversimplify things. The Louisville defense is a whole column unto itself. I’ll write that one next.
But in terms of team psyche, across the board, offense, special teams, everybody, this was the drive that put Louisville on the offensive. And it never got off.
“They really come out with an opening script-plus, that was really difficult to defend, and they got out on us 14 points in a hurry,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal. “I thought we had a really good call on the fake field goal where we should have been able to defend it, but we didn’t. … After those 14 points I thought we settled down.”
There was more creativity than just the opening drive. Louisville ran more quick-hitting pass plays than it has all season. It utilized shifts by the backs or tight ends to create opportunities. It neutralized Miami’s talented defensive ends with its run game.
If anything, Brohm said he ran out of tricks.
“I didn’t have enough,” Brohm said. “Maybe I need to learn my lesson and have more next week.”
Brohm has lived on these kinds of games. He excels at them. If anything, the game underscores the value of Louisville playing a major national opponent earlier than Week No. 7 of the season. But it is trying to do that, mightily.
“They’re a lot of fun,” Brohm said. “Anytime you play these types of games, you put in a lot of work. I am not gonna lie. I was stressed out because I wanted to win bad and I wanted to have a plan that would work and give our players hope. It was a rough two weeks to try to get that done, but we put the work in, and you know, when you get to the field, you’ve just got to relax and roll out the dice and play ball, and I just think our players responded. These types of games, you’ve just got to be aggressive. You can’t be conservative.”
It took a whole game. (Brohm said he almost faked the Cards final punt before giving the ball back to Miami for its ill-fated final drive.) It took a massive defensive effort that included four interceptions of one of the nation’s most experienced quarterbacks.
But in the end, it was all set in motion by a beautiful 11-play, 75-yard excursion into illusory chaos. The Speed Museum ought to hang a screen and make it an exhibit. Put it in the “Beat Miami” wing with Howard Schnellenberger’s bronzed boots.
At Walt Disney World in Florida, in the Hall of Presidents, the clothing worn by the mannequins of the U.S. presidents is so authentic that even the undergarments are from the proper historical periods and have textiles and stitching from that time. Why do they do that, when no one can see it? The people who run the park well tell you, guests may not know, but the people who work there know. They know the attention to detail and the work that goes on underneath.
Louisville’s players walked onto the field Friday in Miami knowing the same thing. They knew what had gone into the planning, and they knew what was coming. They were confident, and they walked in there smiling.
And for one night, for this team after the game, it was the happiest place on earth.
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