LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Scott Satterfield called it a “licking your chops” play when his Louisville football team would practice it, and before the snap, too, on Saturday night when the Cardinals were backed up inside their 10-yard line with zero offensive momentum and having spotted WKU a quick touchdown in the season-opener for both teams.
Micale Cunningham has been licking his chops since last December. A year ago, a quarterback known mostly for his running coming into the season was just one passing attempt short of being ranked among the top five passers in all of college football. Don't expect lack of attempts to be a problem this season.
He threw the ball 34 times in Louisville’s 35-21 win over WKU, for a career-high 343 yards and 3 touchdowns.
With WKU packing the box and hoping to make Cunningham win the game in the air, the junior from Montgomery, Ala., obliged.
Even backed up on that first-quarter play, Cunningham unloaded a picture perfect strike to Braden Smith on a go route. The pass covered 63 yards, flipped the field, and lit the pilot light on a Cardinal offense that served notice that it could produce big plays at any moment, from anywhere on the field.
“All week we were lining up in a certain formation and on film, those guys gave us a look where we can take that No. 2 guy on the go route,” Cunningham said. “Pre-snap coach called it licking your chops, I just dropped back, held the safety, and made a good pass to Braden and he did something with it. We were looking forward to that look on third down, so we attacked it like we did tonight.”
All summer, while most of us were sitting around waiting to get out of the house, Cunningham was working. Satterfield said he doesn’t think Cunningham took a single day off from football. Even when they asked him too.
That’s a guy who is driven.
“I just got to show how much I’ve improved on my accuracy and good decision-making,” he said a a couple of days before the game. “At the quarterback position, I’ve got to be more of a vocal leader and that’s what I’ve been working on this whole time. I feel like I’ve done a good job up to this point and I’m ready to showcase it.”
After every practice, he and wideout Dez Fitzpatrick sit down and go over every play where they feel like they messed up. They talk about what the mistakes were, why they happened, and what they can do to fix them.
Saturday night, the two connected four times for 110 yards and a touchdown.
When Cunningham is given time, he’s as accurate a deep passer as anyone in the country. He showed that again Saturday, with completions of 63, 48 and 70 yards – all of them on downfield routes, two of them to Braden Smith and one to Fitzpatrick.
“Cunningham had a career-high throwing the football,” Satterfield said. “I give credit to a lot of today's receivers and then the offensive line too with that. Those guys made some big time plays out there. We needed to be able to throw the ball tonight. They were loading up the box to try and stop the run, which they did a good job of that. So we've always said if they take that away we have to throw it. We feel good about our guys on the outside.
“We have a lot of weapons,” Satterfield added. “And our guys never feel like they're behind the sticks very much. Even if it's long yardage, we still feel pretty good about that. They feel like they can get a first down, so I'm really pleased about the big play capabilities that we do have, and the guys made plays. That's what they did tonight and I know hopefully they'll be able to do that the rest of the year.”
When the clock hit zero on Week 2 in college football, Cunningham ranked 5th in the nation in passing yards per game, 13th in quarterback rating, 11th in yards per attempt and 6th in touchdown passes.
And though he rushed for 24 yards and a touchdown, people aren’t really talking about his running anymore.
But don’t expect to hear him talking about any of that. Cunningham has become a no-nonsense kind of guy. And you can bet, the first film he looked at after the game was a cut of his mistakes – one of which he acknowledged that Fitzpatrick bailed him out by snatching from a defender for a 70-yard completion.
“You have to get lucky sometimes,” he said.
And it helps to work your tail off.
“We definitely have a lot of speed, but honestly as a team, we were just ready to get back out there as a team,” Cunningham said. “Waiting around all day until 8 p.m. was really crazy and it was tiring for us. We were so ready to get out there and play and the guys played great on both sides of the ball. O-line did a good job and I want to thank those guys. Hawk (Javian Hawkins) and Hassan (Hall) ran the ball hard today and we made plays on the outside which is what we have to do every week.”
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