LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Jeff Brohm didn’t show up to ACC Football Kickoff with a stack of one-liners. No buzzwords. No branding. No motivational quotes destined for the graphics department.
Brohm is not a podium guy. But sit down to talk football with him — as happened after his main news conference, or on the ACC Network set — and the stories start to fly.
He’s not going to get up and quote Vince Lombardi — though he did offer a fond recollection of Howard Schnellenberger’s idea of a water break:
“There'd be like 100 players, and he'd have like, 50 glasses of water,” Brohm told the ACC Network. “And he’d set the table up about 400 yards away, so if you want to jog over there and get one, go on. Otherwise, here we go.”
That’s more Brohm’s speed. Straightforward. Efficient. Unsentimental. He’s not going to talk in greeting card prose. But you don’t hire him for a press conference.
You hire him for the sideline. For the game plan. For the attitude that once led him, as an XFL quarterback, to ask back into a game after a headshot with a now-legendary bit of Brohm logic:
“Is this or is this not the XFL? Yes, it is. Do I or do I not currently have a pulse? Yes, I do. Let’s play football.”
Brohm didn’t say that in Charlotte. He didn’t need to. His approach — plainspoken, football-first, with a few dry smiles tucked in — says it for him.
Louisville's outlook
He talked Wednesday about Louisville’s outlook. The Cardinals are coming off a 9–4 season and a bowl victory. They beat Clemson for the first time and ended a losing streak to rival Kentucky.
“Those were some special wins,” he said. “And they really felt great. But in this game, consistency is the most important thing.”
So, how do you avoid the lapses that cost Louisville in key moments last year?
“How can you not have letdowns?” he said. “That's the challenge, and it's not easy. We try to teach a one-game season, putting everything on the line for one game, and whether you win or lose move on to the next one. That’s how we do it, and you hope it works, but we've slipped up a few times, so we just need to improve on that.”
Nothing earth shattering there. “One-game season” is about as close as you’ll hear to a pull-quote line, but this one happens to be true.
Brohm isn’t reinventing the program. He’s refining it. And in today’s transfer-era world of constant roster churn, he’s embraced the new reality.
“We’re not scared to have a new roster every year,” he said. “That’s what this game has become. I didn’t make the rules. You’ve just got to abide by them.”
Miller Moss, a former USC quarterback who lit up Louisville in the Holiday Bowl at USC two years ago, is expected to lead Brohm’s offense. Asked if Moss’ bowl performance helped in recruiting, Brohm smirked. Then he admitted it wasn’t just Moss bringing it up — it was his girlfriend, who revisited the topic during a Derby weekend visit.
“We were at the track together, and she brought up the game and how he played, how great he played,” Brohm said on the ACC Network set. “And I kept having to hear it, and I finally said, ‘You know what? We were so terrible in that game anybody could have made those passes.’”
It was his best laugh line of the day on the set – and may have been one of his best recruiting lines, too.
“But I’m glad he’s on our team, now,” Brohm added.
He likes what Moss brings: experience, urgency, hunger. Nationally, Brohm is being branded as a “quarterback whisperer.” In two years at Louisville, he’s taken two transfers in their final year of eligibility and moved them forward.
Tyler Shough, in the same situation last year — looking to answer some questions and, in Brohm’s words, “go out with a bang” — now has a legitimate shot to start for the New Orleans Saints.
“We’re fine bringing in a quarterback with one year left,” Brohm said. “Because we know it means something to them.”
He’s also excited about who Moss will hand it off to — Isaac Brown, the compact freshman who turned heads last season. Brown, who has earned preseason All-American mention from several publications, broke a school freshman rushing record that was previously held by Lamar Jackson.
“He’s definitely helped me love the running game, which does not usually happen,” Brohm said. “But when it’s that easy to just hand the ball off and they go for a lot of yards, I'm like, ‘Man, this is even easier than passing it. Keep doing it.’”
At this point, it’s worth tapping the brakes. Don’t expect Brohm to abandon his pro-style attack. But he does think what Brown did last season will open up opportunities.
“To be a championship caliber team, you've got to be able to do both,” he said. “I think the fact that we've been able to pass the ball really has opened up our running game, and now that we have a running game, we can really open up our passing game. They tie together. Isaac has been great. We have a guy with him, Duke Watson, that's also been great. They're a great combination. And these guys just make guys miss. And if (Brown) walked through here and you looked at him, you might think, ‘I don't know if he can withstand all these hits.’ But they can't hit him. He’s just quick, and he's really explosive in the hole with his moves. And we’re just really lucky to have him on our team.”
'Something special'
Louisville is lucky to have Brohm, too. Because without printing it on a T-shirt, he does aspire to bring championships – conference and national – to his hometown. It means something to him. It’s why he’s literally everywhere around town in the summer. He was courtside for both TBT games in Freedom Hall.
“I don't vacation a lot in the summer. We're there with our players,” Brohm said. “It's vital that we get our guys ready to go for game one.”
That’s who Louisville has. Hometown motivation, with year-round dedication.
“We’ve got a chance to hopefully do something special,” Brohm said. “We want to be in there at the end.”
When Moss was asked how much Brohm’s reputation with quarterbacks was a draw, he acknowledged its value, but said something else mattered just as much – his impression of Brohm as a person.
“I think just being around good and decent human beings can kind of get lost on us a lot in terms of the era of NIL and transferring and all that kind of stuff,” Moss said. “But in sitting with Coach Brohm … and coming on my visit, I wanted to be surrounded by good and decent human beings that cared about the right things and cared about one another, and I think I've absolutely found that within the program.”
I don’t know how that translates into a media day moment. But it sounds like a pretty good starting point for a football team.
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