LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Isaac Brown is the story. Without him on Saturday night against Boston College, the No. 19-ranked Louisville football team is a likely upset victim, another one-hit wonder for head coach Jeff Brohm.
With him, the Cardinals live to rise in the polls, a 38-24 winner in L&N Stadium.
Brown carried 14 times for 205 yards and a touchdown. He touched the ball on less than a quarter of Louisville’s offensive snaps but still accounted for more than 40% of its total yardage.
No brainer. We’re all in agreement. Brown is the column. Let’s go. Brown on three. One, two, ...
Wait, there’s a problem. Rocco Gasparro, Louisville’s director of media relations and procurer of football interviewees, says, “Isaac slipped out. We can’t get him.”
Disappointing, but not surprising. Brown was hard to catch all night.
Louisville’s first play of the game, they hand the ball to him, he gets to the left sideline, cuts it back toward the middle and runs 73 yards. You have to credit the one of the top tacklers in the ACC, K.P. Price for running him down from behind to stop him at the 1-yard line.
Every handoff is hold-your-breath time. A big play could be coming. Not since Lamar Jackson has Louisville had that kind of threat.
But it’s also hold-your-breath time because of the fumble thing. He’s had three in as many games. All lost. A late fumble at Virginia was catastrophic. They escaped after a late fumble at Miami. A late fumble Saturday night left the door open for a Boston College upset.
You could almost hear Louisville fans groan in harmony: Not again. But nobody wants to groan too loudly -- because, well, without the guy? Not a good picture.
“Trust me, we work on it,” Louisville coach Jeff Brohm said. “We reminded him before he went out there multiple times. But you’ve just got to secure it as tight as you can. And I didn't see the play, maybe they did a great job knocking it out. Even the one in the Miami game, the guy did a good job knocking it out. Yes, we wouldn't like to fumble. So I just think there might be some times where we double, put our arms around it. You know, he likes to run fast and make moves, and he's quick. So maybe there's just comes a point where we’ve got to really roll over the ball.”
It’s a weird sentence. But also a fair summary of Brown’s game. Risk, reward — and the only way forward.
I want to press pause here. Because I don’t have any word from Brown to talk about this. Not the 205 yards. Not the fumble. Not any of it.
Maybe it’s a good moment to remember that we all have highs and lows. Our highs might not be as high as running for 205 yards in a college football games. And our lows might not be as low as nearly fumbling a game away.
But maybe they are. And that’s what it’s all about. To get the ball back into our hands and keep running. To stop after the great achievement and focus. To realize that the game isn’t over. The ball is coming back to us.
This is the whole game. For us. For Brown. For Louisville. Just a thought.
Louisville running back Isaac Brown breaks into the clear for a 73-yard run in a win over Boston College.
In previous years — in previous weeks — this could’ve unraveled. A post-Miami trap game. A sluggish first half. A Boston College offense that held the ball for 20 of the game’s first 30 minutes.
That’s how upsets happen.
But Louisville held its ground.
And Isaac Brown devoured it. He became the first Louisville running back to top 200 yards since Javian Hawkins carried for 233 at Syracuse in 2019. That’s a week after running through Miami for 113 yards, after no back (and only one team) had run for more than 100 yards against Miami all season.
Of all the running backs in the nation who get 10 carries a game, none is averaging more than his 8.7 yards per carry. Only one is averaging more than eight yards a carry.
Special talent. Special situation.
This is the team. They aren’t always clean. They are always committed.
But there is a difference, and I’ve thought about this. A week prior, I covered Indiana’s game against Michigan State. Same game. Michigan State came out and chewed up clock. Held a 10-7 lead well into the second quarter. Indiana was coming off a win at Oregon and seemed sluggish.
But trailing 10-7, it got things going. Scored touchdowns on five straight drives, and that was it. Pulled the starters. Won 38-13.
An example of handling success. What was the difference between that win and Louisville’s? Indiana played clean. Louisville put up more yards, but won by less, and had to turn back a Boston College chance to tie the game late, because of its own mistakes.
So there's stuff to clean up. And it's that cleaning job that may determine how and where the season ends. But again, if we didn’t all have stuff to clean up -- as football teams or people -- life would be pretty boring.
“Isaac bounced back,” Brohm said. “It’s never fun to fumble. I mean, they are costly. But he came back and did a good job.”
Increasingly, for Louisville football, this season is becoming the Isaac Brown experience. It has other players who are having great seasons. But if Brown stays healthy, Louisville might be able to ride that lightning somewhere special.
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