ATLANTA (WDRB) – Everybody’s going to focus on the fire-and-brimstone halftime speech that Jeff Brohm said he gave his University of Louisville football team in the locker room with the Cardinals down 28-13 to Georgia Tech.
Fans love it when coaches yell and scream. And Brohm will do his share. He knows that emotion is a part of the game, and sometimes players need that, and need to feed off their coaches.
But there were some other talks at halftime that were just as important. Having watched his defense give up 28 points and 282 yards of offense in the second quarter alone, more than just a pep talk was needed in his first game back as head coach at his alma mater.
Pep talks are nice. But if not backed up with real adjustments, they can ring empty. That's why the more encouraging thing about Louisville's halftime rejuvenation was the substance behind Brohm's sizzling speech.
Defensive end Ashton Gillette and center Bryan Hudson congratulate head coach Jeff Brohm after winning his first game as Louisville head coach.
Asked about it after the game, I also was glad to hear Brohm provide a solid football answer.
“We got in a rut there playing too much man coverage in the second quarter,” Brohm said. “We had some guys running all over the place and not knowing where to be. I thought we played the same front too much. We were on our heels. The linebackers weren't attacking downhill. Fortunately, we've worked a lot of things throughout fall camp, the summer and the spring, and we made adjustments, and we used different calls, changed the front, stemmed the front, played more zone, and we did a much better job. I just think you come into the game thinking you can do something, and if it doesn't work, you've got to be able to adjust. I applaud our defensive coaches for making those adjustments.”
Halftime adjustments. Seemed like as much of a throwback at Louisville as the leather helmet trophy the Cards got for winning the game 39-34. I’d almost forgotten what those look like.
“They did a good job of really making a couple of adjustments and sustaining us in that third quarter,” Georgia Tech coach Brent Key said.
For Louisville, it was the biggest comeback since the Cards erased a 24-7 halftime deficit behind Lamar Jackson. They didn’t have Lamar on Friday night in Atlanta. But they did have Jack Plummer, who got off to a rocky start.
He hit on just 3 of his first 11 passes. He was missing receivers, throwing short, staring guys down. He was tentative. Louisville was getting to the red zone anyway, but settling for field goals instead of cashing in touchdowns.
“Not my best first half of football, that's for sure,” Plummer said after the game. “. . . Proud of myself for battling back in the second half, and I thought I played really well in the second half. Just got to start off quicker, and it's probably a different game if I start the game off right and do my job.”
Louisville piled up 302 yards of offense and outscored Georgia Tech 26-6 in the second half. Plummer hit on 10 of 14 passes for 157 yards and two touchdowns.
What was the difference? Jeff Brohm challenged him at halftime, like he challenged everybody. He got into him.
But it was a talk that QB coach and offensive coordinator Brian Brohm had with him at half that Plummer referenced after the game.
“Coach Brian Brohm came up to me in the locker room and he said, ‘Hey, man, you've just got to go be Jack Plummer. I've seen it before. You've just got to go play quarterback like Jack Plummer knows how to play quarterback.’ I think I did that. I started to play my brand of football and put that first half aside. I was able to kind of forget about it luckily, and then just go and play my game.”
They were well-timed words from Brian Brohm. Plummer was clearly hesitant in the first half. He was a different passer in the second.
And Louisville’s offense seemed more simple in the second in that it just relied on getting the ball to playmakers in space. Jamari Thrash, Jawhar Jordan, Kevin Coleman all got the chance to get loose and make things happen. Louisville had 47 yards after the catch in the first half. It had 80 in the second.
“I talk about it all the time to our football team,” Jeff Brohm said. “Nothing will ever be easy. We challenged our guys at halftime to play much harder, play much tougher, figure out a way to grind this thing out, and just try to win the half. Also, we said, ‘Look, we're going to judge effort, and if you're not giving more effort than the other guy, you won't play the rest of the year.’ I think our guys stayed together. They gave way better effort. Fortunately for us, our coaches hung in there, too. We found a way to coach better in the second half and have a better plan and some adjustments, and it took everything to win. We have a long way to go, but like I told them, every college football game is going to be like that, and if you're not ready for that, you might as well not show up for the game.”
On Friday night, in the first game of the Brohm era, Louisville showed up a bit late, but it showed up. That’s all fans ask for, generally. And it should be what they get more often than not moving forward.
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