CRAWFORD | Joyful scene after Notre Dame win is why Louisville brought Brohm home

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Saturday night was why you brought Brohm home.

It’s why you didn’t renew the contract of Scott Satterfield, even after a win over a Top 10 team quarterbacked by Sam Hartman. It’s why you committed to $6 million-plus a year.

This was why, this scene that unfolded in front of the largest crowd in University of Louisville history (59,081), and a national television audience.

Louisville beat No. 10-ranked Notre Dame 33-20 Saturday night, in front of Jack Harlow and Peyton Siva and Harry Douglas and Reggie Bonnafon and Donovan Mitchell and Allan Houston and Kenny Payne and the entire basketball team and, well, pretty much everyone else in Louisville, known and unknown.

For the first time in school history, Louisville beat a Top 10 team for a second straight season. It ended Notre Dame’s 30-game winning streak against ACC schools. It is 6-0 for the first time in a decade. And those things are great, but Saturday night was more than that.

This was about hope and homecomings, about family, football, faith and future.

When Louisville beat No. 10 Wake Forest a year ago, there was little the program could do with the win. It had opened the season 2-3, including losses at Syracuse and Boston College. By the time it got that signature win, there was little more than another step toward bowl eligibility at stake. The crowd was a little more than 39,000.

After Saturday night’s win, lots of things are possible. Louisville could be favored in every game it plays the rest of the season. And regardless of what happens, that moment Saturday night, with fans filling the field and staying well past midnight, signaled the return of something for a program has shown that it can stand up on the biggest stages the game has to offer.

I know that the university lists the Oct. 28 game against Duke as the Homecoming game. But Saturday night was the real Homecoming for Louisville.

I rode up on the elevator with Brian Brohm, whose jersey was honored before the game, and Reggie Bonnafon, who was the only other Louisville quarterback to beat Notre Dame before Jack Plummer pulled it off Saturday.

I was talking to Brohm about how he might lose the memory of that jersey moment depending on what happened later against Notre Dame. Looking back, I think the whole night will be seared in his memory, and that of a lot of fans, for a long time.

After the game, in the press box, I ran into Louisiville athletic director Josh Heird. His assessment: “That was fun.”

Heird will have a check to write after Louisville fans stormed the field. I don’t think he’s worried about it.

Louisville fans donated more than $50,000 in three minutes during an NIL "Flash Giving" opportunity in the second quarter. With crowds like that, money can start moving.

“Well, it’s a great day to be a Cardinal,” Jeff Brohm said after the game. “This was a huge victory for this team. A huge victory for this fan base. A huge victory for this university and all the leadership that does such a tremendous job of directing us in the right direction. Our fans were the twelfth man. We felt them. We felt them all week. I read Twitter a little bit and they were ready to go. They expected to win. They wanted to win. They came ready to win. So, I knew we needed to get them a win. They were fired up all week. They were fired up today. . . . The game was close for a while. We hung in there and fed off our fans. I just think our players came out in the second half and understood what it meant not only us but to the entire town, city, and university to win. They grinded it out.”

This was not a fluke. Louisville was the better team. Jawhar Jordan was the best player on the field Saturday night. His 143 yards rushing were the difference.

Louisville’s defense was the difference. A year after intercepting Hartman three times, they did it again Saturday, with two of the interceptions by safety Devin Neal, a transfer portal addition from Baylor who played high school football for a state championship team at Frederick Douglass in Lexington. Louisville sacked Hartman five times and held star running back Audric Estime to 20 yards on 10 carried. It held Notre Dame to 3 of 13 on third down.

“Nobody’s affected our quarterback quite like Louisville did,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. “So, you have to give them credit. They were stacking the box and saying that we’re going to refuse to let you run the ball. That means we have to make some plays in the passing game. We didn’t. We got to make sure we cannot let this happen again.”

For the record, Notre Dame’s opponents this season include Ohio State and Duke.

The Cardinals scored on their opening drive and, for a sixth straight game, held an opponent scoreless in the first quarter.

From there, it was a slow grind. But in the second half, Louisville simply was better. It pulled out to a 33-13 lead. And that lead could’ve been bigger, but with the game in hand, Brohm played it conservatively after some late turnovers, running the ball and settling for field goals.

And in the middle of all of that was Brohm, who shares the penchant his college coach and mentor, Howard Schnellenberger, had for big games, and preparing teams to match the moment.

“I like big games,” he said. “Our team likes big games. If you can’t get up for those then maybe this sport isn’t for you. You have to come ready to play. You have to do all the small things and you have to be aggressive. Yes, we didn’t run as many trick plays today because I thought this team was guarding us pretty well. It was hard to get yards. So we just started going to our best players. Jawhar (Jordan) and Jamari (Thrash) and let the others just feed off them. Jack was very, very efficient and took care of the ball, threw it away when he had to and extended plays with his feet. . . . You have to give our offensive line credit, they played very hard and don’t get a lot of credit. We ran the football against a solid defense. We found ways to get yards in the passing game in the second half. Our special teams came through. The defense was outstanding.”

That’s why you brought Brohm home. And why home, with fans storming and singing “All I do is win,” deep into the night, is a little bit different place this morning.

Copyright 2023 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.