Special delivery: How Louisville’s special teams are scoring big and breaking records

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- You can win a football game a lot of ways.

You can bleed clock with a 14-play drive. You can stuff a goal-line stand. You can even pray for a favorable replay review, and the football gods might oblige.

Or, if you're Louisville, you can let a 5-foot-10-inch magician from Mobile field a punt in traffic and vanish into the ether. Or flip the field with a long punt. Or sap an opponent's will with a 57-yard field goal.

The Cardinals have done all three in their first three games of the 2025 season from a special teams unit that has sparked the team like a shot of espresso or a twist of jalapeno.

Caullin Lacy has returned two punts for touchdowns. He leads the nation in punt return yards per game (77) and is second in punt return average (33). Kicker Cooper Ranvier is 6-for-6 on field goals, and distance kicker Nick Keller hit a school-record 57-yarder last week against Bowling Green.

All of which has made Louisville special teams coach Karl Maslowski a happy man. But he throws much of the credit back to head coach Jeff Brohm, who has given him the time – and talent – to make things happen.

"We don't just have freshmen and backups on there," Maslowski said. "... Coach Brohm has told me 'Use who you've got to use to get what you need to get done."

Brohm said former Cardinal assistant Greg Nord visited practice recently and was surprised how much time was spent on special teams.

"We do work at it," Brohm said. "... I think Coach Maslowski's done a good job. We studied the trends and what's worked, what's not. I think our kicking game has been consistent. … And I think with Caullin in the return game we've got a weapon, and we've blocked well."

Lacy's 75-yard punt return touchdown last week — his second of 75-plus yards this season — made Louisville history. No Cardinal had ever done that in a single year.

In addition to his punt returns, he's also averaged 35.6 yards per kickoff return. Just as impressive: he's the first player in school history with two career 100-yard punt return games. And they are different disciplines.

"I think catching a punt, especially at this level or in the NFL, is one of the hardest football skills there is," Maslowski said. "The ball doesn't follow a normal trajectory, right? When it hits its peak, depending on where the nose of the ball is, it can change its direction of flight. So it's not like just being a center fielder. It's a little bit more than that. That in and of itself makes it harder than a kickoff, where it just it follows an easy arc. Then the other part is it's shorter kicks. So, the gunners, the cover guys, get to you a whole lot faster. You have to have a little more courage just to catch it, and then the vision and spacing are different when you get there."

Maslowski added that Lacy's ability to break tackles also has made him tough to deal with in the return game.

Against Bowling Green, Lacy piled up 268 all-purpose yards — eighth-most in school history — with three punt returns, two kickoff returns, and eight receptions for 97 yards.

Maslowski made it clear that Lacy doesn't fly solo. Against Bowling Green, Louisville's gunners — Rodney Johnson and Justin Agu — sealed the return lanes by physically driving their blockers out of bounds.

"They were just kicking butt up and down the field," Maslowski said. "By the time Caullin got his balance, there was 15 yards of open space."

With blockers like that — and Lacy's vision — teams may soon start punting away from him. That means Maslowski will have to get creative again.

"We're preparing for that," he said. "You can't shut him down completely. We'll find ways."

Louisville hasn't just relied on Lacy's spark. It has gotten some consistency from its kicking game – even if different legs are providing it.

Freshman kicker Cooper Ranvier is a perfect 6-for-6 on field goal attempts to start his career — the first Cardinal to do so. Junior Nick Keller drilled a 57-yarder last week, breaking the school record. And there's a third kicker, freshman Carson Hilbert, a Trinity product whose dad, Jon, kicked for Louisville in the late 1990s before a couple of season in the NFL, reportedly can hit from beyond 60 as well.

Maslowski called the situation "fun competition."

"We've got selfless guys waiting for their opportunity, and that forces the other guys to fight to keep their jobs," he said. "It's like rotating linebackers — doesn't mean one guy's out forever. We just use whoever gives us the best shot."

Keller's record-setter? "I think he was good from 61," Maslowski said. "He was hot. Almost put his kickoffs through the uprights."

Like every unit, Brohm says special teams will face tougher challenges, beginning on Saturday at Pittsburgh.

"We've done some good things," he said. "Now we need to keep doing them."