October 8, 2007

No bowl for the Cardinals?

At the beginning of the season, I think most Louisville Cardinal football fans wondered WHERE the team would be playing in a bowl game. Six weeks into the season, I think it's time to begin asking IF the Cardinals will even make to ANY bowl game this year.

Louisville layed another egg this week, giving up 582 yards of offense in a 44-35 loss to Utah.

The same UofL team that many predicted would be playing in a BCS game now sport a 3-3 record, are unranked in any of the college football polls, and ranked #135 by computer guru Jeff Sagarin's BCS ratings.

Side Note: I'm not going to take the time to point out that I didn't have Louisville ranked in my pre-pre-season top twenty five, that I thought they would lose at least three games, and that they would not be better than Rutgers, USF, and WVU.

Lousville has to win three more games to become bowl eligible. Looking at the schedule, that means they need to beat both Pitt (2-3) and Rutgers (3-2) at home and then must beat at least one of the Big East "beasts" on the road. For the Cards, that means winning at Cincinnati (6-0), at UConn (5-0), at South Florida (5-0), or at West Virginia (5-1), to become bowl eligible.

Tom Heiser of the Louisville Courier-Journal says the doesn't deserve to go to a bowl game.

Simply put, if you surrender 582 yards to a hinky Utah offense and, in the process, fall for another fake kick (a pie in the face would be less improbable), then you deserve to join the wretched roster of teams that don't qualify for bowl games.

Heiser, who gave up on first year coach Steve Kragthorpe weeks and weeks ago, called the Utah loss a "mindboggling travesty."

I cannot hammer home or re-emphasize my utter loss of faith in Coach Kragthorpe and the coaching staff. They have not solved any of the glaring shortcomings that have plagued the team since Murray State's opening drive. Kragthorpe's laconic refrain of correcting mistakes and being a better football team are becoming laughable. (Read Brian Bennett's Q & A with Coach K -- you'd get more information out of Edward Teller if you quizzed him as to the ongoings under those bleachers.)

The defense is atrocious; there's no way the offense can keep pace. Brian Brohm is working under the assumption that the team MUST score 40 points and hope for a few breaks in order to win. Thirty-five points will not get the job done, and that is a mindboggling travesty.

Former Louisville Courier-Journal sportswriter Charles Springer blasts Kragthorpe...

When Steve Kragthorpe addresses questions, you get the feeling that he's holding something back or, worse, that he might not know the answers.

So... how does this happen? How does a team with so much... hype/firepower/hype/potential/hype... end up staring down the barrel of a losing season?

Charles Springer is 100% spot-on correct:

There is obviously a problem with discipline. You see it in the mounting number of players who are being dismissed or suspended. You see it in the disorganization on defense, when so many opposing receivers scamper untouched to the end zone. You see it when a U of L player throws a football at a tackler and when another player gives an obscene gesture to the opposing crowd.

You have to wonder what effect the Orange Bowl title, the top 10 poll rankings and all the media coverage had on the team. My gut feeling is that too many players were unable to manage all the adoration that came their way. They knew they were good, listening to the media, their fans and buddies telling them how great they were for eight months.

The afterglow of all this success is a major part of the problem. Here comes a new coach with a different coaching philosophy. The new sheriff does things differently. His offensive and defensive schemes are not quite the same. He threatened the players' comfort level...

...

College kids can react negatively or positively to change. After all, they are still teenagers, in many cases. Unfortunately, what we are seeing appears to be a negative reaction. Are they being developed in an environment where they can mature or have they just resorted to pouting?

You had better believe that discontent translates into trouble on the field. While they are being expected to embrace the new playbook, too many of them may doubt the system. They don't respect their opponents. They line up wrong on offense or defense. They draw penalties and they make a gift of lots of points to opposing teams.

This team knew it was headed to a BCS bowl, so it never had to buy into the new coach and new system. Hell, they were the Louisville freakin' Cardinals, baby - and they are ENTITLED to win. And when things started going downhill, the vast majority of the younger players on this team jumped off the bandwagon, leaving the seniors and their new coach holding the bag.

In many ways, this year's Louisville Cardinal team reminds me of the Chan Gailey era Dallas Cowboys - Super Bowl or bust. When the team was winning... great. But when the losses came, players would give up on the team, sit and pout, or start pointing fingers.

In short, Louisville drank its own Kool-Aid.

Can the UofL season be resurrected? At this point, I don't think so.

Louisville would have vastly improve on defense to even have a chance. UofL is ranked #99 in the nation for total defense.

UofL is dead-last in the Big East for Pass Efficiency Defense, Pass Defense, and Tackles for Loss, and are near the bottom in Rushing Defense, Total Defense, Scoring Defense, and Sacks. The only team that plays worse defense in the Big East is Syracuse, and -- least ye forget -- the Orange already laid the wood to the Cardinals.

Heiser agrees - there is no saving this defense this year.

The defense has demonstrated an overarching incapability of lining up in the correct formation, tackling in the open field, stopping third-down conversions, and preventing the opponent from ginsuing the coverage and marching up and down the field. How are we supposed to believe that, after "simplifying the calls" after the Middle Tennessee State game, that the Cardinal defense will pull itself up by its collective bootstraps and give the offense a chance to play ahead for a change?

Nope, this team is done. After the Kentucky loss I said now we would see what Louisville is really made of and now we have: The Cards are a rag-tag bunch of "BCS or Bust" kool-aid drinkers that will be lucky to reach .500.

The majority of the players have given up on the season and the few guys that are putting forth the effort can't carry the load. This team didn't learn anything after the Middle Tennessee debacle and the coaches haven't found a way to fix the defense since. And... maybe it can't be fixed. The coaches surely aren't talking about it.

The good news? It looks like the UofL coaching staff will have plenty of time this winter to fix it... while everyone else is playing bowl games.

Over at Card Chronicle, well... bring on the basketball.

Expect of heavy onslaught of college basketball preview material this week because I really don't want to talk about this anymore.

Posted by Kevin Donahue

Share|