Louisville got its first real look at itself on Saturday morning, and Jeff Brohm didn’t sugarcoat what he saw.
The Cardinals held their opening scrimmage of fall camp inside L&N Stadium, a closed, game-like workout that gave the staff its first chance to measure where things stand ahead of the 2026 season. Afterward, Brohm met with local media and said the offense had the better of the day while the defense took the brunt of the mistakes.
“Had a good scrimmage today, it something that we needed which was really good,” Brohm said. “Got a lot of situations, a lot of things we needed to see.
I thought overall, like everything, good and bad. I was not real happy with the defense so it was good that they struggled.
Gave up way too many big plays, had a couple busts there that really cost us so that needs to be fixed. But it's very fixable, so it's a good wake up call there for us.
"On offense we did make some plays. I thought Lincoln played well.
We made some plays at receiver. The tight ends did a solid job.
O-line played fairly decent. Probably threw the ball more a little bit on this scrimmage than we had but overall good things and bad like everything.
"We just got to get back to work. We'll play a good opponent that'll test us in a lot of ways especially with the tempo and the quarterback and running back. Our defensive will have to play way better.”
Brohm’s takeaway was clear: the Cardinals have some cleaning up to do on defense, but there was also enough on offense to leave the staff with positive notes. He specifically pointed to Lincoln’s play, along with contributions from the receivers, tight ends and offensive line.
Louisville will be back at it with another scrimmage on Friday evening.
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