No. 23 Louisville opens ACC play on Saturday with a heavyweight test that already feels like a separator.
The Cardinals host No. 16 SMU in a top-25 matchup that could shape the conference race, especially with both teams coming in as established ACC contenders and neither scheduled to face Miami in the regular season.
That reality gives this one extra weight. If either SMU or Louisville is going to take down the Hurricanes, it would have to happen in Charlotte in the ACC Championship Game.
If Miami gets there, only one other spot would be available. That makes Saturday afternoon in Louisville feel like a swing game before the calendar even gets to October.
SMU arrives at 2-0 and already has one conference win in hand after surviving a messy opener at Florida State. The Mustangs followed that with a 56-10 win over UC Davis, a game that turned into a Kevin Jennings showcase. He threw for 337 yards and five touchdowns in just one half before the backups finished things off.
Jennings has now started against Louisville twice, and this will be his third crack at the Cardinals. He enters with an undefeated mark in ACC play this season and a 2-0 record against Louisville as SMU’s starter.
The recent history between these teams leans the Mustangs’ way, too. Rhett Lashlee is 2-0 against Jeff Brohm in ACC games, and both wins carried real weight.
Two years ago, SMU went into Louisville and won 34-27 after breaking a fourth-quarter tie with an 11-play, 89-yard drive that ended up producing the game-winner. Last season, SMU handled a battered Louisville team 38-6 in Dallas, a result that extended Brohm’s conference slide and left the Cardinals with a 4-4 ACC mark, their worst since he arrived.
Since joining the league, Lashlee’s team has been a problem for everybody, going 15-2 in conference games. The coaching matchup is still one of the ACC’s best on paper, but the results have clearly tilted SMU’s way lately.
Louisville, though, has found a new gear on offense behind Lincoln Kienholz. The Ohio State transfer has fit cleanly into Jeff Brohm’s system, throwing for at least 300 yards in both games while accounting for seven total touchdowns, four through the air and three on the ground, with no interceptions. He also leads the team in rushing yards with 111 and ranks second in rushing attempts with 20.
The Cardinals’ offense has taken off after a slow start against Ole Miss. Louisville managed only six points in the first half of that game, then piled up 91 points over the next six quarters. Kienholz has also built strong connections with portal additions Tre Richardson and Lawayne McCoy, and that has already produced multiple 50-plus yard touchdown passes.
Jennings brings a different kind of firepower. He has kept building on his place in SMU history while chasing a 21-7 record as the Mustangs’ starter.
He leads active ACC players in career passing yards with 8,476 and career total yards with 9,072. Through two games this season, he sits first nationally in yards per attempt at 14.8 and second nationally in yards per game at 383.5.
SMU has already pushed Jennings into the Heisman conversation, and he has backed that up so far. Saturday may be his best shot yet at a statement performance.
The game is set for Saturday, Sept. 19 at 3:30 p.m. ET at L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium in Louisville, Kentucky. It will air on ESPN2.
Prediction: Louisville -1.5
This is the kind of spot where Brohm has to deliver the sort of signature win that has defined his best seasons. Louisville has already taken big swings under him, including wins over Notre Dame in 2023, Clemson in 2024 and then-No.
2 Miami last season. With the schedule front-loaded with major games this year, and with the loss to Ole Miss still hanging there, this is a must-win type of afternoon for the Cardinals.
In Other News...
Louisvilles Second Quarter Exposed One Concern And One Encouraging Sign
Louisvilles second quarter against Villanova offered a pretty clean snapshot of where this team is still sorting things out early in the season. The defense had a coverage bust on a pick route that left the slot receiver free down the sideline, and the offense showed both its promise and its rough edges in the same stretch, with motion helping create better looks while the blocking still had some plays that needed cleaner execution.
There were encouraging signs inside the chaos, too. Lincoln Kienholz showed the kind of improvisation that can keep a drive alive when the initial picture breaks down, and DJ Wallers aggressive tackling stood out as the defense tried to settle in. Even so, the bigger question from that quarter is whether Louisville can tighten the little details fast enough, because the film had more than one example of a unit making things harder on itself. [Read more 🡒]
Louisville Faces An ACC Test That Could Shape Jeff Brohms Season
Louisville is settling into the middle stretch of a three-game homestand, and the timing of this weekends visit from SMU makes it feel like more than just the first ACC game on the schedule. It is also the kind of conference test that can tell you something about where Jeff Brohms team really stands, especially with the Cardinals trying to build momentum in front of their own crowd after a solid start to the home slate.
SMU arrives with enough league credibility to make this one matter beyond the standings, and plenty of observers have already weighed in with predictions, analysis and betting angles. For Louisville, the bigger picture is straightforward: conference games tend to sharpen the margins quickly, and this one comes at a point when the Cardinals could use a performance that helps define the rest of the season rather than merely surviving the opener. [Read more 🡒]
Louisville Just Got An Encouraging Keyjuan Brown Sign Before SMU
Louisvilles buildup to its Week 3 ACC matchup with SMU got a timely boost this week, as the Cardinals moved into game prep with a little more optimism around their backfield. Keyjuan Brown, who was injured in Week 2, was not on Louisvilles first injury report for the game, a promising sign for a team that enters the matchup slightly favored and could use its top runner back in the fold.
Jeff Brohm had already sounded hopeful about Browns status, and the early reporting only strengthens the sense that Louisville is trending in the right direction ahead of Saturday. With SMU on deck and conference play beginning to matter, having Brown available would give the Cardinals a much steadier offensive setup as they try to keep their momentum going. [Read more 🡒]