Louisville walked out of its ACC opener with more than a ranked win. The Cardinals beat No. 16 SMU 41-31 on Saturday at L&N Stadium in front of an announced crowd of 50,199, and they did it with the kind of offense that keeps flashing big-play potential while still leaving room to grow.
Quarterback Lincoln Kienholz liked the atmosphere, even if he thought the building could have been fuller.
“The crowd showed up for sure today,” Kienholz said. “I did see some empty seats.
I think we can fit some more people in our stadium. It was an awesome environment.”
That fits the picture Louisville has painted through the early part of the season: explosive, productive and not quite polished. The Cardinals finished with 442 total yards, hit on 12 plays of 15 yards or more and kept their turnover count at zero.
They’re averaging 46 points a game. Still, Kienholz wasn’t pretending everything was clean.
“I think we can put it all together eventually,” Kienholz said. “I think it just takes more practice, more chemistry on the field during practice. But hopefully soon we can put it all together and play a complete game.”
The Cardinals had their share of missed chances, too, with drops, overthrows and penalties showing up again in the win. Louisville now turns to Wake Forest, which visits at noon Sept. 26.
The biggest swing in the game came on the defensive side, where Louisville finally found a way to slow SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings. Tennessee transfer Kaleb Beasley was central to that effort.
Playing safety in just his second year at the position after moving over from cornerback, Beasley had a career-high 10 tackles and intercepted Jennings twice. The final takeaway came with 1:31 left in the fourth quarter and effectively shut the door.
“He wants to win and he's coachable,” Brohm said. “So when I or someone else gets on him, he responds, looks you right in the eye, shakes his head and he's going to go out and try to do it. I knew we could count on him to play until the end.”
Louisville’s defense wasn’t spotless. SMU still piled up 479 yards of total offense, and the Cardinals allowed 11 plays of 10 or more yards.
The unit also drew five penalties for 51 yards. But the Cardinals did enough in the key spots, especially against a quarterback who entered averaging 383.5 passing yards per game and with SMU putting up 566.0 yards per game as a team.
Jennings had beaten Louisville twice before, including one game with 300 passing yards and another with 100 rushing yards. This time, he finished with 222 passing yards and just 35 rushing yards. Louisville also got to him in the backfield, with Clev Lubin recording 1.5 sacks and Tyler Thompson assisting on a sack right before Beasley’s second interception.
“We’ve got to continue to figure out what's the right package and when to be aggressive, when not to, all those things and work through it,” Brohm said. “But our players want to work, they want to win. We'll look at this video and try to get better, be as more consistent as we can.”
If Louisville’s defense delivered when it mattered, the penalty problem remained impossible to ignore. The Cardinals were flagged 11 times for 110 yards, their worst showing yet this season. They had 82 penalty yards on nine flags against Ole Miss and 90 yards on seven penalties against Villanova, so the trend is only getting louder.
This latest total was also the first time Louisville has topped 100 penalty yards since the 2025 opener against Eastern Kentucky, when it had 106 yards on 12 errors. Of the 11 penalties against SMU, only three were pre-snap. Four were personal fouls, and two more came for unnecessary roughness and unsportsmanlike conduct.
The numbers also place Louisville among the ACC’s more penalized teams entering Week 3. The only teams averaging more penalty yards per game were Wake Forest at 95.7 and Syracuse at 109.7, with Syracuse set to host Louisville on Oct. 17.
Brohm said the issue is getting addressed, but not solved yet.
“Both sides have to clean that up, and we’ve got to be way smarter,” Brohm said. “We'll address that in great detail and try to get better.”
Still, the win matters. SMU was picked second in the ACC preseason poll, Louisville third, and the Cardinals now own a conference-opening victory over a ranked opponent that puts them in strong position early in the race for a trip back to Charlotte, N.C., for the ACC championship game in December.
The challenge now is keeping that edge once the league schedule settles in. Wake Forest is next, and it arrives after pushing No.
5 Miami before falling 33-20 on Friday night. The Demon Deacons have an explosive offense of their own, which means Louisville’s defense will get tested again fast.
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