The second quarter brought a noticeable shift for SMU and Louisville: the pace on offense dipped, the defenses tightened, and both teams started winning some of the big moments on third and fourth down.
Even with that, Louisville still found a way to cash in on a busted coverage. Koen Entringer continued to struggle in coverage, and that opened the door for another easy touchdown.
Louisville brought pressure with man coverage behind the blitz, while Jennings used two players in dummy motion to try to sort out the coverage. The look suggested zone before the snap, but the defense actually sent the blitz, and Jennings seemed to hold the ball while he worked through the field.
He kept gaining depth until he found a receiver crossing the middle.
Entringer’s role on the play was the real problem. He never seemed to track the receiver he was assigned to cover.
He glanced over before the snap, then never really looked back, and he didn’t react at the snap either. That allowed the receiver to run freely across the field before Entringer collided with a different receiver near the goal line.
By the end of it, he was roughly 15 yards away from his man.
Louisville also had a second-down call that didn’t make much sense in the moment. Needing just one yard, Jeff Brohm dialed up a play that sent the ball five yards behind the line to gain.
It also played right into what the defense wanted. SMU was getting upfield and disrupting plays in the backfield, so the answer there was to attack downhill or use real misdirection.
The jet sweep to the bottom of the screen was already accounted for, which made the whole thing even tougher to sell.
Mark Ivey answered with a smart piece of disguise on a different snap. SMU likes to line up in trips to the wide side of the field and spread defenses out, and Ivey clearly had a plan for how to muddy the picture.
At the snap, it looked like Louisville was in man coverage with Kaleb Beasley as the deep safety, while the rest of the defensive backs matched up across from receivers. But Beasley started creeping toward the middle right before the snap, and once the ball was snapped, Antonio Watts dropped deep while the defensive end to the wide side also bailed into coverage.
That turned the picture into Tampa 2, with Beasley and Watts sharing deep zone duties. The corner at the top of the screen, believed to be Tayon Holloway, did a strong job forcing the receiver toward the boundary, and that threw off Jennings’ timing. The confusion led to a bad decision, and Beasley picked it off with what amounted to the easiest interception of his career.
Louisville also unveiled a new wrinkle that nearly paid off with a touchdown. As teams kept keying on the running backs, Brohm used motion to make the play look like a screen pass they had already shown earlier in the game, then turned it into a designed run for Lincoln Kienholz around the corner.
Lance Robinson, lined up at left tackle, got a rare chance to go one-on-one with a corner in space. He handled the assignment well, maybe even a little too well, because he gained excellent depth on his pull.
He had enough room to cut off the tight ends, but the play was drawn up for him to get that depth so he wouldn’t get trapped if SMU worked to the tight ends. Kienholz had to throttle down and cut behind him, which sent him into the safety.
It was a perfectly blocked play, and one that fit a quarterback who has good instincts as a runner. The hope is that Louisville keeps leaning on it.
The quarter also featured the kind of third-down snap that keeps showing up as a frustration. Louisville rushed four and dropped into coverage, which in itself was fine, and Clev Lubin won his edge rush rep.
The issue was what happened behind him. The linebackers kept dropping well beyond the first-down marker, which gave the offense an easy target to move the chains.
That’s the tradeoff Louisville has to clean up. On third down, if the defense is going to rely on pressure from the front, the underneath drops have to sit at the sticks. Otherwise, offenses will keep taking the simple completion and moving on.
In Other News...
Louisville Is Surging For An Elite PG But The Race Is Tight
Louisvilles push for the 2027 class has put the program squarely in the mix for one of the top young point guards in the country. Reese Alston has already taken in several major stops, including Purdue, LSU, Tennessee and Kentucky, and the Cardinals have done enough to stay in the conversation as the recruiting battle takes shape. Analysts from On3 Sports and Fox Sports have both pointed to Louisville as a program building real momentum here.
What makes this one worth watching is how crowded the field remains, even with the Cardinals gaining traction. Louisville has locked in one of Alstons official visits and has made his final seven, which is the kind of position every staff wants this early in the process. For now, the Cardinals have put themselves in a strong place with an elite lead guard target, but the race is still open enough that every next step matters. [Read more 🡒]
Louisville Gets An Early Test That Could Define Its National Hype
Louisvilles early-season spotlight figures to burn a little brighter with a high-profile nonconference test on the calendar, and the timing could hardly be more demanding. The Cardinals are already navigating a packed stretch that includes a Thanksgiving-week tournament in Las Vegas, so by the time a marquee opponent arrives in town, they will have been asked to show depth, poise and staying power against quality competition.
Texas trip to Louisville adds another layer to a schedule that is built to answer real questions fast. A nationally televised meeting in early December will give both programs a clear early read on where they stand, and Louisville still has another major challenge waiting right after it, with a game against defending national champion Michigan in Detroit soon after the Texas matchup. [Read more 🡒]
Louisvilles Fast Start Is Raising A Much Bigger Question
Louisvilles offense kept finding answers again, even as the Cardinals worked through another game that tested both sides of the ball. Multiple running backs chipped in, Kienholz helped steady the attack, and the result was another reminder that this teams start is not built on one carry or one breakout performance, but on a group effort that has the Cardinals sitting at 2-1 with a narrow loss to a top-ranked opponent already in the rearview mirror.
The bigger question now is how sustainable that formula will be when the schedule tightens up. Louisville has shown enough explosiveness to matter, but it also gave up too much on the ground and spent real stretches defending short fields, even while coming up with timely stops to stay in the game. With Wake Forest next, the Cardinals are good enough to keep winning around the edges, but the margin for error is starting to shrink. [Read more 🡒]