Louisville Football: Brent Guy and the Louisville Defense Show Their Teeth at West Virginia

[Shannon]

#58 Rodney Gnat 6-3 253 DE JR Jacksonville, Fla. (Wolfson)
My predictions of the starting secondary finally being healthy for really the first time all season came true, other than #26 Andrew Robinson 5-9 191 CB SR Louisville, Ky. (Manual), not playing or starting in the WVU game. Looks like Robinson is still nicked up, and hopefully we can see him with some action in the Syracuse game this Saturday. But I do have to report, Raglin, Patrick, Mathews, and Thompson held down the secondary like a champ, and were ALL leading tacklers behind the leaders OLB Campa, ILB Dempsey, and DT Scott! I love it when a plan comes together!

I have been questioning our lack of diversity in defensive play calling for quite some time, and I posted in the secondary is finally healed article earlier in the week, that I was hoping having our secondary healthy for really the first time all season, if we would start loading the box. Well I can answer that question very quickly now with fact.

#38 Jon Dempsey 6-0 241 LB SR Collingswood, N.J. (College of the Sequoias)
I was almost amazed when I saw what Brent Guy was dialing up on defense, and I also saw an aspect of the Louisville Defense that I have not seen since 2006 from this squad.

Here are some play calling facts from the WVU game:

2nd Quarter 6:45, 3rd and 2:

Brent Guy loads the box with EIGHT, and stops WVU's Brown from scrambling for the 2 yard first down, and WVU punts.

3rd Quarter 3:50, 3rd and 7:

Brent Guy loads FIVE in the box with OLB Campa and OLB Heath lurking on the corner, with Campa smashing up the gut, that opens a hole for delayed blitzer ILB Jon Dempsey to run straight through the WVU line, and force a FG in the red zone.

4th Quarter 7:50, Brown goes out injured, rookie QB Smith comes in:

Brent Guy sees that the rookie QB is in, so first play he dials up 6 in the box and blitz.

Those are just a few specific plays that you can watch for yourself with the time of the play and the quarter for reference.

Now the bigger picture. All day long, we mostly stayed in the traditional 4-3-4, but there was a HUGE difference in the WVU game, and we saw it on the field. All day long, Brent Guy kept giving WVU different looks with our OLB's Campa and Heath in different areas, and it looks as if our LBs are reading the offense and communicating with one another. They were in different places all the time, and were flashing blitz often throughout the game.

This is DEFINATELY not the same Louisville defense we have been used to seeing all season thus far.

Looks like the days of the mundane standard 4-3-4 defense at Louisville we have had for the last two seasons, and the first eight games of this season, may be over. We held WVU in Mo-Town on Mountaineer Field to 17 points, and massacred the point spread. The players are hitting hard, reading the offense well, communicating with one another, and playing with great passion.

Not saying that we are going to set Syracuse, USF, or Rutgers on fire, but we definitely showed flashes of a REAL defense, and REAL defensive play calling in the WVU game. If the defense continues to improve like this, and we get some consistency on offense, this 2009 Cardinals team gives us some hope for some possible wins in the remaining three games for 2009, against Syracuse, USF, and Rutgers. I am predicting a Louisville win this Saturday at PJCS over Syracuse, and hopefully that will give us some momentum going into Tampa for Jim Leavitt's dangerous USF Bulls.