Jeff Brohm's homecoming at Louisville carries weighty expectations
Note: rankings for this series are set by TERSE, a D1 college football metric designed to imitate human rankings. These will shift as the offseason goes on, with more transfer data becoming available over time.
In 2006, Louisville made the deepest of its scattered runs at national championship contention across the last few decades. The Cardinals had previously finished 10-1-1 in 1990, a Fiesta Bowl team that featured sophomore Jeff Brohm in the role of backup quarterback, and 11-1 in 2004, a miraculous C-USA contender that would’ve had an outside Orange Bowl case if it had only held off Frank Gore in the final minute of a 41-38 loss to #3 Miami. But this team, returning quarterback Brian Brohm (coached by Jeff, his older brother) and seven other starters from an electrifying offense, seemed capable of finishing the job and giving Louisville its long-awaited shot at a title.
Louisville didn’t blink when it faced #15 Miami in mid-September, eviscerating the Hurricanes 31-7 on national television. The Cardinals climbed further with every week, rising to fifth in the country as they approached a pivotal November showdown with #3 West Virginia. The undefeated Mountaineers were on a similarly meteoric rise, having defeated every opponent by at least 17 points, but only one underdog could emerge as a true title contender. Behind 354 passing yards from a transcendent Brian Brohm, Louisville ensured they were that team, slaying the demons of that 2004 loss to Miami. They also put a blown 17-point lead against WVU the previous season in the past, firmly showing that this team was different.
The following week, the Cardinals blew an 18-point lead and lost to #15 Rutgers.
They haven’t always been at their alma mater—Jeff’s spent the last fifteen years at FAU, Illinois, UAB, Western Kentucky, and most recently Purdue, while Brian played eight years in the NFL and CFL before joining his brother at the last two stops—but the Brohms know all about the hope, and the heartbreak, that comes with Louisville football. They’ve been right there for quite a lot of it, and Jeff was just a couple hours’ drive away in 2013, getting a front-row seat to another potential non-power title contender that lost its shot on a last-minute loss to a Florida team, this one getting its heart broken by UCF’s Blake Bortles.
The Cardinals haven’t really been back to that level since. The 2016 team skyrocketed to the top five early in the season, lost to #5 Clemson, and climbed back before getting blown out by Houston to kill their CFP chances for good; the list of one-loss teams in program history remains at five, however, with Jeff Brohm involved with three of them and close by for a fourth1. But this team rarely follows much of a trajectory—it’s a bewildering 31-28 in the five seasons following those all-time peaks—and they’re due to come out of nowhere and nearly turn the college football world on its head sometime soon.
Accordingly, Jeff and Brian are both back after an odyssey through multiple levels of football, the former hired as the program’s new coach, the latter following him as its new OC/QB coach after filling the same role at Purdue. There’s natural excitement with this move, bringing home the prodigal sons identified with so much of Louisville’s past success, but it brings with it a degree of apprehensiveness. The Brohms are associated with glory above the Cardinals’ usual station, yes, but also with the anguish of watching those title chances slip away. It’s hard to get your hopes up after seeing them dashed so many times.
Compared to everything else Jeff Brohm and his staff have to navigate, though, getting a fiercely loyal following on board for another round of the Louisville Fan Experience seems comparatively easy. They’re taking over a program that, since Brohm first arrived here in 1989, has seen eight head coaches, five seasons of double-digit wins, two seasons of double-digit losses, and six teams that reached the top ten before ultimately falling short. Louisville’s instability is second only to Auburn, from two chaotic Bobby Petrino stints (2003-06 and 2014-18) to the messy, confusing Scott Satterfield tenure that local rival Cincinnati mercifully ended for equally confusing reasons. In recent years, they’ve been defined by wasted potential, unbelievably landing two separate quarterbacks who passed and rushed for 19+ touchdowns in a season…and going 9-4 and 6-7 in those years2.
The Brohm hire makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons, and his ability to right a ship that’s been rocking for years is one of them. At Purdue, he unlocked potential that had been brimming for nearly twenty years, claiming the program’s first division title and winning the most games in a two-season span there since 1997-98. Now he’s back home with a team that’s had all the pieces in the past, but has never put them together quite well enough.
There’s hope, so much of it, with a rare Louisville hire designed to stabilize things, rather than shake them up further. Brohm is a natural, strong choice to try to bring the Cardinals back to their ceiling, and possibly break through it. But there’s always disaster lurking just around the corner here, and if things go as well as they seem likely to, Louisville will run up against it sooner or later. Taking the next step, and finding consistency at a program that’s only ever known the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat in the same breath, is how Brohm can set himself apart and build something new at a punchy program that knows it’s capable of great things.
The Last Five Years
It’s been a rollercoaster. In 2018, the Cardinals lost two-time Heisman finalist Lamar Jackson and instantly cratered to the bottom of the ACC, losing their last seven games by an average score of 57-21 and buying out Bobby Petrino for over $14 million. They immediately stumbled upon one of the few dual-threat QBs in college football history to rival Jackson’s talent, with Malik Cunningham averaging 11.6 yards per pass and 4.0 yards per carry as they surged back to the forefront of the conference. Throw in Javian Hawkins (1525 rushing yards) and Tutu Atwell (1272 receiving yards) and Louisville had one of the best big threes in football going into 2020…whereupon they finished 4-7, embarking on an underwhelming three-season stretch to end Scott Satterfield’s tenure. The only thing they haven’t been lately is as superb as they’re capable of.
2022 and 2023
The Cardinals shouldn’t be too wary of another 2018-like collapse after losing Cunningham. While his first season as a starter was spectacular and the next two saw further achievement (39 passing touchdowns, 27 rushing touchdowns), his final year at Louisville was something of a letdown, with career lows in passing yards, yards per attempt, and passing touchdowns. For once, the Cardinals leaned more on their defense, which finished 11th in points allowed per game behind the sensational Yasir Abdullah (14.5 tackles for loss, 9.5 sacks, 2 interceptions, 4 forced fumbles) and Yaya Diaby (14 TFL, 9 sacks). The whole unit was remarkably deep, tying for the fewest points allowed in the ACC despite Abdullah being their only first- or second-team selection.
That depth is vital as the defense tries to hold steady, losing five starters and 46% of its production going into 2023. Brohm is making a few tweaks to switch from a 4-3 to a 4-2-5, which will emphasize the experienced secondary: Jarvis Brownlee Jr., MJ Griffin, Josh Minkins, and Quincy Riley combined for 193 tackles, 18 pass breakups, and 8 interceptions, and all are back this season. Former Purdue and Cal quarterback Jake Plummer has command of the offense, though Louisville will probably move the ball more with Jawhar Jordan (815 rushing yards, 5.7 yards per carry) and promising second-year star Maurice Turner (314 yards as a true freshman).
The Next Five Years
I don’t have an explanation for you about how I think Brohm’s going to get Louisville to a championship level. I obviously think it’s a possibility—he’s a great coach, the top of the ACC is as weak as it’s been in a while, and this is a program that’s clearly capable of reaching that level—but I feel certain of it for different reasons. It seems bound to happen every once in a while here, regardless of the circumstances that lead such a team to arise.
It would obviously be presumptive to say Brohm’s main priority should be figuring out how to make the next step when the Cardinals reach those dizzying heights again. There’s a long way to go from where they are now, and nobody’s going to call for his head if they do make a run at the title before suffering another agonizing defeat. Expectations are, obviously, not at a CFP level. Regular top 25 appearances and occasional ACC contention is more of a realistic standard at Louisville.
But Brohm also knows as well as anybody that this fanbase has been through a lot. And he also knows that the Cardinals keep finding a way to punch up, to master the death-defying dance of close-game luck and big-game success to position themselves on the brink of ascendancy, before it all inevitably falls apart. He’s been a part of nearly every unlikely chapter in Louisville’s improbable, recurring bids for an almost-unthinkable championship. If and when the time comes, he might be just the man to write another, the first that doesn’t have to end in heartbreak.
He was about sixteen months old in 1972, when Lee Corso’s Cardinals embarked on a 9-1 season blemished only by 4-7 Tulsa. Hard to blame him for missing that one.
There have only been four other such seasons by P5 quarterbacks this century. Their teams went 9-4 (Tim Tebow, 2007), 14-0 (Cam Newton, 2010), 11-2 (Johnny Manziel, 2012), and 12-2 (Jalen Hurts, 2019).