College Football Rankings: Top 25 after spring practice
Louisville Cardinals
2016: 9-4,
Coming as a shock to no one, Louisville Cardinals quarterback and 2016 Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson looked every bit as dynamic and explosive as he did last year during his team’s spring game. He also showed some looks that we didn’t see much of from him in 2016, namely him not exclusively working in the shotgun and/or spread and trying to develop more traditional quarterback elements.
Jackson obviously is the greatest strength of this Louisville team. That type of talent isn’t found every day and the team, for the most part, will go as he goes. However, there are reasons to be concerned about this Cardinals team, starting on defense. Their defense wasn’t elite a year ago by any measure. Now they’re a unit forced to contend with the losses of some of their best playmakers, namely Devonte Field and Josh Harvey-Clemmons. If the defense underperforms, the task becomes much harder for Jackson and the offense.
Sneakily, though, Jackson and the offense are another reason for concern. Louisville’s offensive line was shaky down the stretch and put Jackson into bad situations. But also at play was the fact that defenses largely figured out the Cardinals offense — perhaps a reason for the more diverse looks for Jackson this spring. If they can’t improve the line as they’ve tried to this spring and if they can’t effectively expand their playbook, Louisville has potential to drop out of the top 25 college football rankings quickly.