The Louisville Cardinals should be one of the most exciting teams to watch in college football. Here are five reasons they can win the national title.
If last year proved anything to college football fans, it is that a team with an outstanding quarterback can win the College Football Playoff even without his program being able to bring in top-10 recruiting classes annually. Deshaun Watson moved mountains for the Clemson Tigers. Could Lamar Jackson do the same thing for the Louisville Cardinals?
Jackson is coming off a Heisman Trophy season as a true sophomore. He electrified college football with his dual-threat playmaking abilities last year in September and October to win the prestigious award in a landslide.
Obviously, he’s not the only player Cardinals head coach Bobby Petrino has at Louisville, but Jackson is easily the most well-known. Admittedly, the Cardinals are a bit of a dark horse to win the ACC Atlantic as well as make it to the fourth annual College Football Playoff.
While this is a tournament built for the blue-bloods, Louisville isn’t just an elite basketball school anymore. The Cardinals have been able to hang with and beat anybody since the turn of the century. It will be tough, but here are five reasons Louisville can win the 2017 National Championship on the gridiron.
5. Last season didn’t end the way Louisville wanted
For a while there, the Cardinals were definitely in the mix to win the ACC Atlantic and reach the College Football Playoff. Not to discredit what a great first year it was for Justin Fuente in Blacksburg, but the ACC Coastal Champion Virginia Tech Hokies weren’t going to beat whichever team came out of the Atlantic.
Louisville was 7-1 through Halloween. The Cardinals most signature win was a drubbing of the rival Florida State Seminoles at home on September 17, 63-20. Louisville lost by one score to eventual national champion Clemson on the road in Death Valley on October 1, 42-36. Then, the calendar flipped to November and the Cardinals’ playoff hype train toppled over.
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Louisville might have defeated Atlantic Division rivals Boston College and Wake Forest to close out ACC play at an impressive 7-1, but that wasn’t enough to win the Atlantic since the Cardinals lost the head-to-head tiebreaker to Clemson. The Cardinals would lose its final three games of the season: on the road against Group of 5 Houston, at home to in-state rival Kentucky and a shellacking at the hands of LSU in the Citrus Bowl.
From 7-1 at Halloween to 9-4 at season’s end is not how Louisville wanted that 2016 season of theirs to end. This was a team that had the talent to win 11 games and almost certainly 10. The Cardinals were still ranked No. 21 at the end of the year, but a poor November has to leave this team wanting to do better this fall.