The Cardinal Countdown: 1 Day Until Kickoff

#1 PJ Mbanasor

Class: RS Senior

Ht/Wt: 6-1/203

Position: Defensive Back

Hometown: Pflugerville, TX

Twitter: N/A

Thoughts: PJ Mbanasaurus Rex (TM) was a key backup last season in a secondary that needed some, shall we say, direction? PJ came to the Cards via Oklahoma and was looking to contribute immediately. PJ played in all twelve games, grabbed 18 tackles, a couple pass break ups and one Jim Boeheim, fittingly against Syracuse…

I pegged Mbanasor as a starter this year, thinking his experience would be a benefit to the secondary that was coming off a challenging season. As I spoke about yesterday Chandler Jones ended up winning that spot but PJ will get plenty of reps on the outside. Mbanasor can play man coverage well enough that he isn’t putting the team at a disadvantage, and has enough speed that he can often make up a lost step on the outside. What goes well with speed and coverage? Being a great interviewer of course…

Best of luck to PJ this year as he finishes out his career with the Cards. Secondary is a group that’s still a big question mark to me so I’d love to see Mbanasor step up and make sure we roll 5-6 deep in that group with no dropoff. And honestly….I really want to just use my picture more on twitter.

Sweet Tweet: No twitter for PJ so let’s take a moment to reflect back on this random game ?I selected from 2014. Just a random contest with no correlation to anything that may coming up soon whatsoever. Enjoy.

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#1 Tutu Atwell

Class: Sophomore

Ht/Wt: 5-9/153

Position: Wide Receiver

Hometown: Miami, FL

Twitter: @c5_atwell

Thoughts: Get Tutu the ball.

It really is that simple. If you ask me what I’m most excited about in 2019 seeing Tutu get the ball a bit more has to be pretty high on the list. In early 2018 Tutu went the first five games and only caught six balls. I called out Petrino publicly on this very website (because I know he is a faithful reader) and things did improve. He finished the last seven games with 18 more catches and finished the year with 406 yards and a couple touchdowns.

Check out some of Tutu’s highlights from last year below. (Heads up, the music has some explicit lyrics so maybe ask the toddler to go and play with their knife collection for a few minutes. Wouldn’t want to be a bad parent or anything).

While statistically I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Louisville passing numbers very similar to what we saw in 2018, I do expect it to be more efficient and more of a scoring threat. App State was very close in passing yardage to Louisville last season but they used that aspect of the game to account for 17 more touchdowns a higher yd/att average and a higher completion percentage. While the yardage for guys like Dez, Seth, Tutu, Marshall, Johnson, etc may not look like 2013 passing numbers I do think we see less dropped balls, and a better utilization of each players skill set instead of just throwing, and then throwing, and then throwing some more. Pass/Cunningham/Conley have some weapons at their disposal and Tutu is a big part of that arsenal.

Sweet Tweet:

Reminder that Tutu and Teddy B both hail from Miami Northwestern and are good buds. One reason Tutu even knows about Louisville’s program. I think this is a great way to wrap things up this year. A reminder to look back at better times in our past (Bridgewater) and an opportunity to look forward to our future (Atwell) all in one tweet. We’ll get this things back on the rails folks. The train is still coming.

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Well, another off-season is in the books. Come back tomorrow for my ‘Day 0’ post where I highlight some of my favorites from this summer and put a big bow on the whole thing. One more day, folks. We can do this.