The WynnedBag: Week Eight

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Louisville’s offensive line has been underrated this season, in my opinion. The line was awful against Pitt and I think we all know that. However, it’s hard not to buy Scott Satterfield’s stance that they just didn’t play as opposed to Pitt being that much better than them. Louisville has run the ball very well this year with the top three running backs all averaging over 5.5 yards per carry. They’ve also done much better protecting Malik Cunningham in the last two games.

Don’t get me wrong, Florida State did a poor job defending the run and they didn’t put a lot of pressure on Malik. But, I do think that they have talented players who who will be playing on Sundays soon. Their scheme seems to be lacking when it comes to utilizing that talent, though. Marvin Wilson was a non-factor for most of the game after being an absolute nightmare in 2019. So my long answer is that but the shorter answer is that UofL’s line has gelled and is playing well right now.

I don’t know that Louisville will be able to hit the big throws to Tutu as easily as they did last week. UofL should be able to run the ball all day based on what VT has done so far this year. But I don’t think that anyone will try to cover Tutu in single coverage in the slot again. I have no clue what FSU was thinking there.

I also don’t anticipate UofL getting double digit PBUs this weekend. If they’re able to get out to a lead, I could see Tech scrapping their game plan and throwing the ball but they’re more experienced than FSU. Jordan Travis was inaccurate last week and the UofL pass defense was very sticky in coverage. Tech has James Mitchell at Tight End and Tre Turner who can play inside or outside. With those guys being very high level players as well as guys who can line up in areas where Louisville has had some issues covering, we could see some issues.

I’d have to say that Virginia Tech is the toughest game left on the schedule. They have the most talent, in my opinion, and the unknowns might actually play to their favor. Tech has been missing players each week so it’s hard to know how they will look as players come back. They also have an experienced Quarterback who protects the football pretty well and a running game that’s hard to contain. That’s a good recipe for wins.

Syracuse is my pick for the easiest game left on the schedule. They’re really struggling with injuries on top of the handful of guys who opted out. I didn’t expect Cuse to be good this year but the attrition issues have really hurt a team that looked improved on defense with their new scheme and probably could have been pretty good on offense with their top two Running Backs on the field.

In my opinion, the schedule is very manageable beyond VT. Boston College is improved in the passing game but now has one of the worst rushing attacks in the country. Virginia is still good on defense but their offense has taken a “kitchen sink” approach to trying to score points. Wake Forest is a threat as always in this series but I do wonder how they would handle a game where they can’t run the ball well.

A lot of it had to do with FSU’s very bad decision to try to contain Tutu Atwell with one human being. The other aspect is FSU being undisciplined. Their second level guys overran plays multiple times and Javian Hawkins kept making them play. They also did a poor job of defending UofL’s play-action game.

I also think that Scott Satterfield started to put some actions to the words he’s been throwing out each week. UofL’s offense is dependent on getting big plays by countering the defense in a sense. It’s mostly simple because it’s all about forcing the defense to crowd the line which then allows for big throws down the field. They got some shots down the field by taking advantage of that after Hawkins got going last week.

The bigger thing to me was that they started to set up plays for later in the game based off of tendency things early in the game. I believe this was the first game that they used orbit motion with Tutu Atwell motioning behind the play and then the offense snapping the ball. They did that all game long and then in the fourth quarter Tutu breaks back to the side of the field that he came from and they get an easy touchdown. That’s what we haven’t seen enough of and it’s the mentality that led to bigger plays.