Louisville rolls over Syracuse on Lamar Jackson Day, 41-3

Well that was fun.

Louisville beat Syracuse in dominant fashion, 41-3 on Saturday afternoon, with the offense shredding the Orange in the first half on 5 scoring drives. The game was never in doubt and despite Syracuse’s QB, Garrett Shrader, predicting that the Orange would be able to move the ball well against Louisville, Syracuse was held to an abysmal 182 yards of total offense. Syracuse’s star running back, Sean Tucker, also saw his school-record streak of 100-yard rushing games snapped at 7 games as he was held to 95 yards on 19 carries.

That aged well.

It was great to see Louisville finally jump out to an early lead and never leave the door open for the opponent to get back into it.

After an embarrassing finish last week, where they had a more than disappointing and emotional loss, to see the team to get back up for a less than exciting opponent and beat them down in a noon game is more than encouraging. This type of performance should give fans hope for the Cards to not only handle an inferior Duke team on the road next week, but for them to come back home on Thanksgiving weekend and be ready to give Kentucky a tough game.

Personably, I had a blast last weekend with how great the environment was in the stadium for the Clemson game, but after the heartbreaking loss and with a nooner this week, I worried that the atmosphere would suffer. Thankfully Lamar saved the day and I was impressed with how loud and into the game the crowd was. Everything came together perfectly and fans left in a fantastic mood. Today was exactly the kind of day this fanbase needed with all of the frustrations as of late.

The halftime ceremony where Lamar’s number was retired was special and emotional. Lamar himself seemed on the verge of tears the entire time. The fanbase made their love for him more than heard as he choked his way through his acceptance speech. It was awesome and the athletic department deserves props for putting together such a cool celebration.

From start to finish the whole game was a success, and I’m not sure many of us predicted this outcome considering how well Syracuse had been playing as of late. I figured this one would be close and come down to the wire, but I’m glad I was wrong.

I think the best thing about this win is the team showed they were able to get up off the mat after last week, throttle a solid opponent, and gave themselves some legitimate confidence heading into the last two games of the regular season. Let’s keep building on that confidence next Thursday.

Louisville needs one more win to reach bowl eligibility. Hopefully they can guarantee themselves a bowl spot before coming home for rivalry weekend.

Go Cards.