Louisville wins Fenway Bowl and Keg of Nails, 24-7

THE KEG IS OURS FOREVER!

In one of the weirdest bowl games in recent memory, a game that included teams separated by nearly 100 miles playing each other in Boston, in a baseball stadium, a few weeks after one of the teams curiously poached a largely disliked coach from the other team, with skeleton coaching staffs, interim coaches, and starters missing from both sides, the Cardinals absolutely ran that ass over.

What does it mean when I say Louisville “absolutely ran that ass over?” Why I’ll show ya!

That’s right. Louisville had more than twice as many rushing yards as Cincinnati had total yards = Ass. Run. Over.

In all seriousness what a beautiful, bizarre, and fun way to put a bow on the season. So much to love about this game and to digest.

I think it’s safe to say that Deion Branch and Mark Ivey have cemented their names in Louisville football lore for years to come. The way that Deion was able to hold this team together, get them focused, and embarrass an arch rival with less than two weeks to prepare, all with a huge smile on his face, is something we’ll all be remembering for a very long time.

You could just see the energy and the fun the players and staff were having on the sidelines, and Deion’s and his staff deserve all the praise for the awesome job they did. This could have been a total clunker, “who cares” bowl game, but they made it count and had a blast doing it.

Mark Ivey deserves just as much credit for dialing up a relentless and punishing attack, including a seven-sack barrage that helped this Louisville team match its school record with 50 sacks on the season:

The beginning of the game was just about as ugly as we imagined it would be with teams trading 3-and-outs and turnovers back and forth before Jawhar Jordan busted a 49-yard touchdown run to finally put some points on the board. A few drives later Cinci had a wild drive that included a fourth down conversion and a touchdown play where the quarterback was running for his life.

With the scored knotted up at 7-7 in the second quarter, Louisville put together two more touchdown drives, including another 40+ yard touchdown run by Jordan to put the Cards ahead 21-7 at the half.

The second half was pretty uneventful as the Louisville defense choked any remaining life out of the Cincinnati offense and the offense put together long, clock bleeding drives, and added another three points to their lead.

I’m just super happy for Deion and all the coaches and staff that stayed behind to make this happy, and the veterans that got to play one last game with a Cardinal jersey on. Again, this could have been a ho-hum, whatever bowl game, but Deion and Co. made this a fun game for everyone to remember.

And even though Cincinnati got embarrassed on national television, I’m not sure there was a bigger loser than the Fenway Bowl trophy that got entirely overshadowed by the beautiful, thicc Keg of Nails.

Go Cards. See y’all in Atlanta in 9 months. Enjoy the rest of Cardmageddon 2022.

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