Louisville football can’t just win; Cards have to win with style

To be clear, Friday night under the lights at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, the normally spectacular Lamar Jackson and his talented Louisville supporting cast did not look like one of the four best college football teams in all the land.

Idle since that emotional down-to-the-wire loss at Clemson on Oct. 1, the Cards had trouble (a) shaking off their Redbird rust and (b) dealing with Duke coach David Cutcliffe’s masterful ball-control plan which devoured chunks of the clock and kept the ball from Jackson’s hands.

Ultimately, No. 7 Louisville had enough to down the Dookies 24-14. With Louisville a 34-point favorite, however, it’s doubtful Bobby Petrino’s squad impressed the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.

“I am proud of our team sticking together, working hard and grinding out the win,” said Petrino after his team had improved to 5-1. “Sometimes you just have to grind it out.”

Unfortunately, grinding doesn’t carry the same cachet as Louisville’s normal 58-points-per-game light show. And when you’re in the Cardinals’ present position, hoping to wiggle back into serious consideration for the four-team College Football Playoff, victories are not as much about substance as style.

“That’s the reality of where we’re at right now,” Petrino said. “We’ve got to understand that, but again our objective is to win, keep ourselves in it and I think we did that. I think we’ll be all right, we’ve just got to play better.”

They also have to hope everything else falls into place. After all, that thrilling 42-36 loss at division rival Clemson backed the Cards against the wall. For U of L to reach the ACC title game, the Cards need to not only win their remaining four league games, but also hope somehow Clemson loses two of its final four conference dates. That appears highly unlikely, especially considering Clemson survived an overtime scare against North Carolina State on Saturday.

Without a chance to play for its conference title, the Cards have to hope that at season’s end there are fewer than four teams with unbeaten records and at least one Power Five conference champion with a damaged résumé.

“We’re not worried about that right now,” said center Tobiah Hughley.

The teams Louisville has beaten also have to go out and win games. That means Florida State, who the Cards crushed 63-20 back on Sept. 17. A Seminole roll through the rest of the FSU schedule would help the Cardinals’ cause. The same applies to Clemson. If the Tigers don’t lose twice, it’s probably in Louisville’s best interest for Clemson to not lose at all. Then U of L can say it came closer to topping the Tigers than any other team.

Meanwhile, Louisville could be a victim of its own remaining schedule, which includes North Carolina State, Virginia, Boston College, Wake Forest and Kentucky. Not exactly the type of murderer’s row needed to earn U of L a degree of difficulty bonus.

Everyone was pointing to Louisville’s Nov. 17 game at Houston, but that was before the previously sixth-ranked Cougars lost at Navy last week. A road win over Tom Herman’s team would still be an impressive accomplishment, but not as impressive as it once looked.

None of this matters, of course, if the Cards continue on Friday’s course. They fumbled the ball away inside the Duke 10-yard line. They nullified a 90-yard punt return for a touchdown with an illegal block penalty. They missed field goals of 42 and 46 yards, only to be bailed out by a roughing the kicker penalty on the latter.

Action Jackson did rush for 144 yards on 21 carries, including a how-did-he-do-that spin away from defenders for a 13-yard gain. But many of Jackson’s passes were way wide of targets or bounced before arrival. He ended up completing 13 of 26 for 181 yards with a touchdown.

“It felt like our first game again, we’d been off so long,” said the Heisman Trophy contender afterward. “We went out and scored the first drive and maybe we thought it was going to be easy.”

It won’t be easy impressing that selection committee, however.

“We’re just focused on going 6-0 the rest of the way,” said Hughley.

Will that be enough?

This story was originally published October 15, 2016 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Louisville football can’t just win; Cards have to win with style."