Five things you need to know from Louisville football’s 30-3 win over Eastern Kentucky
Five things you need to know from Louisville football’s 30-3 win over Eastern Kentucky in the 2021 home opener at Cardinal Stadium:
1. Defense and special teams lead the way for Cardinals. After surrendering 569 yards of total offense, including 381 passing yards, in its season-opening loss to Ole Miss, Louisville showed improved defensive resilience Saturday night against inferior opposition.
While the Cardinals, now 1-1, still allowed five plays of longer than 15 yards, they generated their first takeaways of the season: Sophomore defensive back Kei’Trel Clark twice intercepted Eastern Kentucky redshirt sophomore quarterback Parker McKinney.
In doing so, Clark became the first Louisville player since 2017 with multiple interceptions in a game.
“I thought he played awesome out there on the edge,” Louisville head coach Scott Satterfield said. “(He) had some deflections, some interceptions, some great tackles coming up on those little bubble spot screens they were trying to run.”
Louisville’s special teams also made an impact with sophomore Braden Smith returning a punt 49 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter. It was Louisville’s first punt return for a touchdown since 2018 and put the Cardinals up 13-0.
The Cardinals’ special teams unit also directly contributed to Louisville’s first score of the game, as Eastern Kentucky’s Matt Wilcox Jr. muffed a punt in the first quarter, which was recovered in prime field position.
These takeaways were Louisville’s first of the season.
2. Cunningham continues to power Cardinals. While Louisville’s offense still has moments where it struggles — especially without the benefit of good field position — Malik Cunningham’s athleticism can’t be questioned.
The redshirt junior quarterback shifted past Colonels in his backfield throughout Saturday’s game, an indication of his speed and an indictment of the Cardinals’ offensive line.
Cunningham finished the contest with 277 passing yards and 29 rushing yards on 11 attempts. He threw for one touchdown and ran for two more.
Eastern Kentucky head coach Walt Wells said his defense spent more time in read coverage to account for the quarterback’s mobility.
“I thought Malik came out and played solid,” Satterfield said, adding that the game plan was for Cunningham to spend more time in the pocket while progressing through his reads during this game.
3. For EKU, the real test starts now. Last season, Eastern Kentucky played as an independent. The Colonels played nine total games, including three road contests against FBS teams. Those games were all losses, including a narrow two-point loss at Troy.
This season the Colonels had just one game scheduled against an FBS team, and now it’s over.
Wells said he was happy with the attitude and effort his Colonels team took into the game against Louisville, but not pleased with the mistakes that disrupted EKU’s upset efforts.
The mistakes were ones of execution rather than discipline, though, as EKU didn’t commit an accepted penalty until there was 14:02 left in the game.
“When you’re playing up like that, you can’t make the mistakes we made,” Wells said, noting the Colonels’ failure to play “error-free” football. “These games, you have to get to the fourth quarter to have a chance ... then the pressure goes to them. We never got to the fourth quarter.”
In addition to a more traditional football schedule this season, the Colonels are also set to navigate a new conference. Now members of the ASUN Conference, the Colonels are taking part in the ASUN-WAC Challenge this season, a scheduling alliance between the ASUN Conference and the Western Athletic Conference allowing for seven combined schools, including EKU, to be eligible for automatic qualification into the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Games in the challenge begin for EKU on Oct. 9 at home against Abilene Christian.
4. New-look EKU excited for home debut. When Eastern Kentucky, now 1-1, took the field last weekend at Western Carolina, about 24 new players were making their Colonels debut.
While they returned to the commonwealth for Saturday’s loss at Louisville, home debuts for these newcomers must wait until next weekend when EKU plays Indiana State on Saturday night in Richmond.
Against this week’s FBS opponent, Wells saw some positives from his team. Despite muffing a punt, Wilcox finished with 66 receiving yards and McKinney had moments when he successfully evaded several Cardinals defenders and made it into the second level with his legs, proving his ability as a dual-threat quarterback.
But even with the step up in competition, Wells noted that his team needs to get better for next week.
“We’ve got to get better fundamentally. We’ve got to play 60 minutes of fundamental football,” Wells said. “I think getting home and Roy Kidd Stadium and that home environment, playing a really good Indiana State team from the Missouri Valley Conference is going to be fun. I think our guys are looking forward to seeing what Richmond is going to be like next weekend.”
5. Cardinals fans remain dismayed, despite win. The official attendance announced at Cardinal Stadium on Saturday night was 39,673. It was the smallest non-COVID impacted opening-game crowd at Cardinal Stadium in at least a decade, reflecting both the quality of the matchup as well as fan perspective on the Louisville program.
The Cardinals have now won 20 straight games against FCS teams, dating back to a 1985 loss to Eastern Kentucky. Reasonably speaking, the final result Saturday was never in doubt.
The process of getting there still left Cardinals fans frustrated though, something shown audibly with their reactions and visibly with the swaths of open red seats left exposed throughout the game.
This was best encapsulated in the fourth quarter, when Cunningham connected with freshman receiver Ahmari Huggins-Bruce for what appeared to be a 94-yard touchdown pass, only for Huggins-Bruce to drop the football in celebration a full 2 yards before crossing into the end zone.
The echo of fireworks and in-stadium celebrations reverberated around a nearly empty Cardinal Stadium while officials reviewed the play, before ruling that EKU recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchback.
