I heard from a few irritated Bulldogs fans after my blog post that praised Todd Grantham's work with Louisville's defense and noting Jeremy Pruitt hadn't been the instant savior they had envisioned. My favorite piece of fan (e)mail: "You must be the dumbest of the bunch at the ajc! Congrats, that is saying ALOT!"
It's true I'm not the smartest guy at the AJC (though, to be fair, my grammar is decent). Those Bulldogs fans who didn't think I was stupid figured I was just trollin' because there was no way Louisville's D is any good. Perhaps I was viewing Grantham through my Cardinals red-tinted glasses because, as I noted then, Louisville hadn't yet played the best teams on their schedule.
So let’s hear from someone smarter than me, Clemson offensive guru Chad Morris. What does he think about Louisville’s defense after the Cardinals visited Death Valley over the weekend?
Louisville's defense was No. 1 in FBS total defense before the Cardinals played at Clemson Saturday. It's still No. 1 after playing Clemson, which won 23-17 without scoring an offensive touchdown.
If the Cardinals don’t have the best defense in the country, there aren’t many better. After watching Louisville in Death Valley (Clemson fans are very cool, by the way) I believe this will still be true after the Cardinals play Florida State and Notre Dame. I didn’t think I'd ever be saying that after the Cardinals lost a lot of talent and Bulldogs fans and media colleagues told me Grantham can’t coach.
Bobby Petrino's offense, which couldn't score the winning touchdown at Clemson with a first-and-goal at the eight, continues to self-destruct. The Cardinals are a muffed punt and two yards from being undefeated, and that's entirely because of Grantham's D. The Cardinals haven't allowed a touchdown in 17 quarters. Louisville's first-team defense has allowed three touchdowns in seven games.
Clemson's offense managed just three field goals against Louisville and those drives went 24, 55 and 68 yards. With less than four minutes left in the third quarter Clemson had gained eight yards and two first downs. The Cardinals knocked promising freshman quarterback Deshaun Watson out of the game early with a hand injury but he'd shown no signs of doing anything—he'd already thrown an interception under pressure.
Louisville's D was put in bad situations against Clemson and still dominated, just as it did to lesser opponents. It was obvious those Bulldogs fans I heard from angry about my Grantham take hadn’t watched the Cardinals play. They just looked at the opponents and scores and dismissed Louisville’s defense as untested.
My critics didn’t know Miami recovered two fumbles inside Louisville’s 10-yard line and scored three points. They didn’t see that Louisville turned the ball over in its end of the field four times against Virginia, or that one of Virginia’s two touchdown drives started at Louisville’s 15-yard line, or that Virginia kicked the winning field goal after a muffed punt, or that two other drives started in Louisville’s end because of poor kick coverage, or that. . . well, you get the picture.
By contrast, my opinion that Louisville's defense was/is better than Georgia's was formed by watching both teams play. The Cardinals looked the part and my subjective opinion was backed up by Football Outsider's advanced, schedule-adjusted stats. Those stats now have Louisville's defense ranked No. 3, better than before the Cardinals played Clemson. Georgia is up to No. 35 after shutting out Mizzou.
A few Bulldogs backers told me Grantham left Georgia's cupboard bare, especially in the secondary, and that things might be different for him at Louisville once he no longer has Charlie Strong's players. This implies that Louisville (fresh off Big East/AAC purgatory) recruits so much better than Georgia (allegedly elite SEC program) that the Cardinals can lose two first-round draft picks on defense and still have more talent. It’s also a take that effectively blames Grantham for the players who got run off from Athens after he left.
I didn't watch Georgia's W at Mizzou so I can't speak intelligently about the performance of its D. But I don't need to see the game to know that shutting out a conference opponent on the road is impressive no matter the caliber of that opponent. I won't dismiss it by saying Missouri just isn't very good. I won't focus on the SEC Least, where Kentucky is in second place.
I’ll just say it’s promising for the Bulldogs that Pruitt’s defense is showing improvement, and leave the reactionary takes to those UGA fans and media who want to scapegoat Grantham.
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