Good teams find a way to get it done, so this isn't an excuse, but I'm thinking Louisville might just have a really, really good run defense.
I'm interested to see how this looks against Stanford and obviously more importantly SMU. I'm not saying we have some electric run game right now by any means, but it was serviceable enough against ND and UiF to run a decent offense, we smashed USF on the ground, and I think FSU just completely sold out to stop it.
But Louisville has really crushed every team they've played so far on the ground. UVA has a good run game, coming into the Louisville game they had gotten at least 160+ on every FBS team they played, including over 200 on FSU, Stanford, and NC State. Louisville held them to 88 yards on 2.75 a clip.
We need to be better, without a doubt. And again, I'm not saying we should all be singing rainbows and lollipops after what we saw Friday night....that was the worst the run game has looked in Dawson's 3 seasons, bar none. But I'm hoping the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We obviously don't have a safety net, so if we run the ball like **** and lose in Dallas, then we're done here. But before I go completely off the deep end and declare the run game completely comatose, I'd like to see what happens against SMU. I'm watching the game back, and Louisville really played the fits completely perfectly and we got way less push than usual. Will SMU be able to do the same? I have my doubts, but we have to see it.