CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB) -- All you need to know about Jeff Brohm from Louisville's 2024 ACC Football Media Days appearance is this: He made it back to Louisville in time to attend The Ville's TBT regional title win Wednesday night in Freedom Hall.
There's a lot of football to talk, and Brohm talked it Wednesday. The "talking day" schedule is pretty exhausting. The same questions in 100 different ways. The same answers in not-so-different ways.
ACC Network, radio row, podcasts, local media, press conference, breakout sessions, ACC Digital, ACC Social, ESPN, ESPN Digital, CBS, Sirius XM, ACC Network Features, The CW, ACC Network Live. You get the picture. And sound.
If I hop a charter flight home after all that, I'm heading straight to the couch. Brohm headed for an end zone seat in Freedom Hall. He was there for all three TBT games. No basketball coach in the last two years has been there for all three games.
Before we get to the football, I want to acknowledge that. Brohm is Louisville. He's U of L. He's the city. He doesn't need any introductions. He's not making an entrance. He's just showing up. He's the face of this place but also a face in the crowd. Maybe there's some sense of, "I ought to support this," in there, but I also think he genuinely likes being a part of it, likes being there to support those players and something they're doing, ultimately, for the university and city, even if the university's name isn't on it.
Just felt that was worth saying and remembering. The difference between what people in Louisville expected last season and what national observers expected was Brohm. In Louisville, at Louisville, he's the intangible.
Back in Charlotte, on Media Day, someone came up and reminded Brohm that the most recent betting odds listed Louisville as fifth on the list of expected ACC champions. He was asked if that belied a bit of a lack of respect for a team that made the championship game a year ago.
"Well, that's higher than we werepicked last year," Brohm said. "Last year, we were eighth. Look, expectations are higher. But we feel like if we coach and play well enough, we can be better."
He thinks Louisville will show up. And, if you know Brohm, there's a chance these preseason picks might be mentioned, motivationally speaking. At the same time, he's famously day-to-day, like most coaches. Maybe more.
There's no escaping: If you want to be better, and last year you finished No. 2, well, there's only one number left. And in the day of a 12-team playoff, there are obvious goals beyond the conference championship that may be more attainable than they once were.
Goals are important. But they don't replace the work.
"As we get our team ready for fall camp, we'll have one meeting where we talk about the goals and set them out and talk in some detail about it," Brohm said. "But even then, you move on and you realize that you're worried about a one-game season. How can I win? Play at my highest level? Raise my level of play? Play the best game I've ever played? Challenge yourself to play well, and then you do it again the next week."
Looking back at last season in Louisville, it's pretty remarkable that the Cardinals accomplished what they did: the school's first trip to the ACC Championship game. They got some help from the ACC schedule. They got no help from football fortune. During the second half of the season, they lost a key offensive lineman (Renato Brown), their top receiver (Jamari Thrash), their best running back (Jawhar Jordan) and some other key pieces.
It was not a team with a lot ofdepth. And Brohm immediately went to work in the offseason to build depth.
Is the depth where he wants it? Probably not. But is it closer?
"I think that, you know, keeping your key guys healthy is always important. And we do the best job we can," he said. "But you're going to have some things happen. We've got depth. And I'm not going to blame the last few losses (last season) on the lack of depth. I think that we just didn't coach well enough and play well enough. This team has depth. The linebacker position maybe not as much depth as we would like, that's a concern. But you know, we have enough to win if we play well and we coach well. So, we're looking forward to kind of getting things going and see how we stack up."
With seven starters back, defense again should be an asset. Offensively, Brohm went to the portal for help at receiver and tight end, and has a collection at that position that transfer quarterback Tyler Shough (himself a portal addition) calls "the deepest I've ever been a part of." And he has played at Oregon and Texas Tech.
Heading to the hotel for Media Day, Louisville players passed Bank of America Stadium, site of the ACC title game.
"We're going to be back," cornerback Quincy Riley said. "We got there last year and the results weren't what we wanted, but we'll be back."
For Brohm, the job will remain a scramble. New plays for new players. New approaches.
"I think some different looks and packages for defenses, it's always important to give them something that they haven't seen before, because teams will prepare and they'll prepare well, so you have to be able to do that," Brohm said. "And you just can't be really vanilla in your thinking too much. We will research and we'll study and you just have to be creative each and every week a little bit. A lot of times as we've looked and studied ourselves, when we first run a new play it's always very successful. As we coach it more, it gets less successful. So you know what? Sometimes, all right, we need we need a couple of these wrinkles every game because they normally work and there's nothing beats being good at what you do. But unless you're by far the best team, you know, that doesn't always work. So, I just think offense, defense, special teams, we need to have some creativity in that and make sure that we have a plan, and that it can adjust along the way."
The fun is in the adjustments. And for Louisville, much of the fun is in watching Brohm make them.
Louisville Football Coverage:
- Louisville's Quincy Riley hoping the little things pay off in a big way
- CRAWFORD | At Louisville, Shough wants to end 7-season college career on an inspiring note
- 7 questions with Jeff Brohm at ACC Football Kickoff
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