NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Louisville football came here to
Nissan Stadium, three hours or so from home, and put in a solid
performance to finish the 2015 season, running past Texas A&M
27-21 in the Music City Bowl on Wednesday night.
The win pushes
Louisville (8-5) into a critical offseason in which a young team hopes
to start the process of growing into a potential ACC title contender in
the coming seasons. The Cards will spend the next few weeks waiting on
the decisions of four key juniors who are trying to figure out if they
want to return to school for one more season or make an NFL roster.
In
the meantime, U of L has its third bowl win in four seasons, a budding
star in freshman quarterback Lamar Jackson and a young core of talent
around him.
Offensive player of the game: It has
to be Jackson, who set a freshman record for total offense in a single
game (453 yards) and broke the school's career rushing record for
quarterbacks in the process. The speedy, shifty signal caller did a
little bit of everything in Louisville's win, carving his way into the
end zone in the first quarter with a 6-yard run, then busting through
Texas A&M's defense 10 minutes later for a 61-yard touchdown sprint.
The first quarter hadn't even ended when Jackson ran past the 100-yard
mark. He finished with 226 rushing yards and two touchdowns.
The
biggest knock on Jackson is that he is not a polished passer. That is
still the case, and U of L's offensive coaches will spend a lot of the
offseason working with him on his pocket presence, deep balls and
throwing touch, but he was sharp throwing the ball on Wednesday. His
numbers aren't eye-popping - 12 of 26 for 227 yards and two touchdowns -
but he was effective enough to keep Texas A&M's defense at bay
while also limiting turnovers and throwing the ball away when he was in
trouble. It was an important step into the offseason for Jackson.
Defensive player of the game: Call
it a tie between DeVonte Fields and Josh Harvey-Clemons, who both had
major impacts on the game. Fields had his best game of the season,
sacking Texas A&M quarterback Jake Hubenak three times. He tormented
Texas A&M left tackle Avery Gennesy, who at one point in the first
half picked up back-to-back false starts.
Harvey-Clemons, a
much-maligned figure on U of L's defense in the second half of the
season, came up big, too. The hulking safety had a free shot at Hubenak
on a safety blitz in the third quarter and slapped the ball out of the
quarterback's hands for a strip-sack, a fumble that James Hearns
recovered. Later in the same quarter, he snatched a key interception
that led to Louisville's fourth touchdown of the game and gave the Cards
a two-score lead.
Where the game turned: Harvey-Clemons,
after checking back on Hubenak mid-play, adjusted himself to make a
leaping, fingertips interception at the Louisville 27-yard line. It came
at a time when Louisville was clinging to a six-point lead and needed
some momentum, and the Georgia transfer provided it. U of L went 73
yards in seven plays after the pick, capping the drive with a 17-yard
touchdown pass from Jackson to Keith Towbridge, who was wide open in the
end zone.
Key stats: This one comes with the
obvious caveat that Texas A&M's two primary quarterbacks
transferred, which left Hubenak, the third-stringer, at the helm. That
said, A&M (8-5) came into the game with an impressive 43.2 percent
conversion rate on third downs, but the Aggies struggled on Wednesday,
hitting on just 6-of-18 tries.
What went right: The
pass rush was really effective for Louisville, especially early on.
DeVonte Fields was disruptive as ever, and Sheldon Rankins and James
Hearns had solid games, too, until Hearns's late-game hands-to-the-face
penalty that kept alive Texas A&M's last-gasp drive. Beyond that,
the offensive line did a solid job for Jackson, who did a lot of work
with his own legs, but he did have running lanes and space to operate.
What went wrong: The
game got off to a rather surprising start, with senior linebacker James
Burgess, one of the key cogs in Louisville's defense, getting ejected
from the game after a targeting penalty on the first play. It was a
disappointing end to what has been a very productive career for Burgess.
Later in the first quarter, one of Louisville's top pass rushers,
Trevon Young, was taken to the hospital with a hip injury after he was
carted off the field. Those two incidents, and the brief back injury for
cornerback Shaq Wiggins, put a damper on Louisville's otherwise
impressive first quarter.
