FSU football: 5 keys to victory for Noles against Louisville
By Kelvin Hunt
Put Louisville Offense Behind The Chains/Win Third Downs
This key ties into the first one of stopping their run game. Right over 14 percent of Louisville’s offensive plays have gone for tackles for loss this season.
They’ve allowed sacks on roughly 10 percent of their passing attempts, and an offense predicated on the run usually doesn’t have a lot of success converting third and long.
That’s why they are converting third downs at a 38 percent clip. It’s something FSU did a great job of last season as they only allowed the Cardinals to convert 5 of 17 third downs.
They had six sacks and 11 tackles for loss while allowing 2.6 yards per carry. Notre Dame allowed them to average 4.2 yards per carry and convert 33 percent of their third downs.
As I mentioned, I would allow the FSU football front four to rush and hopefully be enough to cause havoc in the backfield with the linebackers coming downhill to clean things up.
Louisville will try to play-action deep vertically off their run game, so they could hit a couple of big plays through the air. However, I’d take my chances of them not being able to do that consistently.