Unlike last season, the Huskies were not anxiously awaiting the College Football Playoff show to see where they would be seeded. But Washington still qualified for a bowl game and it came out this afternoon that the 6-6 Dawgs will be playing on New Year’s Eve in El Paso, Texas against the 8-4 Louisville Cardinals.
Somehow, this will be the first ever matchup between Washington and Louisville. The Huskies are still beholden to the Pac-12 bowl matchup schedule despite now playing in the Big Ten which meant it came down to playing in the Las Vegas Bowl, Sun Bowl, or L.A Bowl. Two of those 3 bowl games are easy for just about every Husky fan to travel to via airplane. Washington naturally ended up in the one that is not as the Las Vegas Bowl had first pick and took USC with the Sun Bowl taking the Huskies over Cal which would have set up an ACC/ACC matchup.
There will still be plenty of intrigue for Husky fans to watch this game whether in person or on television. It should be expected that freshman QB Demond Williams Jr. will make his second career start after taking over for Will Rogers in the 2nd half against UCLA and then starting at #1 Oregon. It will be interesting to see how he performs when playing a team that doesn’t have quite so distinct an advantage at the line of scrimmage.
It was a season of what-ifs for their opponent Louisville. All four of Louisville’s losses came by one score and 3 of them were to teams that finished inside the top-13 of the final College Football Playoff Rankings. The Cardinals fell 31-24 at #5 Notre Dame, 34-27 vs. #10 SMU and 52-45 vs. #13 Miami. That would have set up for a better bowl game but Louisville collapsed with a 38-35 loss at Stanford late in the year to ruin the narrative of only losing by one score to very good teams (losing in Palo Alto? Couldn’t be us).
Louisville’s offense was led by a familiar face who is somehow still around. Former Oregon QB Tyler Shough is in his 6th season of college football having transferred to Louisville from Texas Tech where he was oft injured. He started all 12 games this year finishing with 3,191 yards on 8.2 YPA with 23 TD and 6 INT.
The real engine for the offense though was RB Isaac Brown who was one of the best true freshmen in the country. He finished the year with 1,069 yards and 11 TDs on 7.4 yards per carry. Brown is a smaller back at 5’9 and 190 pounds but is absolutely dynamic. Backup Duke Watson was no slouch averaging a ridiculous 8.8 yards per carry including 3 straight games with 69+ rushing yards to close the season.
Former Alabama receiver Ja’Corey Brooks was Louisville’s leading receiver with 1,013 yards and 9 TDs. Former Husky TE Mark Redman finished 3rd on the team in receiving with 238 yards and 3 TDs.
You may have noticed when I listed the scores of their close losses to good teams that all of those opponents put up 31+ points. This is definitely a Louisville defense prone to giving up scores. Senior edge rusher Ashton Gillotte led Louisville with 5 sacks and 59 pressures (more than double the pressures of 2nd place). Cornerback Quincy Riley tied for the team lead with 2 interceptions and had a team-high 9 pass breakups in the secondary.
Here are where Louisville players finished on the All-ACC teams:
1st Team: WR Ja’Corey Brooks
2nd Team: RB Isaac Brown, DE Ashton Gillotte, CB Quincy Riley
Honorable Mention: QB Tyler Shough, OT Monroe Mills, OG Michael Gonzalez, OC Pete Nygra, DT Ramon Puryear, LB Stanquan Clark, CB Corey Thornton, K Brock Travelstead