One year ago, Virginia took a 4-1 record into a game with Louisville, lost to the Cardinals, and spiraled to a 5-7 finish.
The newly ranked Cavaliers (4-1, 2-0 in ACC), at No. 24 in the AP Top 25, have a chance to write a different ending starting Saturday afternoon when they visit Louisville (4-0, 1-0) for an Atlantic Coast Conference showdown.
Louisville has won the last three meetings in the series. The Cardinals initiated Virginia’s collapse last season by rallying for a 24-20 win on Oct. 12 in Charlottesville, Va. Tyler Shough threw the game-winning touchdown pass with 1:55 left.
Much has changed in a year. Shough is now a rookie with the New Orleans Saints, and the Cavaliers are in the poll for the first time since 2019 after upsetting then-No. 8 Florida State 46-38 in double overtime last Friday.
Not as battle-tested, Louisville has an opportunity to secure its first signature win of the season. It completed a perfect September with home wins over Eastern Kentucky, James Madison and Bowling Green, plus a come-from-behind 34-27 victory last Saturday at Pitt to open ACC play.
The Cardinals will have to contend with a Virginia offense that ranks fifth in the nation with an average of 539.6 yards per game and eighth in scoring with 45.6 points per game. Virginia needs only 45 points to surpass last season’s total output of 272 points (12 games).
“They are playing very good as a team. I mean extremely well,” Louisville coach Jeff Brohm said. “Very efficient, not hurting themselves, making a lot of really big plays on both sides of the ball. Right now, they’re a dangerous team.”
The balanced Cavaliers are averaging nearly 300 passing yards per game behind quarterback Chandler Morris and also rank second in the ACC with 243.4 rushing yards per game. J’Mari Taylor and Harrison Waylee have combined for 626 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns.
Brohm has concerns with his own ground game, which managed just 53 yards on 34 attempts in the victory against the Panthers.
“We’ve got to find ways to run the football, and if that means being a little more creative with what we’re doing — whatever we’ve got to do,” Brohm said. “No matter what, we’ve got to do a good job there.”
Miller Moss made up for the rushing deficiencies at Pitt, throwing two of his three touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to wipe out a 27-17 deficit.
Meanwhile, Virginia’s victory over the Seminoles was the Cavaliers’ first at home against a top-10 team since 2005, but fourth-year head coach Tony Elliott is trying to keep his team humble.
“In the big scheme of things, we just won an ACC game,” Elliott said. “… We wanted to be in the driver’s seat, and that’s all we did was keep ourselves in the driver’s seat. So now we’ve got to keep two hands on the wheel, put the seatbelt on, right? Make sure we check the rear-view mirror. Make sure we’re awake so that we don’t hit a pothole along the way.”
Morris scored the game-winning touchdown against Florida State with a 4-yard run in the second OT. He injured his throwing hand — “a little sprain,” Elliott called it — when it struck a defender’s helmet in the third quarter but is not expected to miss any time.
The Cavaliers are searching for their first road win of the season. They fell 35-31 at North Carolina State on Sept. 6 in a non-conference ACC game in their only previous contest away from home.
