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Bobby Petrino proved he's undoubtedly one of the nation's best coaches by crushing FSU
Louisville’s victory over Florida State Saturday was a masterclass in coaching.
Florida State didn’t know what hit them on either side of the ball — Louisville’s kinetic offense left the Seminoles’ heads spinning, while the Cardinals’ defense blitzed Florida State into submission.
It was a beatdown, and it was all orchestrated by one of the nation’s best coaches — Bobby Petrino.
When college football fans discuss the best coaches in the game, Petrino’s name is one that rarely comes up in conversation alongside Saban, Meyer, Harbaugh, Dantonio and even Peterson. It’s not because Louisville is some flash-in-the-pan team or that Petrino doesn’t have a track record of success — the opposite is true, in fact.
Petrino isn’t discussed amongst the best coaches in college football because people don’t like him. It’s hard to blame them, either.
Petrino’s off-the-field -- let’s call them antics -- aren’t disputed, but they have made us forget how good Petrino is.
Louisville beat Florida State in every aspect of the game Saturday, and a great deal of that has to do with scheme and gameplan.
A lot has to do with Lamar Jackson, too, but the sophomore now-Heisman Trophy frontrunner was three steps ahead of every Seminole Saturday in part because Florida State couldn’t get a wrap on the pace, movement and peculiarity of the Cardinals’ offense. By the time they understood what was happening, Louisville was past the sticks.
Petrino, Louisville’s offensive play caller, was pitch-perfect Saturday. In a game where Louisville won 63-20, the Cardinals left points on the board — they could have scored 80 or more.
As the head coach, Petrino emboldened defensive coordinator Todd Grantham to call for a hyper-aggressive defensive gameplan that terrorized the A-gap and stymied FSU redshirt freshman quarterback Deondre Francois. That’s a risky move, but no one could argue that Louisville wasn’t all-in Saturday.
As for recruiting, Petrino found a way to get the electrifying Jackson to Louisville — no easy task — but he also created a roster of players that was able to beat Florida State in the trenches and out wide. That’s hard to do against a team of five-star players coached by one of the best staffs in the nation.
Louisville is firmly in the playoff conversation today and will have a chance to pencil its name into the field if it beats Clemson in a few weeks. No matter what happens the rest of the season, Saturday’s beat-down has put Louisville in the class of college football’s elite teams.
You don’t need to forgive Petrino for quitting on the Falcons 13 games into his first year to take the Arkansas job – telling the Atlanta players he was resigning via a cowardly small laminated note in their lockers — or for being a rule-breaking, $20,000-giving, motorcycle-crashing, affair-having scoundrel when he was in Fayetteville. (He led Arkansas to a 21-5 record his last two years there.)
You don’t have to like Petrino, but after Saturday’s win, you have to admit that he’s one of the nation's best coaches.
