Petrino focused on fun? It’s worth a try
Louisville’s season is off to a rough start at 2-5. It’s the worst start of any season of Bobby Petrino’s coaching career, and the possibility of a winning season looks bleak with three of Louisville’s final four games coming against ranked teams. In fact, the only game the Cardinals are currently favored to win is Saturday’s tilt with Wake Forest.
To prep for the Demon Deacons, Petrino took a new and interesting tact — fun.
“One thing we really tried to do starting last week is change our mindset,” Petrino said. “Get back to enjoying it, having fun, smiling on the practice field. Be energetic, help out your teammate, and have the mindset that this is football, we enjoy it, we grew up doing it. Let’s have fun playing football. We have been working hard at that. We’ve been grinding away at that.”
Petrino said his team still has a lot to work on.
“We have a lot of thing to focus on so it is hard to think of just one thing,” Petrino said of the bye week. “Offensively we are really working on timing in the passing game and being more physical in the run game.”
Petrino said the bye week allowed the team to go back to some basics as well.
“We did do a lot of things ones versus ones and that is one of the things the bye week helps you do. You can go back to do some of the things you did in camp and work hard on playing physically, both offensively and defensively. We worked on tempo on defense because Wake Forest goes fast. They got beat last week and they ran 105 plays. That’s a lot of plays so they go really fast. That’s been a big emphasis for us defensively — tempo, the alignment and playing physically.”
Petrino said he doesn’t want to change too much, but he is searching for answers as well.
“I don’t feel like I’ve been through a season like this before, and certainly losing some games that I really felt like we should have won,” Petrino said.