Jeff Brohm explains what he needs to see from his team ahead of Louisville vs. Murray State

Thursday night is officially the home opener as the head coach of the Louisville Cardinals for Jeff Brohm. He’s of course, the brother of Louisville legend Brian Brohm, one of the greatest quarterbacks in program history. In Week 1, the Cardinals took care of business against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and they prevailed in a 39-34 classic. On Thursday night, the Cardinals will look to move to 2-0 for the first time since 2017. Sherree Burruss of the ACC Network spoke with Jeff Brohm just before kickoff to hear what he wanted to see from his team against Murray State.

“Well, we’ve got to win the football game. I want to play well and I think it’s important that we get off to a good start. And that’s what we worked hard on all week. Get a good first half. Everybody executing. All of them playing together. That’s what we’ve got to do,” Brohm said.

What’s going to be the difference maker on Thursday night?

“Well, the difference is going to be execution and effort. I think in the second half last week we were better at that. It’s gotta be all 60 minutes. I want to see how our guys perform today,” the Louisville head coach said.

Last week against Georgia Tech, the Cardinals rallied in the second half, outscoring the Yellow Jackets 26-6 to pull out the impressive comeback win.

Louisville is wearing special alternate black helmets on Thursday night. They are black matte with a retro style Cardinal on the side.

Jeff Brohm is hungry for more

While Brohm was happy Louisville escaped Week 1 with a win, he was not satisfied. After the triumph, the former Purdue head coach discussed his team’s narrow victory.

“We’re happy to get out of there with a win,” Brohm said during the postgame press conference. “As everyone saw, it was a tough football game for our team. It wasn’t a great performance in the first half for sure. So that was disappointing.

“But that’s how college football works. I talk about it all the time to our football team. Nothing will ever be easy. We challenged our guys at halftime to play much harder, play much tougher, figure out a way to grind this thing out, and just try to win the half.”

Louisville did just that. Cardinals QB Jack Plummer lit up the Yellow Jackets in the final two quarters after a questionable first-half performance. In the back half of the game, Plummer completed 10 of his 14 passes for 157 yards.

Brohm believes his starting QB will only learn from the shaky experience.

“I applaud him for his effort the second half. He really wants to win,” Brohm said of Plummer. “Sometimes, he’s the type, he cares so much that he will press early on, and I think like everybody, he was nervous and wasn’t playing as confident and as sturdy as he easily could.”

“He’s got to learn from it. That’s one thing about quarterback play, that you have to either have that skill or you have to continue to develop that skill that when it gets game time, the mentality has got to be that you will stand in that pocket and you will throw it with conviction, you will not allow anything else to detour you, and if you get in a little rut, you’ve got to be able to bounce back.”

Plummer and his fellow Cardinals will have a chance to bounce back tonight.

On3’s Grant Grubbs also contributed to this article.