Joel Klatt identifies Louisville as CFP sleeper, makes TCU comparison

Louisville has been slowly creeping its way into the national consciousness as the 2023 season has continued, much like TCU last season. But the team has now made a splash nationally after this past weekend with a win over Notre Dame. The Cardinals are now 6-0 with a ranking of No. 14 in the country.

But many would probably dismiss their College Football Playoff odds as minuscule or nonexistent. Not Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt. He said this week on The Joel Klatt Show that Louisville is his top sleeper for the second half of the season to make a CFP run.

“After last week, it’s hard not to see at least a path for Louisville,” Klatt said. “Louisville is my No. 1 sleeper team so far this year. Unranked to start the year. You got a first-year head coach, by the way, eerily reminiscent to what we had last year with TCU with Sonny Dykes coming over from SMU. Lots of transfers and an experienced quarterback. I think that’s really a resume that we’re all starting to see and stumble upon that really works in terms of turning something around right away.”

The 2022 Horned Frogs team started the year unranked and didn’t join the AP Top 25 until the first week of October. From there, they climbed into the top 10 in two weeks times and the top four by the first full week of November.

They didn’t lose until the Big 12 Championship Game but their 12-0 record in the regular season was more than enough to get them into the College Football Playoff.

The 2023 Louisville team, like TCU, also started the year undefeated and wasn’t ranked until last week ahead of playing the Fighting Irish.

Like those Horned Frogs, the Cardinals have a first-year head coach with previous experience at the school in Jeff Brohm.

“I also love this element of Jeff Brohm going home,” Klatt said. “Coach Brohm goes back to Louisville. He knows it. He understands it. He knows what can be successful there. I think, more specifically, alums of programs have a unique understanding of what the fan base wants, in particular ex-quarterbacks. I can tell you exactly. when I heard murmurs in the stands at Colorado, Brohm can do the same at Louisville. He can tell you exactly what the sentiment was and the ebb and flow of the season and who you have to beat and who do they think is a great win. Those things shouldn’t be overlooked in terms of just intimate deep knowledge of a program and an institution and a place and a community and a fan base. Brohm clearly has that at Louisville. I thought you saw that come to fruition last week. That stadium was incredible, electric.”

Louisville hasn’t had a fluky schedule to start the season, either. They’ve faced five Power Five teams — including Notre Dame — with its one non-Power Five opponent being its only non-Power Five opponent of the season.

The games have also come in difficult places to play, including neutral site games versus Georgia Tech in Atlanta and Indiana in Indianapolis.

“You’ve also got a team that’s playing at a pretty high level,” Klatt said. “I think their experienced quarterback helps. They had five takeaways. You’ve got to have those games in which you play over your head. TCU did that a year ago. I think we all remember some of those comebacks late in games, Oklahoma State they came back in a game. Now you’ve got this Louisville team that welcomes Notre Dame in. They get Notre Dame at a good point because Notre Dame just played two highly emotional games, one a loss at home to Ohio State and then they go out and they they beat Duke on basically the last play of the game. You’ve got this Notre Dame team that walks in and then they just lock the gates behind them.

‘That was an outstanding performance. They did everything right. They used the momentum of the crowd. They used everything that was there at their disposal to win the game. They sack Hartman five times. They have eight TFLs. They were aggressive. Several of those by the way on key short yardage plays. They held Notre Dame to 50 yards rushing. This is a team that needs to run the football, wants to run the football.”

The Cardinals schedule the rest of the season features three teams currently ranked in the top 25 — Duke, Miami and Kentucky — and three teams that are a combined 4-13 on the year.

While the ranked teams won’t be easy tasks, Klatt looks at the schedule as one that could be favorable towards Louisville continuing to make a run towards the College Football Playoff. The Cardinals won’t have Florida State or North Carolina until the ACC Championship Game and could finish with as many as 12 Power Five wins.

“You look at the rest of their year, and to me, their schedule is favorable to be a sleeper,” Klatt said. “They’ve got at Pitt. They got Duke, by the way, Riley Leonard still has that high ankle sprain. It’s unclear when he’s going to return. That’s their toughest game remaining because then they got Virginia Tech, Virginia, and then at Miami. Now Miami’s ranking of 25, that might be a little bit flawed. They’ve also got Kentucky, which Kentucky and Miami could pose a bit of a threat. But you can see the path. You can see the path to them getting into that ACC Championship Game. And at that point, you’re the ACC champion in a year in which the ACC has played really well and in the year in which the ACC has six pretty good teams right now ranked. Then you’ve got a chance to get to the playoff.”