Why Louisville's Jeff Brohm, not Deion Sanders, has been the first-year head coach who's best capitalized on the spring transfer window

Among first-year head coaches, Deion Sanders and Kenny Dillingham have sucked up the most oxygen with the way they’ve hit the fast-forward button on aggressive Year 1 rebuilds. 

The roster reckonings at both Colorado and Arizona State are nearly unprecedented with the amount of turnover at those programs, but with the second transfer window closing Sunday, there’s another first-year head coach who has quietly used the portal to position his team to be a legit contender in 2023. 

No coach in America has capitalized on the spring transfer window more than Louisville’s Jeff Brohm. 

The Cardinals already looked positioned to be a darkhorse ACC contender in the fall thanks to their upgrade at head coach and a cupcake schedule in a now-divisionless ACC (no Clemson, Florida State or North Carolina), but they’ve filled several necessary holes over the last two weeks, adding eight more transfers to the roster. 

Between the winter and spring windows, Brohm has landed 20 transfers, completely reloading Louisville’s receiving corp, offensive line and secondary. He also signed his 2023 quarterback in Cal transfer Jack Plummer, who reunites with Brohm after spending three seasons at Purdue with 14 starts, and Stanford edge rusher Stephen Herron.

Louisville lost several significant pieces to the NFL this offseason (Yasir Abdullah, Yaya Diaby) but Brohm has done a nice job reshaping the roster around a defense transitioning to a 4-2-5 scheme. The Cardinals were a Top 25 unit a year ago, and with key contributors like Ashton Gillotte and Jarvis Brownlee, Jr. back, they simply needed some help around them to maintain their steady level of play. 

Brohm landed multiple potential starters from the two most premium positions in the portal — offensive line and pass rusher. 

During the spring window, the Cardinals grabbed four offensive linemen — Purdue tackle Eric Miller, Houston guard Lance Robinson, Rutgers guard Willie Tyler and Duquesne tackle Vincent Lumia — as well as a couple of former All-ACC defensive backs in Cam’Ron Kelly and Storm Duck, who briefly committed to Penn State as a transfer before reentering the portal.

Louisville’s most recent addition was former Georgia 4-star corner Marcus Washington, who committed to UL this week. 

Duck, Kelly and Washington were simply the latest pieces in a completely overhauled secondary that desperately needed more depth. Louisville’s offseason haul also includes Marquis Groves-Killebrew, a former Top 150 recruit out of Texas A&M, Gilbert Frierson from Miami and Baylor’s Devin Neal. 

The Cards signed four receivers during the winter window — Georgia State transfer Jamari Thrash (61 catches for 1,222 yards and seven touchdowns in 2022), Jackson State’s Kevin Coleman, Tennessee speedster Jimmy Calloway and Cincy’s Jadon Thomson — and all four went through spring practice. 

They might not be done adding a wideout or another offensive lineman, either. 

Louisville does not plan to live and die by the portal so aggressively each offseason. Jeff Brohm is already off to a nice start on the recruiting trail in 2024 (an early Top 20 class), and the goal is to balance the roster with prep and transfer prospects.

But that’s the future. To win now, Jeff Brohm is loading up, and doing so with more success this spring than any other first-year head coach.

He didn’t inherit a complete teardown compared to what’s happening at Colorado or Arizona State, but he’s used the portal to patchwork real holes on Louisville’s roster that now positions the Cardinals to be a surprise contender in Year 1 under a new regime.