3 takeaways: Louisville football's ACC woes continue with stunning Boston College loss

BOSTON, Massachusetts — Louisville football needed a win.

The Cardinals started 0-2 in ACC play. They traveled to face a Boston College they were favored to beat handily. It was a chance to build positive momentum following a big win over USF.

Instead, it was déjà vu for Louisville (2-3, 0-3 ACC), struggling to hang on in a close game before ultimately falling to Boston College 34-33 at Alumni Stadium.

Louisville entered the season hoping to start fast against teams projected in the preseason to be near the bottom of the conference. Instead, Syracuse (31-7), Florida State (35-31) and now BC have handed U of L one puzzling loss after the next.

The Cardinals averaged just 4.9 yards per play, gave up a season-high 346 yards to the Eagles (2-3, 1-2 ACC) and were down to backup quarterback Brock Domann in the late stages of the game.

"I think one thing BC did, they played a lot more man in this game than what they had shown and really contested catches, that we had to make," Louisville coach Scott Satterfield said. "I think we ended up getting maybe three personal- pass interference penalties against BC. That's how contested it was, so you had to make some tight throws in some tight windows. We were able to make a few of those and get some big plays in that, but for a lot of the game, you just couldn't get in some good rhythm."

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Here are three takeaways from Louisville’s third straight ACC loss:

The offensive struggles continue

Louisville’s inconsistencies on offense continue to cost the team.

The Cardinals’ defense forced three Boston College turnovers, yet the offense could only produce nine points off of them.

Where the group of running backs had been a bright spot for the squad, Louisville struggled to get going coming out of the backfield, averaging just 3.6 yards per rush.

But take out starting quarterback Malik Cunningham’s 52 yards on 14 carries (3.7 yards per attempt) and the Cardinals’ trio of Tiyon Evans (eight carries, 48 yards), who left the game with an injury and was last seen in a walking boot on the sideline; Jawhar Jordan (10 for 23) and Trevion Cooley (six for 14), and the average dipped to 3.5.

The 52 yards were the fewest by Cunningham since his 34 yards on the ground in the Week 1 loss to the Orange. He had cleared 100 yards in each of the previous three games.

Cunningham also struggled with accuracy. At one point in the first half, he was completing less than 55% of his passes. He finished 19 of 28 for 186 yards and a touchdown.

The Cardinals did continue to spread the ball around, with Tyler Hudson (four catches, 50 yards), Huggins-Bruce (four for 44) and Ford (four for 37) leading a passing attack that saw nine different players record at least one reception.

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Bringing in QB Brock Domann

Cunningham took a shot to the head during the Cardinals’ first drive of the second half that led to Boston College linebacker Jalyn Blackwell getting ejected for targeting.

Domann came in for a play after that, but Cunningham returned for two more drives. He had a 29-yard pass to Ahmari Huggins-Bruce before floating a 12-yard TD pass to the receiver at the 4:50 mark of the third quarter to put U of L ahead 33-28. The Cardinals came up empty on what was Cunningham’s final series of the day before Domann came in with 7:24 left in the game.

Cunningham ended the day with 186 yards on 19-for-28 passing and 52 yards and three touchdowns on 14 carries. For a second straight game, the Alabama native had three rushing TDs in the first half.

Domann started out well with a 19-yard pass to Marshon Ford but couldn’t find Huggins-Bruce a few plays later on fourth down, and the Cardinals turned the ball over on downs.

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After the Eagles took the lead on a 26-yard field goal with 1:56 to play, Domann had one final drive but threw three incomplete passes, two of which came after offsetting penalties, to turn the ball over on downs with 1:32 on the clock. BC kneeled out the rest of the clock.

Domann finished 1 of 7 for 19 yards.

"It's just about executing on what my read is, and some really tight coverage, some questionable stuff," Domann said, "but at the end of the day, it didn't go our way. We got to just come back next week and prepare for Virginia."

Boston ‘big play’ College

There was little Louisville did to stop Eagles wide receiver Zay Flowers, who had touchdown grabs of 57 and 69 yards while averaging 42.7 yards per catch on a five-catch, 151-yard day. He added a 23-yard run on what appeared to be a busted trick play to set up Eagles quarterback Phil Jurkovec’s 1-yard TD pass to Joe Griffin at the 4:34 mark of the first quarter for the Eagles’ first score of the day.

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"He's a tremendous player. We knew that coming in," Satterfield said of Flowers. "You've got to have a guy underneath, on top. He beat us a couple of times on some post routes. Then he had us on a reverse pass that he ends up taking down and going all the way over to the one yard line. Just made some great plays."

According to Statbroadcast, Boston College had 148 yards after the catch.

Louisville entered the game with the 30th-ranked passing defense by yards allowed per game (187). But against ACC competition, U of L has given up an average of 270 yards and ACC quarterbacks have thrown nine touchdowns. Non-conference foes have just 241 yards and no TDs against the Cards.

The 303 yards Jurkovec (18 of 21, three TDs, an INT) threw for are a season high against U of L.

BC running back Alex Broome also added a 40-yard touchdown run as the Eagles totaled over 400 yards of offense after averaging 283.3 per outing on the year.

"Bottom line is, too many big play given up in the pass game," Satterfield said, "and we knew that coming in, we had to stop that."

Reach Louisville football, women's basketball and baseball beat writer Alexis Cubit at acubit@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter at @Alexis_Cubit.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville football vs. Boston College: 3 takeaways from Cards