The Louisville Cardinals are a sleeper national championship team this season with Teddy Bridgewater at quarterback and with the team playing the Big East for the final season, they could have a special season, but first they will have to get past the always tough Rutgers in a Thursday night game on ESPN starting at 7:30 pm.
Rutgers is 4-1 this season and 1-0 in the Big East and the game on Thursday will be at Papa John's Cardinal Stadium and should give number eight Louisville their toughest test of the season so far. The Big East matchups will be tough all season and those games are the ones that Cardinals need to watch out for, as they don't have a currently ranked opponent on their schedule all season, something that could help them go undefeated, but also something that could hurt them come BCS time.
Click here for the Watch ESPN live coverage of the Louisville Cardinals and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
Bridgewater was looked at as a Heisman Trophy candidate this season after playing very well last year and he could be the key for the team getting into the BCS mix this year. This season Bridgewater has over 1,500 passing yards already with 16 touchdowns and he is the main reason why the team is 5-0 and they have also done an excellent job rushing the ball, averaging over 180 yards per game already. The team is averaging over 500 total years per game and that could be too much for Rutgers to handle.
Louisville is not usually known for its stout defense, but this season the team has not allowed anyone to score over 13 points over five games and they have only had one even reach double digits, which came in a 27-13 victory against Kentucky. The team has allowed a combined seven points over the past two weeks while scoring over 100 and apart from the Kentucky game, the team has allowed just 21 points through five games this season. The team scored 72 points in their win over Florida International two weeks ago and now they are getting ready for the Big East schedule to heat up.
Senorise Perry is having a very solid season for the team and he has rushed for over 290 yards and has scored four touchdowns for the Cardinals and he should be a factor on Thursday. The team has a home game against UCF next week and then will play against South Florida on the road in the first of two away contests with Connecticut next as well. The team then has home games against Houston and Memphis and then they will play their biggest game of the season against Cincinnati on the road December 5 for the final matchup of the year.
The team is ranked 13th in passing yards per game with over 330 and are 58th in rushing and are ranked first in the nation with just under seven points allowed per game. The offense is ranked 12th with over 40 points per game and the Thursday matchup against Rutgers will start at 7:30 PM on ESPN and will be live on the Watch ESPN website.