Louisville football after Scott Satterfield: How good is the job? Who are candidates?

Louisville needs a new head coach after Scott Satterfield accepted the Cincinnati head coaching job on Monday.

The move caps a dramatic few months for Louisville. After a 2-3 start to this season, Satterfield appeared to be on the verge of getting fired. But the Cardinals rallied to win five of their next six and reach the Top 25 before a loss to Kentucky ended their regular season at 7-5. Now, Satterfield’s out on his own terms. Coincidentally, Louisville and Cincinnati will play each other in the Fenway Bowl on Dec. 17.

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Satterfield went 25-24 in four seasons at Louisville. The Cards were 8-5 in his first season, followed by two losing seasons and this 7-5 record.

After his second season, Satterfield interviewed for the South Carolina job. When the news got out, Satterfield apologized to fans and said he would work to gain back their trust. It never really happened. A strong recruiting effort leading into the 2022 season appeared to give him some stability, until the 2-3 start. Though he wasn’t fired, he would’ve gone into 2023 on the hot seat.

So how good is the Louisville job? What names could get in the mix? Here are some factors to keep in mind.

The program has been wildly inconsistent recently, but potential is there

From the end of the second Bobby Petrino era to the beginning of Satterfield, Louisville went from 8-5 to 2-10 to 8-5 to 4-7. The highs can be high: a 23-3 record from 2012 to 2013 and Lamar Jackson winning the Heisman Trophy in 2016. And the lows can be very low: an 0-8 ACC record in 2018.

In an ACC lacking great teams, there’s no reason Louisville shouldn’t regularly be in the upper half of the league. The program has a good eye for quarterbacks, from Teddy Bridgewater to Jackson to Malik Cunningham.

From 1998 to 2017, the Cards reached 17 bowl games in 20 years and won at least nine games 10 times. This is a winning program with the ability to get near the upper tier. But Satterfield had only one winning season in conference play over four years.

There is a lot of investment in the program, from facilities to recruiting to NIL

This may be a basketball school to some people, but Louisville has put money into football. Cardinal Stadium opened in 1998 and has had a few renovations, including an overhaul to the Howard Schnellenberger Football Complex in 2018. That upgrade featured an additional 100,000 square feet, doubling the size of the weight room and conditioning center, plus more amenities.

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Under Satterfield, Louisville’s recruiting investment and attraction work improved, as The Athletic’s Ari Wasserman noted in June, and it paid off. A class that ranked in the top 10 before the season was still in the top 20 before Satterfield’s departure. Five-star running back Rueben Owens, who committed in June, would be the program’s highest-rated signee since Michael Bush in 2003 — if the next coach can hold onto him.

The 502 Circle collective launched in June for boosters and fans to help the program, and the school created an NIL marketplace in early September as well. Technically speaking, NIL cannot be used for recruiting, but Louisville’s recruiting improvement coming alongside NIL investment is likely not a coincidence. From top to bottom, this program has a good amount of financial support.

Is Power 5 experience a requirement?

Satterfield had never coached at the Power 5 level before Louisville, and nearly all of his career had been at an Appalachian State program that has won for a long time. Head coaching experience is one thing, but experience at big programs with big boosters and high-level recruiting is another.

After the frustrating run with Satterfield, who was hired by Vince Tyra, does current athletic director Josh Heird want someone with top-level experience? Looking at Louisville’s recent basketball search, Heird went with Kenny Payne, who was an NBA assistant with more than a decade of experience at Kentucky with John Calipari.

Whether it’s the head coach or an assistant, the next staff should have connections in Florida, where Louisville has recruited well over the years.

Does Louisville want another offensive head coach?

Over the past 20 years, Louisville has almost exclusively had offensive-minded head coaches: Bobby Petrino, Steve Kragthorpe, Petrino again and Scott Satterfield. Charlie Strong is the only exception. It’s a program often synonymous with offense and those aforementioned quarterbacks.

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So what names could get in the mix?

This list has to start with Jeff Brohm. The Louisville native and former UL player and assistant coach turned down this job the last time it opened in 2018 and received a big contract from Purdue. But things may have changed since then. Most notably, comments from Brohm while in town at a high school alumni event in the spring, telling the group, “To be quite honest, through my schooling and how I was raised, I believe in at least trying to do the right thing and having morals and values. It just was too early to leave (Purdue). It just wasn’t right. … But, obviously, now we’re on year six. I love this town, this area. I’m an alumnus of Louisville. So anything can happen in the future.”

Was that just playing to the crowd or a real desire to come home? Brohm is 36-34 at Purdue, and he just won the school’s first Big Ten West division title. Under Brohm, the Boilers have had some surprising losses but also have two top-five wins. Brohm has a good track record with quarterbacks and offense, and there are a lot of people at Louisville who want to bring him back. It’s also worth noting that one month before those comments about Louisville, Brohm signed a two-year extension through 2027, a move pushed by Brohm and his agent. He makes more than $5 million annually, and it would likely cost a few million to get out of the deal. Given the growing resources in the Big Ten, would Brohm be willing to leave that to go home?

If it’s not Brohm, Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Liam Coen’s name was mentioned around this job by industry sources when it appeared Satterfield could be fired. Coen spent 2021 as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator and was so successful that he parlayed that back to a bigger job with the Rams, where he also coached from 2018 to ’20. Before that, the 37-year-old had only coached in the Northeast. The Rams are 3-9 this season, in large part due to major injuries on the team.

If Louisville looks within the state, Kentucky defensive coordinator Brad White has continued to build and produce a solid defense since joining Mark Stoops’ staff in 2018. Since White took the coordinator job in 2019, the Wildcats have finished in the top 30 in scoring defense twice and are there again this season. White’s defense also held Louisville to 14.2 points per game in four consecutive Governor’s Cup wins, including a 26-13 Wildcats win this year.

LSU defensive coordinator Matt House also has in-state connections, working on the Kentucky staff from 2016 to ’18, including the last two as defensive coordinator. House’s defense was a foundation of Stoops’ program, helping produce UK’s first 10-win season in 41 years. He spent the past three years as the Kansas City Chiefs’ linebackers coach before joining LSU en route to winning the SEC West this season.

An internal option could be defensive coordinator Bryan Brown. Where Louisville did play well under Satterfield was on defense; Brown’s unit is in the top 20 in points allowed and No. 3 in takeaways this season. He also produced a top-five defense at Appalachian State in 2018.

Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien has been in the mix for a few jobs this cycle, including Georgia Tech, though others in the industry believe he wants to get back to the NFL. In his one stint as a college head coach, O’Brien handled the Penn State job admirably coming out of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and NCAA penalties, going 15-9 in two years as head coach there before leaving for the Houston Texans head coaching job. At Alabama, Bryce Young won the Heisman Trophy last year, one season after Alabama lost one of the greatest classes of skill players ever. Without many true star players on this year’s offense, Alabama is still No. 4 in scoring.

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Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Dave Ragone is a former Louisville quarterback who became a third-round pick. He may have some local support, but he’s never coached at the college level since becoming a coach in 2010.

Michigan defensive coordinator Jesse Minter is a finalist for the Broyles Award for the nation’s top assistant coach, in his first season with the program, and his group shut down C.J. Stroud and the Ohio State offense en route to a Big Ten championship and CFP appearance. The son of former Cincinnati head coach Rick Minter, the 39-year-old Arkansas native has impressed a lot of people with the sustained success at Michigan despite losing multiple NFL Draft picks from last year’s team. He was Vanderbilt’s defensive coordinator in 2021 after four years with the Baltimore Ravens.

Michigan co-offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Sherrone Moore was a Louisville assistant for five seasons from 2009 to 2013. His Michigan offensive line won the 2021 Joe Moore Award as the nation’s top group up front, and the unit has been the backbone of consecutive Big Ten championships and College Football Playoff runs. He’s been on the Michigan staff since 2018 and became the co-offensive coordinator in 2021. He knows Louisville and he’s winning at the highest level.

Western Kentucky head coach Tyson Helton has done a very solid job, with a 31-21 record over four seasons. A bowl win would give him three nine-win seasons in four years. He’s adapted well to the transfer portal, notably getting QB Bailey Zappe last year and QB Austin Reed this year (though Reed has since gone back into the portal after a big season). He’s shown an ability to adjust and make major changes and still win. Louisville previously hired a WKU head coach when it hired Petrino the second time around. Brohm, too, is a former WKU head coach.

(Top photo: Jamie Rhodes / USA Today)