LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The winter months are now finally in the rear view mirror, and spring is in the air in the city of Louisville. With that, comes the onset of spring football.
On Monday, the Cardinals officially kicked off their over month-long set of spring practices in preparation for the 2025 season later this fall. Louisville will get together for 15 total practices this spring, culminating with the annual spring game on Friday, Apr. 11.
Like every college football program in this modern landscape, Louisville is welcoming a plethora of new faces to their program. In fact, between the transfer portal and high school recruiting, there will be 37 new scholarship players for year three of the Jeff Brohm era.
As Louisville takes their first steps in preparation for the 2025 season, part of that process is simply getting acclimated to all the newcomers.
“There’s quite a few new faces out there,” Brohm said following the first practice of the spring. “While we’ve been around them in weight workouts and meetings, it was truly the first time on the field in a practice setting. We’ve got some work to do, without question. Getting to know everyone, and what they’re good at, and their strengths, and what things they need to work on, we’ll take plenty of practices to make sure we’re on top of that. We’re studying it, and we’re getting better.
“It’s quite a bit of a new team, without question. That’s just the nature of where we’re at right now. But we like what we have here, we’ve just got to put the work in. We’ve got to give them as many reps as we can, and watch it on video, and figure out ways to be as sharp as we possibly can, and as crisp as we possibly can every time we step out there.”
The vast majority of these newcomers are already on campus. All 21 transfers in from the winter portal window have made it to Louisville, as well as 11 of their 16 signees from the 2025 high school recruiting class. The other five were the ones who committed to the Cards either on or after the first day of the December early signing period, and are expected to enroll this summer.
During the first day of spring ball, as expected these midyear enrollees – transfer or true freshman – got plenty of run. While the veteran returners to Louisville still had their fair share of reps, it was obvious that day one of spring ball was catered more towards the fresh faces.
It might be just one practice in, but Brohm already likes what he has seen out of the group of newcomers.
“There’s a lot of new enrollees, and it takes a while to learn what they look like in the helmet. Sometimes I’m asking who exactly that is,” Brohm quipped. “But I like our crew. I think that we’ve got some athleticism, we’ve got some length at certain positions, we’ve got some depth that we’ve built that are guys that can play football.
“I think just getting them up to speed and educated on what we’re doing, so that they’re sharp, they’re crisp, they know what they’re doing, they can play fast, is what’s going to be important. I think talent-wise, we have some some key additions that will contribute, and do a really good job.”
Day one of spring ball, like it is across the sport at most programs, was mainly used to install the playbook and help get players adjusted to the schemes. In fact, there was one 11-on-11 period where the players didn’t even wear helmets.
Related: Notes and Observations from Louisville’s First Spring Practice of 2025
While it’s far from the practice that will have the heaviest workload from a physical standpoint, it still serves a massive purpose – mainly from a film breakdown standpoint, given the space between practices that they have.
“We’ll watch quite a bit of this video,” Brohm said. “I think that’s the best part about it. In spring practice, you’re not practicing every day, so you have some days in between You normally have about three practices a week, so you have plenty of time to watch the film as a staff, to watch the film as a unit, to watch the film with your position players. And we want them to go back and watch it on their own, and learn some things and quiz themselves, and that has to happen.”
(Photo of Jeff Brohm: Sam Upshaw Jr. – Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
You can follow Louisville Cardinals On SI for future coverage by liking us on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram:
Facebook – @LouisvilleOnSI
Twitter/X – @LouisvilleOnSI
Instagram – @louisvilleonsi
You can also follow Deputy Editor Matthew McGavic at @Matt_McGavic on Twitter/X and @mattmcgavic.bsky.social on Bluesky
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
