Beating the Spread: Notre Dame at Louisville

Date: Monday, Sept. 2

Time: 8 p.m. ET

Location: Cardinal Stadium — Louisville, Kentucky

TV: ESPN

The first full week of the 2019 college football season will come to an end tonight as the Irish will battle the Cardinals. The game looks like a mismatch on paper, but the games are not played on paper. Let’s take a look at this matchup.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

The Fighting Irish will be looking to make a second consecutive trip to the college football playoffs and they return 14 starters. The biggest of those returning starters will be quarterback Ian Book, who had an outstanding season last year. He will definitely have some big-time players to throw the ball to this season in Miles Boykin and Nic Weishar. The Irish’s top returning receiver, Chase Claypool, started 11 games a season ago and caught 50 passes for 639 yards and 4 touchdowns. The Irish will look to have a balanced attach with running back Dexter Williams.

Louisville Cardinals

The Bobby Petrino era has ended in Louisville and new head coach Scott Saterfield will lead the Cardinals out of the abyss of last season’s miserable 2-10 (at least Cardinals fans hope he can). The Cardinals will be lead by last year’s starting quarterback Jawon Pass, who last year had a less than impressive stat line of completing just 54 percent of his attempts for 1,960 yards (178.1 yards passing per game), while throwing 12 interceptions, compared to just 8 touchdowns. Don’t be surprised if Pass has difficulties early in the game and is replaced by Malik Cunningham, who is more of a dual-threat quarterback, the type that coach Satterfield has seemed to favor in his past coaching stops.

The Cardinals do have some hope on the defensive side of the ball where they return seven starters.

Prediction: This game appears to be a total mismatch on paper and I believe it will be a mismatch when played on field turf.

ND 41  Louisville 17. Take Notre Dame and give the 18 points.