The post Lamar Jackson era in Louisville was off to a terrible start. The team finished 2-10 in 2018 and finished 0-8 in ACC conference play. It seemed like Louisville was in for a long rebuild or at least a couple of seasons at the bottom of the conference.
Then in December of 2018, the Cardinal hired then Appalachian State head coach Scott Satterfield who immediately revived the program in 2019. In just one season the Cardinal improved their record by 6 wins and defeated Mississippi State in the Music City Bowl.
Satterfield deserves a ton of credit, but his QB, Malik Cunningham, also deserves a good amount of credit for helping turn the program around so quickly. Cunningham is a dynamic player with the ball in his hands and has plenty of arm talent.
In his redshirt-sophomore season, Cunningham racked up 2,061 passing yards, 22 passing touchdowns, 482 rushing yards, six rushing touchdowns, and only threw five interceptions.
As you all know, stats often tell the least important part of the story. With their big primetime game scheduled for tonight, I thought it would be a good time to see what the hype is about before kickoff.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Cunningham has some impressive flashes of deep ball placement from inside the pocket. This throw definitely made me raise my eyebrows. Now, the Louisville offense does scheme a ton of guys open down the field, but this throw is perfect even if Andre Cisco was in good positioning.
Louisville comes out in the pistol with one receiver to the bottom of the screen and two receivers to the top of the screen. Tutu Atwell is the slot receiver to the top of the screen, and he’s the player who ends up making the catch.
He’s running a post route right across the face of FS Andre Cisco. Cunningham understands he’s got Atwell (one of the fastest players in the country) in 1v1 coverage over the top. This leads him to hang in the pocket and wait for Atwell to clear Cisco’s face.
A Syracuse LB ends up getting pretty close to Cunningham’s face and definitely makes this a throw under pressure. No problem for Cunningham though as he launches the ball 45 yards down the field perfectly hitting Atwell in stride.
This shows not only arm strength but also anticipation given he leads Atwell into open grass. This was the most impressive throw he made in the three games I watched.
So if the last play was the best of Cunningham has to offer then this next play is the worst he has to offer. The Cardinal came out with Cunningham in the shotgun and an RB behind him with an H-Back to the right side of the formation.
The play is for the H-back to sneak out of the backfilled and run a wheel route down the right sideline. Personally, I love this play call from the coaching staff. The wheel route is one of the best routes in the game and running it from the H-back spot typically yields an advantageous matchup for the offense.
The Louisville RT gets beat pretty badly on this play leaving a free rusher in the face of Cunningham. This forces him to throw an absolute duck into the air which gives the safety enough time to come over and just miss an INT.
Sometimes you just gotta take the sack. The offensive line shares some blame here, but Cunningham has a horrible habit of just tossing the ball up into the air when there is pressure in his face.
He would benefit from either taking a sack here or trying to make a play with his legs. You can’t throw passes like this in the NFL. In the three games I watched, he made five such passes.
Back on the positive side of Cunningham’s game, we have deep ball touch. It isn’t something he’s too consistent with, but he certainly has some great flashes of it. This was probably the second-best throw from Cunningham’s film.
One of the things I like most about Cunningham is he’s good at picking out his best 1v1 matchups and attacking them. Number 12 for NC State was their WILL LB last season, and Cunningham picked on him in coverage all game.
This route was a straight go route by his TE, but I love the touch and understanding of leverage Cunningham shows here. He drops this rainbow throw right in the basket. He places it over the outside shoulder as well allowing his guy to keep running and score the easy touchdown.
This isn’t anything overly impressive, but the ability to ID your best 1v1 matchup and then lead your receiver into space for YAC is an important and translatable skill.
This play best represents the overall conclusion I came to with Cunningham. He’s close but not quite there yet. On this play, he’s got Atwell coming across the middle with FS Andre Cisco in coverage yet again.
What I like most about this play is he throws it with anticipation. He knows Atwell is going to beat Cisco across his face so he lets it rip early. The problem is this time he doesn’t lead Atwell due to bad ball placement. He leaves the throw too far inside allowing Cisco to get back in the play and almost come away with a PBU.
He had the right idea, the right process, but just threw a poorly placed ball. Cunningham struggles with placement pretty consistently and is easily the biggest improvement I want to see from him.
There were a lot of plays I filmed to display some of the easy throws he misses, but I thought this one is the most obvious. Sure, this throw requires some touch but a potential NFL QB needs to hit this throw.
Cunningham is frequently inaccurate in the short game which concerns me because Louisville scripts most of those reads for him. He frequently throws simple curls or in routes too high. He frequently throws the ball too hard on short drag routes too.
He’s also got a bad tendency of getting tunnel vision. He locks on his first read a lot and will refuse to come off it at times. This is a product of the Louisville system but something he’s gotta work on this season.
This throw may just look like one simple miss but trust me it is just a flash in the pan of easy misses.
Now, Cunningham does have one trump card trait I know I can hang my hat on. He’s a tremendous player with the ball in his hands. I think he’s one of the faster QBs I have scouted in recent years. I don’t know how he got to the corner on some of the plays he did but it blew me away.
The Cardinal came out in a pistol full house backfield on this play which I’m sure is every defensive coordinator’s nightmare. From there it is a simple read of the EDGE defender because he just shuffles himself inside right off the snap.
Cunningham immediately accelerates to win the corner. Seriously, very few QBs get outside this quickly. Once he wins the corner he turns upfield while holding his speed and then fights through some contact for the score.
Cunningham is great on designed runs for obvious reasons and the NFL is going in the direction of supporting this type of QB. The one thing I will say about Cunningham’s legs is I wish he kept his head up more when scrambling. I thought he took some bad sacks on plays where he could’ve thrown the ball down the field or out of play.
I think it is prudent to end one last deep throw from Cunningham. Again, he does a great job of identifying the best 1v1 matchup on the field. He gets that same WILL LB I talked about earlier on Tutu Atwell in man coverage with what appears to be no help over the top.
Predictably, Atwell runs straight by him and Cunningham sticks in the pocket to make a nice throw. Cunningham did slightly underthrow this pass, but I would wager it is actually to his benefit this time.
That slight second Atwell spends coming back to the ball allows him to look at what is ahead of him and adjust his YAC plan which leads to a touchdown. Sometimes things just work out.
Conclusion:
I mentioned this earlier in the article and on Twitter Friday night, but I don’t think Cunningham is quite there yet. I think he’s about two seasons away which would put him in the 2022 draft class.
The natural tools, athleticism, and arm talent present an exciting player worth monitoring. However, at this moment, he lacks the needed accuracy, ball placement, and mental processing to be considered anything more than a late day-three developmental QB prospect.
The talent is here, but he just needs to get some more reps under his belt before he becomes a draft twitter sweetheart.