Louisville's Petrino a master counterpuncher

At his core, Bobby Petrino is a counterpuncher.

He believes in balance. He is attentive to detail. His football philosophy reflects NFL sophistication, featuring multiple formations and personnel packages, and it produces points at a dizzying rate.

But one of the reasons Petrino's teams have been so prolific is that their coach is more reactive than he is rigid, more willing than most to tailor his tactics to exploit an opponent's specific strategy. In a sport heavily populated with ideologues, the University of Louisville's second-tour head coach prefers to take what the defense gives him and then systematically demolish it.

"Some places you go, you have an offense and you say, 'This is what we do. This is what we're going to do,' " Western Kentucky head coach Jeff Brohm said. "He's more, 'This is what we do, but we're going to have to do this to beat what they do.' He's more willing to adjust what he does and strategically game-plan to beat what they do, what he sees on film, than other coaches."

Working under Petrino last year at WKU, Brohm recalls his boss scouting not only the Hilltoppers' opponents, but the tendencies of opposing coaches.

Before Western's opener against Kentucky, Petrino performed an extensive analysis of what UK's first-year coach Mark Stoops had done as a defensive coordinator at Florida State, and he arranged his attack accordingly.

"We watched a ton of video and really had an idea of what we thought they were going to do," Brohm said. "We didn't know if they would adjust based on their personnel, (but) they pretty much did what we thought they would do the entire game, didn't change it up. And you don't want to do that against (Petrino).

"Pretty much everything we called that game worked."

Western scored five touchdowns that night against UK, three of them on its first four possessions, and Petrino's knack for finding weakness enabled the Hilltoppers to score touchdowns on eight of their first nine opening drives last season. If the athletes at Petrino's disposal in Bowling Green were generally inferior to those he has coached at Louisville, his shock-and-awe capabilities were the same.

"He's going to take your defense and dissect it," said Lamar Thomas, the wide receivers coach who followed Petrino from WKU to U of L. "He's going to let you run your defense, but we're going to have beaters for your defense. Whatever defense you want to run, I've got a beater for it. I'm going to be prepared enough for any defense you call to know your weaknesses, and that's what I'm going to go after.

"We've got you. We already know your weaknesses. Even if you consider them your strength, we're still going to get you."

Though Petrino remains one of football's most polarizing figures — a coach whose return to Louisville provoked both celebration and condemnation — his ability to put points on the board is beyond dispute. His 2004 Louisville team led the FBS in total offense and scoring and finished the regular season by producing at least 55 points in five straight games. In his four seasons as head coach, Petrino's U of L teams averaged 41 points over 50 games.

For those Cardinals fans who considered Charlie Strong's brand of football too stodgy, Petrino's return is widely perceived as an aggressive gear shift. On the statistical surface, at least, this perception would seem overstated. Petrino's previous four-year stint as U of L's head coach produced 2,007 running plays and 1,514 passes, compared with Strong's four-year totals of 1,855 runs and 1,639 passes.

Yet Petrino's average play gained more than 7 yards, Strong's slightly less than 6. Considering the sample sizes of 3,521 and 3,494 plays, 1 extra yard per play translates into a lot of touchdowns.

Strength of schedule fluctuates from year to year. Talent levels ebb and flow. But those who have watched Petrino's preparations up close tend to credit coaching as the critical variable.

"He sees everything," Louisville quarterback Will Gardner said, "every little thing."

"If I had to game plan for my life with a football coach, I'd want Bobby Petrino to do it," said Kenny Klein, U of L's sports information director. "He's that good."

Part of Klein's faith formation can be traced to a 70-7 blowout of Cincinnati in 2004. Told the first play of the game would go for a touchdown if the Bearcats lined up on defense as Petrino expected, Klein watched in wonder as Eric Shelton broke off tackle and on cue for an 80-yard score.

"We would always watch the first series of the game of every one of (opponents') games," said Brohm, then a U of L assistant coach. "You could kind of get a tendency — this team likes to start out blitzing the quarterback, this team likes to run the base (defense) the first series to get their feet wet. He knew exactly what they were going to do. The first play was exactly what they showed and we hit it.

Petrino "has a great knack of getting his players to believe that this is what's going to happen. We work on it a lot and then they go execute."

Though Petrino retains the final say, his planning process is both collaborative and collegial. Assistant coaches and graduate assistants watch practice on Tuesday afternoon knowing they will be expected to make specific recommendations the following day.

"Each coach is writing down formations and plays that they like and things that look really good," Petrino said. "The first thing we do Wednesday morning is, 'What have you got for me? What four plays would you like to see in the first eight plays?' "

Last fall, before Western Kentucky played at Georgia State, Lamar Thomas was lobbying for a play in which fullback Kadeem Jones faked a block on a linebacker and then broke over the middle as a receiver. Thomas reiterated his suggestion shortly before the first half ended, and Jones turned it into a 16-yard touchdown.

"I was surprised that he gave you the opportunity to suggest plays," Thomas said of Petrino. "But it shows you're on top of things. When you get one that works, you come back the next week and he says, 'You got another one?' "

Expectations are high. Standards are inflexible. Former Louisville quarterback Chris Redman recalls returning to the sideline following touchdown passes to have Petrino point out that his three-step drop should have been a five-step drop.

"You could never be complacent with Coach P," Redman said. "We'd be in a meeting and he'd tell you, 'This is a touchdown throw, you're either going to make it or you're not.' And sure enough, 90 something percent, he was right.

"He had a knack of not just calling plays, but setting plays up for defenses. I've never been so confident going to the line of scrimmage as I was when Coach Petrino was calling plays for me."

Petrino was Redman's offensive coordinator in 1998 at U of L, and the two were later reunited with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons. Before a Monday night game against New Orleans, Redman confided to his wife that if he held his hands to his mouth as if mimicking a telephone conversation, it was a signal that he was about to seek a long-distance connection.

"I told her, 'If you see this, Coach says it's a touchdown,' " Redman said. "My wife saw me where I had my hands up gesturing and she says, 'Here it is, touchdown.' And everybody looked at her. Sure enough, it was a touchdown to Roddy White down the sidelines."

Brohm thinks Petrino's success is a product of him paying closer and more prolonged attention than do many of his peers. When rival coaches are playing golf or vacationing, Petrino is probably breaking down video or designing plays.

"Sometimes other people have a lot of other interests," Brohm said. "I think his interest is football. So he spends the extra time. He's willing to do that. I think the fact that he's got grandkids now and gets a chance to see those has made him have a few other interests, but I think it's family and it's football."

So many touchdowns, so little time.

"It's a hard game," Bobby Petrino said. "You have to be dedicated."

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714