Brown: Jack Plummer raised bar for QB play and Louisville football with career-high outing

Louisville quarterback Jack Plummer changed the narrative of what to expect from him during his 388-yard, five-touchdown performance in the Cards' 56-28 win over Boston College on Saturday.

If that’s the version Plummer shows the rest of the season, go ahead and book U of L for Charlotte and the ACC championship game. It won’t come with a caveat that the Cardinals only made it because of a favorable schedule. It will be because Plummer’s arm helped deliver them there.

“It was a great performance, and now the bar has been raised for him,” Louisville coach Jeff Brohm said.

Plummer got quite the raise nationally, where his performance got him added to the Davey O’Brien Award midseason watch list. The award goes to the nation’s top quarterback. He was also named to the O’Brien Award’s Great 8 and the Manning Award Star of the Week, which are weekly honors that recognize the top eight quarterback performances.

The way Plummer began the season, national awards weren’t really in the picture. He played inconsistently enough to wonder if there would be a point when Brohm would test a backup or two.

The opening game against Georgia Tech, he didn’t look very accurate when his incompletions were either low or behind his targets.

He was intercepted in each of the first three games to start the season, which, combined with last year at California, gave him a pick in seven of eight consecutive games.

Even when he completed passes, he’d underthrow receivers, leaving them to wait for the ball, and potential touchdowns were downgraded to just long plays.

All of that changed against Boston College.

Plummer was on point.

Plummer completed a career-high 85.7% of his attempts (18-for-21) including the string of 15 consecutive passes that ranked as the fourth most in program history.

“That’s part of my game,” Plummer said. “When I get into the groove, I feel like I’m pretty dangerous.”

He surely is when Brohm can open up the playbook like he did against the Eagles.

Plummer had five passes of more than 40 yards, which padded his total that leads all NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision quarterbacks with nine. Plummer is sixth nationally among FBS players, averaging 17.2 yards per completion.

U of L won’t score 56 points every game, but it’s not outlandish to expect the explosive plays to keep coming when Plummer plays — as Brohm called it — as “sharp” as he did.

“Not only did he play great, he made throws up the field,” Brohm said. “These were not little screens, these were vertical shots down the field, hitting them on the money.”

Brohm has found the sweet spot for Plummer. The Cards are averaging more running attempts per game than passing. Since throwing 31 times in the opener, Plummer has stayed within 20-25 passing attempts per game.

Brohm likened preparing Plummer at quarterback to working on a golf swing and having to continually retrain mentally to get the desired result. Even though he’s started college games going back to 2019, Plummer still needed to be reinforced to relax and trust his work.

Boston College was just the beginning of him doing that.

“I feel like I did a better job of standing in and just throwing the ball,” Plummer said.

Defensive end Stephen Herron, a Trinity High grad, called Plummer an “extremely smart quarterback” who can sometimes overthink things. Herron believes Plummer has more games like Boston College in the future.

“I don't think it was anything special (last) week,” said Herron, who played against Plummer while at Stanford last season. “He's fighting his own self in his head, and he's just finally just buckling down and just being comfortable. Sometimes it takes time.”

Reach sports columnist C.L. Brown at clbrown1@gannett.com, follow him on X at @CLBrownHoops and subscribe to his newsletter at profile.courier-journal.com/newsletters/cl-browns-latest to make sure you never miss one of his columns.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville football: QB Jack Plummer raised bar ahead of NC State game