The First Responder Bowl is a matchup of teams which are coming at this postseason game from different vantage points. Louisville struggled for much of 2021, while Air Force came much closer to fulfilling its potential and has a chance to do something special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Louisville Cardinals vs. Air Force Falcons Location:<\/strong> Gerald J. Ford Stadium, University Park, TX<\/p>\n\n\n\n CFB Odds:<\/strong> Louisville -1.5<\/p>\n\n\n\n Louisville Cardinals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Head coach Scott Satterfield hasn\u2019t had the start he had hoped for in Louisville. He is losing favor with the fan base, having yet to win more than eight games in a season after winning nine or more games four different times while in charge of Appalachian State. The Cardinals thought they were getting a 10-win coach, but instead have yet to finish higher than second in the Atlantic Division of the ACC, all while Wake Forest managed to win a division championship this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Satterfield loses this bowl game, it would mean the Cardinals will have had two losing seasons in three years with him at the helm. With a unique talent such as Malik Cunningham at quarterback, the Cardinals should be finishing a lot higher than they are. Cunningham decided to come back to Louisville next year rather than going pro, but you can bet there will be NFL scouts at his bowl game even though he\u2019s coming back. Teams will want to get an early read on the future quarterback marketplace. With Louisville only having four scholarship receivers for this game, you can safely guess the Cards will need to rely on their run game to set things up for the rest of their offense. Cunningham believes he has enough to win, but can those four guys stay healthy the entire game? If not, that drastically changes things for the First Responders Bowl. It\u2019s definitely something to keep track of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Air Force Falcons<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Air Force didn\u2019t win the Commander-In-Chief\u2019s Trophy this year, but it didn\u2019t lose it, either. Navy did beat Army, but the Midshipmen lost to Air Force, which lost to Army. Air Force finished the year with the best record of any service academy football school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Haaziq Daniels leads the way for the Falcons at quarterback. On the year he has 932 passing yards to go with 705 rushing yards in Air Force\u2019s triple-option attack. As is the case with most service academy schools, the offense relies on doing things differently because of its unique recruiting status. This means Louisville must be ready to stop the run, because Air Force has one of the nation\u2019s most potent rushing attacks. To be more specific, Air Force has the nation\u2019s best rushing attack with Army coming in second and Navy coming in seventh. Simply put, the service academies are going to run the ball down your throat and there won\u2019t be much of a chance to catch your breath of Air Force develops momentum with its run blocking and the different angles from which it attempts to run the ball. How good is Air Force\u2019s rushing attack? The Falcons have 4,090 yards rushing on the year and 42 touchdowns. The only school with more rushing touchdowns is Army with 44.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Louisville is not a steady or consistent team. It\u2019s the kind of team which is likely to be less disciplined and polished than a service academy opponent. Louisville might make a few highlight-reel plays, but Air Force is likely to win the battle at the line of scrimmage and come out of this game with a win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cardinals vs. Falcons Prediction:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Falcons 27, Cardinals 20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The First Responder Bowl is a matchup of teams which are coming at this postseason game from different vantage points….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaaf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20590,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20573\/revisions\/20590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Date:<\/strong> Tuesday, December 28th, 3:15 PM ET<\/p>\n\n\n\n