Kienholz gets first start as No. 24 Louisville opens vs No. 9 Ole Miss
A season of portal quarterback battles ends with Lincoln Kienholz locked in, and his first start comes against a Heisman-caliber quarterback on a neutral field in Nashville.
Kienholz gets his first career start, against a Heisman-caliber quarterback
Jeff Brohm has run a portal quarterback battle every single fall since he arrived at Louisville, and this is the first one that sounds finished before September. Brohm said Kienholz "had a good day, and it was good because he's had a good camp, and I think he's getting a better grasp" of what it takes to both run and call the offense, and offensive coordinator Brian Brohm went further, saying Kienholz has "done a great job of picking up the offense and taking a leadership role within the group." That leadership is not new — 247Sports reported Kienholz sat on a leadership committee during his 3 seasons as a reserve at Ohio State, where he lost the starting job battle and threw just 36 career passes before transferring in.
The opponent for that first start is not a gentle one. Ole Miss brings back fifth-year quarterback Trinidad Chambliss, who threw the Rebels into 2 College Football Playoff wins last season and enters as a preseason Heisman name, with a defense ranked 15th nationally behind linebacker Suntarine Perkins. Louisville still drew 4 first-place votes in the ACC media's preseason poll, according to Brett McMurphy, good for 3rd behind Miami and SMU — a marker of how much the league trusts this roster even with a new quarterback running it.
The room around Kienholz looks nothing like it did a year ago, either. Louisville lost 4 of its top 5 receivers to the draft and the portal, replacing them with Vanderbilt transfer Tre Richardson and Florida State transfer Lawayne McCoy — and Richardson is only just back on the field after missing spring ball following foot and ankle surgery. The depth behind them is thin: Covers' injury tracker lists receiver Kris Hughes as out for the rest of the season and fellow wideout M. Quisenberry sidelined for an undetermined stretch, both with lower-body injuries, which puts real weight on McCoy and Richardson staying healthy into a ranked opener.
Last season ended on back-to-back wins, capped by a bowl win over Toledo
Louisville closed last season on a 3-game skid — a 26-29 loss to California, a 19-20 defeat to Clemson and a 6-38 blowout at SMU — before turning it around at the finish. The Cardinals routed Kentucky 41-0 on November 29, then beat Toledo 27-22 in their bowl game on December 23 to send last season out on a 2-game winning streak.
That's the group Kienholz is stepping into: a roster that was playing its best football of 2025 by the time the year ended, not one limping into an offseason. Ending last season on consecutive wins, including a bowl win, gives Brohm's staff a foundation heading into a 2026 schedule that opens about as hard as it could get, against a ranked SEC team on a neutral field.
Isaac Brown is full go, and he'll need to be against the best running back in Ole Miss history
The fall-camp mystery around Isaac Brown is over. "I think Isaac's ready to go. He's had a good camp. He's fresh and ready," Jeff Brohm told reporters this week, confirming what the issue had been all along: a managed hamstring, not a serious setback. ESPN's Adam Rittenberg called it good news for Louisville entering the opener, and Chris Vannini, who had been tracking how long Brown was dealing with it in camp, flagged the clearance as a big one for the Cardinals. It traces back to a hamstring injury Brown suffered against Virginia Tech last season, and the caution was worth it given he ran for 8.8 yards a carry a year ago and has topped 2,000 rushing yards across the last 2 seasons.
He picked a tough week to get healthy. Ole Miss counters with running back Kewan Lacy, who put together the best rushing season in program history last year — 1,567 yards and 24 touchdowns — behind a defense that will make Brown earn every yard he gets. Covers' injury table still lists backup M. Davis as Questionable with a lower-body issue and it "remains to be seen" if he plays Sunday — a hedge, not a ruling out — but with the starter healthy, Louisville does not need an answer on Davis to feel good about the backfield in a game that could turn into a track meet with Lacy.
A rematch of the only other meeting, and the market makes Louisville the underdog
Louisville and Ole Miss have played once before, a 2021 Chick-fil-A Kickoff in Atlanta that the Rebels won 43-24, and Sunday's rematch carries even more weight: it is the lone ranked-vs-ranked matchup of opening weekend, and neither team is actually at home. Nissan Stadium in Nashville is a neutral field for both sides, a split-the-difference staging ground for a No. 24 versus No. 9 game that neither fan base has to drive far to reach.
The number reflects the gap on paper. Ole Miss opened as a 6.5-point favorite, with the total set at 55.5 — middling as these things go, not a shootout number and not a defensive grind, either. Louisville is an underdog in its own opener for the first time in years, which is exactly the spot Brohm's staff wanted this program building toward: a game worth being in, on a stage that means something, with a group that finished last season playing its best football.