Indiana comes to town this weekend coming off a bye week, a much-needed one for the Hoosiers to lick their wounds. Riding a three game losing streak, sitting at 2-3 on the season and having recently replaced their offensive coordinator, a lot has gone wrong for Indiana. Is there anything to fear on offense? Today we will find out: 

 

The Film: Indiana's P5 opponents to this point are Ohio State, Louisville, and Maryland. The OSU meeting was week one and thus for recency purposes, I wanted to avoid that game. That left me with a choice between Louisville and Maryland. A quick check at SP+ ratings revealed that the metrics deem these teams nearly identical in quality, so with that in mind, I opted to pick Louisville due to the result of the game. Indiana was blown out by Maryland, while they hung in there until the end against Louisville. I believe in scouting teams at their best rather than their worst, because you'd always rather overestimate an opponent than underestimate, so let's take a look at Louisville and see how Indiana nearly went to OT with a currently unbeaten, top 25 opponent. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Indiana's starting QB remains Tayven Jackson, as Tom Allen stated at a press conference this week. The Tennessee transfer and younger brother of Trayce Jackson-Davis was locked in a battle with Brendan Sorsby through much of fall camp. Sorsby was on last year's Indiana team but somehow could not see the field despite the apocalyptic QB situation Indiana had, which ought to tell you a lot. Jackson and Sorsby both played against OSU and Indiana State to begin the season, Sorsby looking better against OSU and Jackson better against Indiana State. Jackson got the nod and played the entirety of the game I charted, as well as the following game against Akron. He started again against Maryland, but was lifted for Sorsby after a brutal performance. It sounds like Jackson will be the guy on Saturday, but both he and Sorsby are major limiting factors for this offense. 

Walt Bell is no longer the OC, so I cannot say exactly how this will change the schemes for Indiana, but what they've been running most of this season should be familiar to people who recall Indiana last season (I'm sorry). That means many sets with two RBs on the field, both of whom can be weapons in the passing game. The first of these to mention is the piece's Dangerman, Jaylin Lucas. A speedy and shifty back, the 5'9"/170 RB first made himself known last year as an expert kickoff returner and this season has become the focal point of the offense, leading the team in both carries and catches(!). He often lines up in the slot on passing downs and they run a ton of screens for Lucas. The other two RBs of note are our old friend Christian Turner, now on his third school, and Josh Henderson, the one-time UNC transfer who was on the team last year. Turner is the most traditional RB, while Henderson is bigger than Lucas but is still a back with receiving capabilities. 

At the WR position Indiana still has Cam Camper, who is a pretty good player. I left him below star status much to Seth's dismay, so if Camper goes off against Michigan, he has bragging rights. A 6'2" outside receiver with an average yards per reception of 19.2 this season, Camper is the lone deep ball threat the Hoosiers have. The other primary outside WR is Donaven McCulley, who you may remember as the Wildcat QB Indiana used against Michigan the last time these two teams faced each other in the Big House. McCulley was a talented true freshman athlete without a position back then. Now he's an okay wide receiver. If IU goes with three WRs, they will put Dequece Carter or Omar Cooper Jr. out there, but I don't have too many notes on either of them. 

Indiana does have TEs but you definitely get the sense they would love to have AJ Barner still on the roster. The Hoosiers have cycled between James Bomba, Bradley Archer, Trey Walker, and Aaron Steinfeldt, but none of these players have looked any good to me or to PFF. Indiana majorly struggled with tight end blocking in the game I charted and the TEs are a non-factor in the passing game, 13 total catches between these players on 19 targets, so less than four targets per game combined. Most of the passing focus goes to the RBs and WRs in this offense. 

The offensive line for Indiana was the worst in the B1G last season. So far this year it has improved, but based on their showing against Louisville, it is still far from a strength. The IU rushing attack has been impotent and though Louisville wasn't unleashing an all out assault on Jackson, there was some pressure in the passing game. The Hoosiers return two starters from last year's line, Mike Katic at LG and old friend Zach Carpenter at C. We gave Katic a cyan last year, but he narrowly avoids it this year. Carpenter has not been good either but also refraining from a cyan there. One-time RT Matthew Bedford has now moved to RG, while two new tackles have entered the picture, Carter Smith at LT and Khalil Benson at RT. Benson was the weakest on the line and gets the cyan but no one here was good. If they use a sixth OL, it's Joshua Sales Jr.. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: finding ways to get the ball to Jaylin Lucas]

Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Indiana to date has been a spread offense running almost entirely out of the shotgun: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	19	9	30	97%
Under Center	2	--	--	3%

The two plays they ran under center were both goal-line situations. Indiana likes to spread their skill position guys out, no matter the particular mixture of RBs, TEs, and WRs on a given play. Last year they were extremely tilted towards the pass, how about this year?: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	11	16
2nd	7	12
3rd	2	10
4th	1	1

Oh yeah. The two runs on 3rd down tells you a lot about what they feel comfortable doing, and it ain't running the ball. 

Base set: Indiana's most common personnel package in the game I charted was 11, like most teams, but it was not a predominant set. Here it is: 

Flexing the TE out to look like 4 wide is quite common.

Indiana mixed in plenty of other personnel packages, their most notable being 2 WRs + 1 TE + 2 RBs. Sometimes that look has both RBs in the backfield, other times with one RB in the backfield and one lined up in the slot. You know what the latter looks like, so I will just show you the 2 RBs in the backfield look (one is to the left of Jackson): 

The final thing of interest is their 12 personnel (2 TE sets, where one TE is lined up like a fullback: 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Indiana ran more gap plays than zone plays in this game on the ground, but did incorporate both. As a whole, pulling a backside guard or the center was their most common form of rushing play in this game, though inside zone made appearances for the Hoosiers. Compared to what I charted last year, where IU was a heavy zone team, Indiana is running more gap concepts this season. 

Hurry it up or grind it out: Perhaps the most notable component of Indiana's 2022 offense was the breakneck pace with which they worked, in the upper echelon of plays per game and plays per minute. The up-tempo approach Indiana used last season was maybe the most effective part of their offense, as it would catch defenses off guard from time to time and it felt like they got one TD per game off of the hurry up, tempo frippery. This season Indiana is still not huddling up, but their plays per game rank nationally has plummeted and in watching their tape, I didn't feel that same electric pace I had seen previously. They've still been working deliberately rather than dinosaur pace a la Iowa, but there is much less of interest to report in the way of tempo. 

Quarterback Dilithium Rating (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): QB run is a component of the Indiana offense and that was on display in the Louisville game. It's not a massive part, but the two QBs have combined for 34 non-sack carries this season, coming out to about seven per game. Some of those are scrambles, so it's probably about four to five plays each game where the QB has a designed run. Here's an instance of something IU ran against Louisville: 

Legit option play, they ran this a couple times against Louisville. Jackson scrambled a couple times against the Cardinals, including this one that nearly tied the game: 

Nothing about Jackson's legs wowed me, but he is a mobile QB who seems to be a decent athlete and will have plays where he as the designed option to keep the ball and run. It's less of a run threat than Heinrich Haarberg and Nebraska posed, but it is still real. I'll mark it as a 6. 

Dangerman: This week we're going with RB/WR Jaylin Lucas. For Michigan fans, the most obvious comparable for Lucas is AJ Henning, if Henning was the focal point of an offense and got more RB carries. Lucas is a bit smaller than Henning, but they're similarly sized, both are involved in the return game, and both are RB/WR hybrids. Lucas is the lifeblood of Indiana's offense, as I mentioned in the personnel section with him being their leading pass-catcher (by receptions) and rusher (by carries). Here's a taste of what he can do in the receiving game: 

Replay that clip again and watch the route that he runs *chef's kiss*. They love to run screens for him, either from the backfield or from the slot by flaring him out, where he can show his acceleration upfield: 

Lucas recorded a receiving TD in this game: 

As an RB, a lot of Lucas' carries come through jet sweeps and tosses using misdirection, confusing the defense as to where the run is coming from. Some of them have PA with another RB involved, as this next clip shows: 

Given the accuracy issues that IU's starting QB has demonstrated (which we'll get to momentarily), considerable attention is given to Lucas as a way to attempt to cobble together a functional offense if your QB can't throw down the field. Getting him the ball on screens, in the flats, wheel/angle routes, sweeps, tosses, give Lucas the ball, and let an athletic and shifty playmaker see what he can do. Not a bad idea when your OL is subpar and the QB isn't functional downfield. 

HenneChart: The Louisville game that I charted was Tayven Jackson's best of the season, so the chart below reflects a caliber of play he has not matched during the season otherwise: 

Indiana vs. LVille	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Tayven Jackson	1	13	1		2	5		-	-	4	1		75%	7

75% is pretty good! Here's the problem: look at the marginal and screens column. Tayven Jackson had very few negative events, but the neutral bucket and the number of screens indicates the complexion of his game. Of the 34 charting events in the passing game I recorded, only 14 were dead-on or catchable downfield throws. The distribution of pure good vs. bad downfield was good. The total package is a bit murkier and the volume of events that were neither/throws not going downfield at all tells us quite a bit. 

Jackson made some nice throws in this game, with this one to deep ball guy Cam Camper being his best: 

Most of his throws were pretty routine and not clip-worthy, including the high volume of screens and short throws to Lucas, which I've already shown you. When Jackson did throw the ball downfield, you generally got a glimpse of why they don't have him do it often: a tendency to overthrow the ball. Of his marginal throws, he seldom had trouble putting the ball too far in front or behind or low, it was almost always too high. Throws like this one to Donaven McCulley: 

Or how about this one to RB Josh Henderson (love the use of the angle route, though): 

And sometimes it was a lot uglier. This is a ball thrown into double coverage and it was way too high: 

Though the DSR looks pretty good, there was plenty of evidence, even in Jackson's best game as a starting QB in the FBS, to believe he is not a QB who can be trusted to throw down the field. You may recall in the Ohio State game that Jackson was barely asked to throw the ball at all, resembling a Wildcat QB. This game showed that he can throw more than that, but that the underlying logic that Tom Allen applied for Jackson against the Buckeyes is not completely incorrect. Which is another way of saying that Jackson is a sizable limiting factor on this offense and thus get the cyan designation. 

 

Overview

Indiana's offense is not in a good spot. They fried a terrible FCS team in Indiana State but here are the offensive totals in the other four games: 3, 14, 29, 17. That's an average of under 16 points per game. They barely crested 4 YPP against Maryland and were sub-3.00 against Ohio State. In response, Tom Allen canned OC Walt Bell. Expectations are very low after a dreadful offensive performance to date. What's the problem here? 

A lot of things. First off, the rushing game is completely broken. Here are their YPC clips against the P5 by game: 2.2, 2.1, 2.7, 3.1. They have a lot of cool ideas for rushing plays reverses, misdirection, and the like, but the offensive line tries its hardest to ruin them: 

If they get into a short-yardage situation and need to get one yard, they'll typically spread it out and throw the ball because this is what happens if they don't: 

The tight ends aren't good in blocking either, as TE James Bomba is a culprit here: 

TE #48 to the top of the formation

To bring it all together, I don't think the RBs are particularly great as rushers. Lucas is at his best in space and the same is true for Josh Henderson, with only Christian Turner as a back who is optimized for between-the-tackles running and let's just say there's a reason Turner is no longer at Michigan. He's not bad, but not a difference maker and when the blocking is mostly putrid, that's a problem. 

Let's talk a bit more about the blocking as we move into the pass game. Indiana doesn't have a West Texas A&M transfer starting at tackle this season, so that's good, but this is still a unit that has had its issues against P5 competition. They didn't get blown up by Louisville but cracks showed. RT Khalil Benson was the weakest link that I keyed in on, with reps that alternated from "iffy" to "uh oh". Here's a bad one (before a dicey decision by Jackson): 

This next one is bad from Benson and Matthew Bedford, a guard who was once the right tackle for Indiana back in 2021: 

The dynamic of this pass game is you have a pass protecting line that is more of a ticking time bomb than a wall and a QB who is too inaccurate to throw the ball down the field, so what does that mean? Screens! Dink and dunk! And that's what leads us back to the Dangerman Jaylin Lucas. They have to run the ball outside the tackles... Lucas! They need to get the ball out fast in the pass game... Lucas! The amount of touches he gets is partially a desire to let a talented playmaker make plays, but it's more a necessity than anything else based on the major limitations at QB and OL. 

If the Hoosiers do choose to throw the ball down the field, Cam Camper is the guy to look out for. He was the recipient of the good Tayven Jackson throw I showed you in the HenneChart section and has been described as a "Dude" in the past. He had this 33 yard catch against Michigan last year: 

The other name to know is Donaven McCulley, who made a nice catch on one of those marginal balls I showed you in that section. He showed some talent leaping up and snatching those balls that Jackson leaves high and his recruiting profile conveys real athleticism. Not a bad player. The TEs aren't worth talking about really, they are poor blockers and don't get targeted. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan?

I would be quite surprised if Michigan's defense did any preparation for this game, because this offense is not good enough to warrant it. All rushing plays between the tackles should be uniformly shut off due to the state of this IU rushing game, and the plays targeting the edges won't be a ton better. In the pass game, Michigan should pay attention to the flats and be ready to sniff out screens because that's all Indiana will be doing, more than likely. There is no real need to leave safeties deep. Put Will Johnson on Camper, assume your pass rush will do plenty of damage if IU tries to target down the field, and feast when Jackson inevitably sails his throws. It's more likely that we see backup QB Brendan Sorsby come in than it is that Indiana consistently moves the ball on Michigan.