You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast,
Dale and Clavio joining you. It is Wednesday the 25th of
September or last Wednesday of September 2024.
I'm not gonna be sad from a a life perspective that
September's ending, but it's been a great month for IU
football so far and that's what we're here to talk about.
Today we got Taylor Lehman back from bite sized bison.
Great to see you, Taylor, how are you doing?
I'm good Galen. I'm I'm a Tigers fan so like
nothing can touch me right now. I'm Brian like I am on cloud 9.
I have never been this dialed into baseball in September and
like since in my adult life, I am ready.
I mean, back, back from the dead.
I it's really remarkable stuff. Good for them, good for you
guys. I love it.
It's we'll we'll see what happens in the play offs.
These runs tend to carry, which you know, you keep your fingers
crossed, obviously, but but good.
That's it's tough. I I'm a Reds fan.
So you know, baseball was over in June like it always is.
So yeah, anyway, we're going to talk IU football and looking
forward to doing so. We got some questions from you
folks out there. We're going to preview the
Maryland game as well. Before we get to all that, just
couple quick reminders. We are brought to you by Home
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If you were signed up for the the, the, the, the text that you
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Taylor at weddings at at parties at at random gatherings of of
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that that Pat well you have a bunch of home field stuff you
know exactly what I'm talking about so it's.
I just got a heavyweight shirt. The heavyweight shirt fits me
almost too well. I'm actually terrified.
Yeah, this stuff envelops you like a glove.
That's what Home Field does. So go check them out.
Home Field apparel.com. Proud sponsor of the back home
network. I mentioned the sub stack.
We are on sub stack here. crimsoncast.substack.com is
ours. What's yours, Taylor?
Mine is bite size bison.substack.com.
That's right and. I was not ready for that cute.
I normally I know I have Taylor, it reads, But that's what I'm
here. I'm trying to mess things up a
little bit for him. But if you were on, if you were
on bite sized Bison you, which you should be, you would be able
to access great things like Taylor's game day roundup from
the Charlotte game earlier on this week.
The, the, the recap of that game, the preview of the game
coming up versus the Maryland Terrapins and just all kinds of
delightful statistical stuff with either.
Actually, if you, if you subscribe to 1, you really
should subscribe to the other one.
You know, on Crimson Cast, there's a free subscription
where you can get all of our episodes delivered to your inbox
for free. We also have a paid option,
which is I think a pretty good value helps to support the
podcast, $5.00 a month, $50 a year.
You can also subscribe to bite sized Bison, which I highly
recommend doing. It's the place to go to find out
information statistically about IU football that you're just not
getting anywhere else. And that one you can find if you
go to the Crimson cast sub stack and vice versa.
The number of people that subscribe to bite size bison and
then get referred to Crimson cast.
It's it's really, it's like it's great.
It's like we are like a Venn diagram and I love it when
people get in the middle of our circles.
It's delightful. Yeah, yeah, no, I, I looked at
the IT actually shows us that information and and I I've
looked at it a couple of times. I'm like, oh wow, yeah, alright.
I like this. Anybody who's listening to
Crimson Casts, of course, is welcome over at By size Bias,
and I'm assuming vice versa. It's basically like I, I always
think of it like we have two tree houses and they're in trees
right next to each other and, and if you get LED into one, you
get LED into the other. And I'm excited that we've got
people playing in both tree houses simultaneously.
So head over to subset drop A. Board between them or something?
Yeah. Occasionally like a rope swing
or something like that. You know, we got, we got a lot
of options between the tree houses.
Also, just one last one last read for you to start with, we
are brought to you by Hoosier Game day Lager, official craft
beer of Indiana athletics and my favorite go to on game days the
the, the delightful candy stripe can.
You can find it all over the stadium.
You can find it wherever you purchase beer products,
including liquor stores and grocery stores and also all of
Upland's great locations across central and southern Indiana.
An easy drinking Vienna style lager.
It's got a lot more flavor than a lot of the adjunct loggers
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And you feel stylish doing it with that candy.
Stripe can go pick up a six pack of Hoosier game day lager today.
And please enjoy responsibly again.
Who's your game day lager from Oakland Brewing Company, the
official craft beer of IU Athletics.
All right, Taylor, let's talk IU Maryland.
And I guess maybe let's start by finishing off the conversation
on the Charlotte game. I think most people have read at
least some aspect of your analysis on this.
But as you've looked through all the stats and you've reflected
on the game and some of the performances, I guess what stuck
out to you the most for Indiana in that game?
Yeah, yeah. The first thing that comes to
mind, simply because it's going to be in the preview tomorrow
and in the Maryland preview, is the way that they handled the
middle 8 minutes. I know that's kind of been an
emphasis of cursive Nettie. And honestly, as they were
approaching the middle 8, that's about the time when Charlotte
had, you know, pulled up in three.
It was 17 to 14. And I know a lot of folks,
including myself, are like, OK, this is this is where like IU
football historically shows that, you know, it's going to
struggle with one of these non confidence opponents.
And this is this is where everything kind of comes back
down to earth. But then the middle 8 happened.
They they got the ball. It was about the five minute
mark until until halftime and and they scored about two
minutes later, they scored a touchdown.
They got they actually got the ball back and then they scored
again before halftime and and then they got the ball to start
the third quarter. They scored a touchdown again.
So in within those middle 8 minutes they scored 21 points.
It was 38 to 14 by the end of those 8 minutes.
And so that that is what the middle 8 can do when you when
you use it appropriately, when it works out in your favor.
Not all of it is always in the coach's hands.
A lot of it is due to chance. But, you know, he took advantage
of that situation. And then knowing that they can
get the ball to start the third quarter also help them kind of
increase some of the risk that they that they took on offense.
But yeah, that was the biggest thing that stood out to me just
off the top of my head. Yeah, it's it's one of those
things that, you know, I'm not a lot of people have not been that
familiar with the middle 8, those last four minutes in the
first half, first 4 minutes in the second-half.
I mean it. But we've talked about it on the
other side. I mean, it was a concern in the
UCLA game given that, you know, UCLA scored those seven points
at the end of the first half. I don't think they scored the
field goal in the 1st 4 minutes of the second-half, but you
know, where they were driving the ball.
But you know, there is this like statistically demonstrated trend
that occurs at at the pro level and at the college level, both
about that being key. And it's largely because of
that, that possession exchange and this idea that, you know, if
you're if you're able to finish off the first half strong and
then you get that second-half. I mean, you can score several
points without the other team really being able to respond.
And that can really turn the tide of the game.
And it completely changes the way that you call plays or the
type of personnel sets you're running and things like that.
So yeah, that was definitely a positive.
Yeah, I, I would say I've had a little bit of time to reflect.
I also podcasted about the game a little bit yesterday.
You know, the the one other thing I'll note, and you and I
talked about it a little bit over text.
It's just like I've been really impressed, I think, with how
much more flexible the run and blocking seems to be for this IU
team, how well they're able to use a variety of different
people, not just lineman, but also tight ends and, and
receivers and how many options there seem to be for running the
ball, including Curtis Rourke, who, you know, when he went back
and you, you watched the broadcast, one of the early you
can always, I was talking about this on Bison chant last night.
One of the things you can tell is what the coaches want to
emphasize to the broadcasters, cause the broadcasters always
blurt that out in the 1st 5 minutes of the game.
And they were talking like, you know, they're really telling
Curtis Rourke he needs to run more, you know, because there's
like openings there. They're like, you know, 810
yards and and sure enough, he did a bunch of that.
It'll be interesting in this upcoming game.
And, you know, this is not to not to spoil your preview at
all, but, you know, given what the Maryland defense, in
particular their defensive line looks like they are best able to
do. There may be even more
opportunities for not just Curtis Rourke to to move the
chains with his legs, but it feels like the running game in
general for IU could be a real handful for that Maryland
defense to deal with and and something they really haven't
faced so far this season. Yeah, yeah, it's it's really
interesting actually, Galen, cause the the more that I dig
into to this this Maryland team, the more I kind of realized the
the only real weapon they have is their pass rush.
Even the even the even the defensive line doesn't
necessarily work in run defense, but they are they have two top
ten in the Big 10 anyway, two top 10 edge rushers.
And so if, if, if the offensive line holds off that pass rush,
the the pass game could certainly get going.
But yeah, like you were saying, the the rushing attack, there
are going to be opportunities there that statistically seems
haven't necessarily broken anything wide open against
against Maryland on the ground. But the success rate, the
consistent meeting of expectation in certain running
scenarios that is happening for Maryland's opponents.
So the run game seems like it will be there.
It seems like Maryland really sells out for the pass rush.
And you know, and, and, and if you don't back that up
fundamentally kind of like the way IU does from their defensive
line standpoint, then you can really find yourself in a in a
predicament, especially if you're giving up the yardage on
the ground. Yeah, it's, it's going to be
fascinating to watch. And, you know, as we kind of
dive into this, this Maryland game overall, you know, the,
the, the thing that strikes me, I guess is Maryland, they're not
a bad team. I mean, you know, they, they
clearly have talent and they they clearly have, I think, a
pretty good idea of what they want to be as a team within the
confines of what their personnel are.
But, you know, I don't think you, you can't look at Maryland
without, you know, looking at that game that they lost at home
versus Michigan State, a team that I think there's still quite
a few question marks about and say, well, that that really
looks like a problem that they haven't quite solved yet.
You know, what what occurred in that game and why they lost it.
And you know, when you look at their their team overall, you
know, it feels to some degree like they feasted a little bit
offensively on some poor competition, but they haven't
played defense nearly as well as Indiana has had against roughly
similar competition. You know, and this is where it's
tough because I think everybody's been waiting for
some kind of other shoe to drop with IU in terms of, well, the
competition is going to get tougher.
It may get tougher in this game. But I, I can't help but look at
Maryland and say, well, this is an average Big 10 team.
Like, they're not, they're not. They're certainly not in the
upper echelon. They may not even be in the
second echelon. And the question is like, where
do they actually fall in terms of the rank order of Big 10
teams? And you know, at this point,
even given the lack of competition for both, like you,
you can't just pat Maryland on the back and say, well, you went
to a bowl last year and Indiana didn't.
So we're going to consider you better, which is what a lot of
people seem to be doing. If you're just looking at the
numbers between these two teams, Indiana does look like the
better team on paper. Yeah, yeah, Marilyn feels like a
a high floor, low ceiling type of team, like you were saying,
kind of like an average Big 10 team.
The the, the Billy Edwards has surprised me with how well that
he has played so far. But yeah, they have some, they
have some weapons and but I don't, I don't think it's his.
I don't think the talent is as widespread on the roster as as
we've seen from from the team like Indiana or or at least the
systems don't exploit their talent as much as Indiana's do.
But yeah, when you when you look at the you know, the way that
they've been graded from PFF, especially on the defensive
side, it hasn't been that hasn't been impressive, especially in
the secondary. But then when you know, when you
think about offensive line, that's that's that's the first
thing that I always look at with Big 10 teams, especially is the
offensive line. And their offensive line is just
really unserious. Galen, I think I text you about
that. It's like they they have a their
left guard is one of their highest graded offensive lineman
so far this season. And he moved over from the
defensive line after three seasons on the defensive line.
And then they have, you know, three other guys that have
transferred in this offseason to, to build up that offensive
line and the only one who's signed and then developed as an
offensive lineman as their left tackle.
And he's been one of the worst tackles in the in FBS.
So this this offensive line is terrible.
And you know what? And when you're playing a team
like Indiana, that is where you have to be good because Indiana
puts so much emphasis on the defensive line.
So, you know, I, I think in the Big 10, unless you have a really
well schemed passing attack, kind of like Indiana in 2019
with, with Caitlin de Boer, you really can only go as far as
your offensive line can take you.
And, and I don't think that's going to take Maryland very far.
Yeah. Now, that doesn't necessarily
mean Indiana's going to walk in the game.
I mean, I think it's it's a game where if they're not dialed in
and if they're not taking Maryland seriously, I think they
could, you know, Maryland could win the game.
Indiana could have real problems.
I did. There was a question from one of
our listeners that I wanted to jump back.
That was from Derek Fields, who is always a good contributor of
questions to the podcast. We always appreciate Derek.
But he asked was Signetti is extra focused on this Maryland
game and his presser as it seemed from his comments on last
year's game that is coming out and saying you'd be surprised if
the Hoosiers weren't ready to play for this one.
Should we see a Chris Hoosiers performance?
I mean, we even heard this a little bit earlier in the week
where he, you know, kind of went out of his way to mention that
he watched a lot of Maryland tape in the offseason.
It kind of does feel like there's a bit of a circle around
this game for Kurt Signetti because I think he I think he
takes Maryland seriously and I think he looks as at this as
really being a barometer for where his team is at as they get
into this middle portion of the schedule.
Yeah, and I, I think he's right. You know, I think Galen, I think
you and I had that game marked when we talked pre season about
about this is kind of like their prove it game.
This is when we figure out how how good this team is,
especially given the circumstances.
It's a little more regular now instead of going out to LA to
play UCLA. So yeah, I I think, you know, I
think it's fair to to assess it that way.
But also the sharpness with which Signeti is kind of talking
this week, I've also noticed is a little a little different than
what it has been in the past. And I also think part of it,
too, is just wanted to create more positive momentum going
into a Big 10 schedule. So, yeah.
And I also think, you know, on the other hand, too, it's it's
it's more than just Signetti. It's when he's saying that he
would be surprised if his players weren't prepared to to
play this game a lot. I mean, the best football teams
have player driven culture and so and they say they usually
take on the the personality of their head coach.
Jim Harbaugh was really good at that at Michigan, even though it
all seemed kind of delusional. It was it was it was all
planned. And you know, they're doing the
weird tribute to him when he gets when he got suspended or
whatever. But that is that's a sign of
just like a good locker room that and there's a reason why
they want to win the championship.
So, you know, I think I think you know what he's saying there
is that the leaders in this locker room are are also leading
the culture and they also like the players.
The players aren't only listening to the coach.
They have their own thoughts too.
And they understand that and they see these things.
They see that Maryland is kind of what we're talking about,
like the barometer and and they they won't make that point too.
So I think that all kind of runs together I guess.
I mean, last year, you know, you could make the argument that it
was the Maryland game that that really kind of drove the nail in
the coffin of the season for IUI.
Mean, you know, that the the Akron game was bad and Indiana
won that one, and then they had to travel to Maryland.
They lose 44 to 17 in that game and and really from there it was
just like everything unraveled and, you know, the previous year
they lose to Maryland at home 38 to 33.
You know, that was that looked like maybe the last that game
and the Rutgers game, the following.
Like it's like you if they if they'd won those two games, they
would have gone to a bowl if everything else had stayed pat.
But they didn't, you know. And and then of course, Maryland
also beat them 3835 the previous year.
You know, so this is 3 game, three days, three years in a row
Maryland has beaten Indiana. And look, I mean, you know,
Tiger Valloa is the quarterback And you know, I think a good
influx of talent from Mike Loxley combined with Indiana
going downhill, it just to me, it feels like internally maybe
this game is very important because, you know, the UCLA game
was important in as much as that was a big game on the road
against the Big 10 opponent. You get off to A1 and O start in
the conference. But this is like, OK, we didn't
know UCLA. We know Maryland.
We owe Maryland after this past three seasons.
And I'm sure for Signetti, he kind of looks at it and he's,
and even the, the part about Billy Edwards, I think it was,
you know, being a quarterback they had recruited at, I don't
know if it was Elon or JMU. And and now, I mean, again, I
think as a coach, it's like, well, that we didn't, we didn't
work with that guy. I want to be able to, to
demonstrate that we've got the superior quarterback.
There's a lot of little things like that that sometimes can
factor into these and and granted, it's all under the
larger confines of we got to go win the game.
But if there's extra motivation to not just win it, but
demonstrate like we are the superior program now, certainly
I understand some of the comments a little bit better.
We also could be reading completely too much into it,
Taylor, I don't know. It also could be a DMV thing,
you know, coming from coming from JMU and it also, it also
could be that as well. I think, yeah, I think there's a
lot of intersections of things, intersections of interest here
for for cursing Nettie. But yeah, like like you and
Scott had said on on your last episode.
This was always kind of the game where it was like, you know, one
or the other was going to was going to was was going to have
room in the Big 10 E. And and so there's there's like
a weird kind of short history here between these two programs.
And yeah, I think, I think Indiana and Indiana fans really
want this one. Let's get to some other
questions that we got from the folks out in Cyberland.
So this is an interesting one from from Matt.
What stats or or statistical figure do you think is the
biggest fool's gold thus far due to IU football's competition
level? Like is there something where
they look really good statistically that you're like
that may not be that may be statistical noise or that may
just be an artifact of playing teams that aren't very good.
Is there anything that sticks out to you like that?
Yeah, yeah. The, the PFF grades, the, the,
the overall PF grade, PFF grades, I think the, the
individual player PFF grades can, can, can be indicative of
performance, but those are not opponent adjusted.
And so you know, when, when you're looking at these
statistical previews that I put together, I always, I always go
through and like, oh, wow, you know, PFF overall, they have
Indiana as the third best team in the country.
It's like, OK, well, that it, it's, it's just execution and
the, the way that they grade them, those are just a
collection of grades. And in a micro sense that they
tried to then create a, a macro sense of the grades.
And it, it's basically, how did you execute what you wanted to
do against the opponents you had?
It's not opponent adjusted. So I think those, I think the,
the those PF grades are are kind of some fool's gold, but there
are others too. I mean, I mean, really at this
point, anything that's not opponent adjusted right now is,
is, is pretty tough. Like like Indiana has the the
top offensive EPA per play and then the country and you know,
they have a great offense and they've been fantastic
offensively, but I don't know if I would be ready to say that
they are the best offense in the country right now.
So you know, opponent adjustments really important
really on in the season. So I I think that's kind of that
that's, that's that's the way that I kind of approach it.
It's more of like a profile of what the team is versus how good
they are. So OK.
I want, I want to stay on that for a second.
Ryan Kotter had a question. A lot of efficiency numbers I've
seen are adjusted for opponent. How much can we actually read
into those given the relatively weak schedule?
And how well does adjusting for an opponent actually work?
So maybe tackle that first, like, you know, how does that
work? And then I want to come back to
something. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I actually, I, I read a really good article a
while back about the how, how you build a statistical model to
account for opponent. And basically it just uses
multivariate regression and statistical concepts that are
like, it's not necessarily about weak opponents.
It's, it's more, it's somewhat of like the transitive property,
but how, how did you perform against them versus their
averages against their other opponents?
You know, so it, the, the example the article used was
like if, if you allowed nine yards per carry to your
opponent, that seems really bad. But then when you look at all
the other games, they averaged 10 yards per carry, it's like,
OK, well, we, we did OK because it was only 9.
So, you know, once you consider those residuals, then you can
kind of get it kind of boosts your, your whatever metric
you're using. So I think, you know, 4 weeks
into a season, I think it's pretty good for opponent
adjustment. And, and you can see it that the
very first one that comes to mind is FIU, like Indiana,
Indiana, you know, deconstructed FIU and then FIU immediately
came out and, and destroyed Central Michigan.
And they, they've, you know, they've impressed some folks,
but I don't think it as much as much as that that week two game.
But but when you consider the way that their opponents have
played against their other their other teams then and then how
well Indiana performed against them, I think it they're,
they're pretty accurate. And also like I saw recently
that opponent adjusted EPA for play.
Indiana's ranked 7th in the country right now.
And so you see those and you're like, there's no way that can be
true. But it's mostly just in in
comparison of how their opponents played against their
the rest of their schedule. Yeah, I mean, we talk about this
a lot on the basketball front too.
And it's it's a, it's a tough concept because we're not used
to thinking about the idea that it's how you perform against
what the computer thinks the other team should do in an
average game. That's essentially what you're
talking about with the opponent adjustment.
And it, you know, it's, is it a perfect system?
No, because you've got a bunch of factors like what if you're
not playing an average game? What if you play a great game?
And you know, now, I mean, even if like there's, there's
technically ways that you can factor that in, but a lot of it
ends up coming back to it's a way to try to establish over an
entire statistical body of, of games, which is, you know,
thousands of games in a, a college football season 10, you
know, almost well, probably maybe 10s of thousands of games
in the college basketball season.
I mean, there's a lot of games that you're dealing with.
And so much of it comes down to this system does more often than
not, by about the midway point of the season, draw a fairly
accurate picture of what each statistical area is doing
relative to the expectations of the other teams and their
statistical areas. That is a little too squishy for
a lot of people who wouldn't just a straightforward, well,
this team's better than that team.
But I think there's the nuance there.
But it it leads to some interesting things.
You know, it's like you mentioned, yeah, Indiana's
number one in the country in EPA per play, which feels like
perhaps fool's gold. But they're number one in
success in pass, which I find I think more fascinating like
because that there's a whole bunch of other factors there
besides just how good or bad your opponent is.
And for Indiana to be #1 in that after four weeks, for them to be
#1 in points per drive, for them to be, you know, like they're,
you know, and, and, and on the defensive side, Indiana's ninth
in points per drive. I mean, even against bad
competition, there are teams that are not doing what
Indiana's doing statistically on either side of the ball, which
was something that we tried to emphasize over the weekend.
Now, does that hold up as the competition gets harder?
Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't mean that the
performance they've turned in so far hasn't been really good.
It might just mean there's other factors that keep it from
continuing that way that doesn't like erase what already
occurred. And if there are alterations
based on Indiana and outperforming as well, those
will show up in the statistical analysis, but they won't
completely erase what happened earlier, if that makes any
sense. Yeah, it's it's very like very
much the way that people think of the SP plus model too is, is
it pulls from the last, as you're closer to the, to the
beginning of this season, it pulls from the last season to
create some sort of weighted, some sort of weight for each,
for each team. So when when the team does
really well against them, they have a weight to apply to, to
that metric. And so it, it takes a while to
respond. It also takes a while, like you
were saying, Galen to, to get a full idea of how good each team
is, how much you should weight them and things like that.
So, so yeah, it's, it's not, it's not perfect.
It's, it's more perfect than than stats out of context.
And like you were saying, success rates are, are a great
way to kind of measure a team in terms of consistency.
And, and we've seen plenty of passing success consistently
from from IU this season. So that would make a lot of
sense. But yeah, I think it's, it's a
really good question. It's also one of those things
where Indiana has been so impressive, especially
offensively throughout these first four games, they they
can't keep this trajectory up. So we're gonna see some, we're
gonna see some downward trend at some point of, of this, of this
offense and even the defense, I'm sure.
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's getting worse.
It just means that, you know, the competition is just, you
know, increasing. Question from Jamie Jordan, Do
you have an unsung hero on both sides of the ball so far?
Yeah, yeah, I have. So I Josh Sanguinetti is is 1
and. A decade.
Is he allowed to be on the sun? I know.
I know, yeah, yeah. Actually, it's really funny
because I'm going to name two people who have been on the team
forever. And then so Josh Sanguinetti on
the defensive side, he's graded as the second best safety in the
Big 10 right now by PFFI think part of it is that he's just
hasn't really like needed to be used that often because the the
defensive line has been so effective and the linebackers
are out there too. But when he has gotten his
opportunities, he he's played well.
So which which has been impressive to me because I've
never been really high on Josh Sanguinetti.
So it's been nice to see that. But then on the offensive side,
Mike Kadic at at center, I think, you know, the way that
that offensive line unit has come together has had a lot to
do with Mike Kadic. He's graded as a top five center
in the Big 10 right now. And you know, I I can't say that
I was necessarily anticipating that when even when he came
back, you know, I I was, I was happy to see that he came back
because they needed some experience on this offensive
line and especially the Big 10 level.
And for him to come back and, and, and be the anchor the way
that he has been and play as well as he has.
But I think that's huge for this, especially for just the
offense and Curtis Roar. Yeah, I think, I think those two
are probably the for me. Jeremy Hood asks the following
looking at the snap counts on bite sized Bison for our defense
against Charlotte, the starters in the secondary and linebacker
positions played 76 percent or more of the snaps, which makes
me nervous how these guys will hold up.
Basically asking if you guys have any concern on the depth of
the defense, particularly in the secondary and linebacker
positions as we move forward. I'll I'll let you handle this
one. Not as much linebacker, but
definitely secondary. This is definitely something
that I'm concerned about this. This is probably my biggest
concern for the team is, is how the, the contrast between the
number of players who play in, in the more competitive games
like in like in UCLA and, and also for some reason, and
against Charlotte too, like that they didn't get a ton of
rotation. And, and yeah, I, I think it's
concerning. I think, you know, at corner, I
think they're actually a little bit better than I thought they
would be. Jamari Sharp was pretty
impressive against Charlotte, but I don't know about safety.
So we haven't seen a ton of the guys behind them.
And, and so, yeah, that is a concern and mostly just because
of the the continued unknown variables with, with the
defensive backfield, especially a safety that, you know, we
talked about before the season started and since the starters
have gotten so many snaps, we don't really know exactly what
is behind them. So yeah, yeah, I'm, I am
concerned about that. Yeah, it's tough because like,
on the one hand, I think the secondary almost had to be
reestablished and you know, you, you had to get a pecking order
out there. You had to get guys who knew
what they were doing early on. I do wonder if, you know,
especially in the next couple of games and the the for reasons
we'll talk about in a minute, the Maryland game may not be
that game, but definitely the Northwestern game.
You may have the opportunity to rotate a couple of of of you
newer players and younger players and players that aren't
playing as much. It would be nice to see.
Now, I will say it seems like Indiana has largely gotten by so
far through the first third of the season without any major
injuries that I can think of. But it's actually been a
remarkably injury free year, which is kind of an undersold
part of what we've seen. I mean, given the amount of
injuries IU has suffered the last few years, like something
must have really changed with their strength and conditioning
program and the way that they were doing things.
So Indiana has been lucky from that perspective.
And obviously if you can keep your guys out there and healthy,
that's the best way to handle this situation.
But I do wonder, like, do we start to see a little more
rotation, a couple more snaps going to guys who who aren't in
the starting line up simply as a matter of necessity given that
you're still got multiple, you know, many games left to play in
the season, at least nine. Yeah, yeah, no, I and, and, you
know, even along the defensive line too, I think, you know,
defensive end is, is a, is a position that I don't think
they're super deep in. And so, yeah, like you were
saying, Galen, I mean, look at it's such a strange contrast
between the offense and defense because the offense is just so
deep at every position. I mean, except for the offensive
line. But but like when you look at
the defense and it's like, OK, well, they're, they're they're
pretty deep at defensive tackle and, and I think they're, they
have some depth at linebacker, but, but you get outside of that
and it's like, OK, that's a little shaky.
But but yeah, I think I think you're right.
I think we'll see exactly where that is at in in in the next
couple of games. So we had a bunch.
Of the secondary is that in general?
Sorry. You know, I am.
I am too. Yeah.
I mean, they've obviously they've got a great receiver
they got to go up against. They've got a quarterback who's
by far the most functional quarterback they'll have played
so far. And I think you mentioned on one
of your statistical breakdowns, this is the highest rated
quarterback that Indiana we'll maybe like we'll certainly will
face has faced so far. Yeah.
I mean, you know, it's it's just it'll be interesting to see how
they handle a level of live competition in the passing game
that they haven't had up to this point.
With several questions that were something in the vein of what JD
Klein writes. The forecast is getting wetter
by the day with the remnants of Hurricane Helen moving into the
region on Friday night. How does the rain impact the two
teams? Who gets the advantage?
Jordan Bailey asks. If it's wet, does it favor the
Hoosiers? Whoever, Stronger ground and
pound game. We had another question about
weather that popped up somewhere else in the feed.
I can't find it right now, but a lot of weather questions and and
a lot of questions about what it would look like if this was
maybe not a repeat of Virginia from whatever that year that was
2018, but certainly a very wet game.
Who does that favor in your in your opinion and why?
I mean, I think it favors Indiana.
I think they're stronger in the trenches on both sides.
The the defensive line's not the Maryland's defensive line's not
super graded around defense. Indiana has the 7th best rushing
success in the country that Justice Ellison is actually
graded as the, he has the highest rushing grade of all Big
10 running backs. And, and you know, he's just one
of four. And so I, I think when it comes
to the, the running game, Indiana has the, the pretty
obvious favor. But I, I, I do think that
Maryland can be sneaky on the ground.
I, their offensive line is, is, you know, not good, but Roman
Hemby is extremely talented. I mean, that guy almost ran for
1000 yards a couple of years ago.
Like I, I have a hard time, you know, counting him out at all.
And I don't think he's getting a lot of talk in this match
because it's Ty Felton and and Billy Edwards.
But Roman Hembi is a very talented runner.
So if it gets into a running match, I I could see it being a
little more competitive than people think it might be.
But also at the same time, you know, Gabe and I, I don't think
the rain really affects the the game as much as people think it
does. You still see a lot of a lot of
rainy games turn into passing games.
And so I think there might be more passing than people think
there might be. I don't think you have to go all
the way to washing. So this has been an interesting
thing. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna show the
people who are watching on YouTube a couple of different
things here. You know, we've we've tried to
integrate some more graphics into what we do here on on
Crimson cast. But let me start.
JD Gebby was nice enough to send us this this tweet which he
which he started off with Boom. See everyone Saturday and you
can see like first of all, it's got the remnants of Helen kind
of stalling out and moving, taking a left turn at Nashville
and then essentially hanging out in the Paducah area for a while
with Bloomington kind of being outside of the primary cone.
So that would be, that'd be fine.
Like, you know, you wouldn't have a lot of of weather related
items there. But you know what I, what I do
wonder not so much the rain, 'cause I agree with you, I think
sometimes the rain is overrated in terms of what it does.
There's a lot of throwing that does happen in the rain.
The accent, that's gonna be harder to run in the rain
because you must get much less footing and you got a better
advantage as a receiver than you do as a running back because
you're not cutting and, and the way that you are in a lot of
cases. But the wind I think is gonna be
interesting 'cause if you look right now and, and this has
changed every six hours, so this could change tomorrow.
But if you look at the afternoon forecast on the 28th, when the
game is wind gusts 613 miles an hour, that's actually gone down
a little bit from what it was earlier where I think wind gusts
were closer to 20 to 25 miles an hour.
That can affect the passing game.
So I think if it's just rain, I'm with you.
If it's rain and wind, all bets are off.
But I do agree with you. I think that actually it, it
favors Indiana for a variety of reasons.
And you know, just just the, the basic fact that you're, you
know, you, you're playing at home and you're used to running
the ball and you've run the ball so effectively and you're used
to scoring on the ground, whereas Maryland not quite as
much. I think that those are some
factors that go in Indiana's favor.
Yeah, yeah. And and, you know, Maryland's,
Maryland's defense has been, you know, OK, against as against
running attacks, I think I was saying earlier, but but they do
allow a lot of success on the ground.
And so you know what, yeah, I think just introducing elements
into into the game, I don't think that's going to make
Maryland's defense any better. So, so I, I think, yeah, like if
it, if it does turn into a, a windy like you're saying, Galen
and which I didn't even think about was the wind, but the, the
windy, rainy competition. I do think India has a has a
favor there. Yeah, our our buddy Hooperazzi
asks. I want to see how you football
win, but a part of me wants to see this team face adversity.
Is anyone else interested in seeing in this team if this team
has moxie? I'm not.
You know, to me, the greatest amount of moxie is never letting
anybody get close to you. Like that's that's moxie capital
M I'll take that any day of the week.
I I don't want a close win. I want Indiana to win by a
couple of touchdowns against everybody that they play and.
I, you know, I, if we, if we get to the point where we're
complaining because Indiana's games are not close enough,
because they're too good for their competition, you know,
sign me up for whatever reality we find ourselves in with that.
That sounds ideal. Yeah, yeah, Galen, I think they
will win by two scorers. I think, you know, we might we
might get into that later, but I I think this, I think the I
think, I think this, I don't, I don't think it's gonna be that.
I don't think it's gonna be that close.
I, I, I just think this offense is just too good.
And, and you know that I think the defense is going to I, I
mean, honestly, I mean, if, if we want to talk about adversity,
I think this defense is just generally facing adversity this
week with Ty Felton and, and I think that's their like their
first real adversity of the season.
And, and so that's, that's really what I'm interested in is
when Indiana's on the field defensively.
But I still, I, I, I think Indiana is going to take care of
business. Let's let's explore that a
little bit. Like, you know, if so, what is
Indiana hanging their hat on if they win this game decisively,
like you're saying, like, what for?
If we're casting that scenario forward, like, what was the game
like that caused Indiana to win by a couple of scores or better?
They didn't turn the ball over. You know, they're one of three
teams that hasn't turned the ball over in FBS play.
And Maryland leads the Big 10 and force turnovers.
So, you know, one of those has to give.
And and, you know, if any end, it doesn't turn the ball over.
I think, I think, you know, it's I don't think it'd be close
because, you know, Mary, Maryland has relied on that.
Yeah, I, I think they, I, I, if they, if they hold off
Maryland's pass rush, if, if the offensive line holds off the
pass rush, if Curtis Rourke isn't feeling too much pressure
and even when he is feeling pressure, he's been solid.
But if he's not feeling too much pressure, I don't think
Maryland's defense is, is going to even be a speed bump for this
offense. Their secondary is just not very
good and I don't think their linebackers can make up for that
play. So I think if there's solid pass
protection from the offensive line, I think and, and, and you
know, we were just talking about the elements.
If, if it is a passing game, then I, I think that's, that's
really where this game is decided.
I don't. I don't think that the Maryland
offense, even with Ty Felton, can keep up with this offense.
Yeah, I look at it if I'm gonna take a pessimistic view, which I
almost feel like I'm contractually obligated to do as
an IU podcaster, like I think I signed that some at some point.
But yeah, it, it feels like if you're looking for the route
through which Indiana doesn't win this game, you know, a lot
of it is, you know, they, they turn the ball over a couple of
times. Maryland does a really good job
of timing the offense early and then the defense just, you know,
can't, can't make the plays in the passing game that they need
to. And, and look, all those things
could happen again. This Maryland team has beaten
Indiana three years in a row, albeit two of those wins were
not blowouts. They were close games.
And those were bad. Those were really bad teams that
Indiana was fielding in 2021-2022.
So it's not like this has been a decisive Maryland tilt over the
last few years. But they, you know, it's, it's
clearly a team that is not going to be afraid of Indiana.
They might be kind of curious about them at this point, but
they're going to come in thinking what we won last time
we were here and we beat them last year out in College Park.
We can do it again. So it just, it's going to be
interesting to me, you know, what Maryland's confidence
levels look like and how their defense matches up early against
IUI. Will say the one other thing,
you know, Indiana's offense had a bit of a slow start against
Charlotte. Some of that I think was
hangover from UCLA. Some of it was, you know, maybe
just some bad luck on a couple of plays and some good plays by
Charlotte early on. But you you would like to see
Indiana's offense like really get off to a good start.
To some degree. That's really what caused the
game to go as well as it did against UCLA.
You know, they, they, they get the touchdown on the 1st Dr.
they force the turnover on the next play and then they score
again and it's like, well, you're off and running at that
point. And that's my big hope for IU is
that they, they get it rolling quickly.
They establish themselves as the lead team.
They make, you know, Maryland play catch up essentially.
That's, that's the most advantageous spot for this IU
team to be in. I think that gives them a level
of confidence in terms of, of being able to finish the game
off. And, you know, we'll, we'll see
what happens with all that, but those are kind of the things I'm
looking for as we go into it. Yeah.
In conjunction with that, Galen, I think something defensively
that that might put that might leave Indiana vulnerable is if
they do surrender anything on the ground like they did in
Charlotte, they they had that Charlotte had the early rushing
success. Obviously, I think that was
schematic. I think Bryant Haynes fixed that
in the second-half. But if they have another
performance like that against Roman Henby, that's going to be
tough because Maryland already uses a lot of screens.
And that is the way the offenses have really been attacking this
defense. And so and they've been
successful in the screen game. So if they're giving up screens,
they're successful plays on with screens.
If they're giving up, you know, yards on the ground that that's
a lot of that's a lot of dynamic to be allowing as a defense and
and be able to cap it. So I think, you know, if, if, if
those two things happen, I think it could be, it could be a close
one. Yeah, especially if it happens
without early offenses. It sounds like you were saying.
Well, it should be a fascinating 1 and, and certainly I'm looking
forward to it. I, you know, the, it's been a
real joy watching this IU team every week and, you know, every
week I'm excited to see what they've got planned next.
And you know, how everything plays out.
I mean, clearly a lot, a lot to watch in this game.
It'll be a fascinating, you know, you know, combination of
events, not just these two teams playing each other, but the
potential for weather. We had a question from Jordan
Bailey about like what are the effective tie downs for a
canopy? I I think it's entirely
dependent. I bought, there are some, there
are some weights I bought at Lowe's.
They did a good job of weighing the canopy down for the FIU
game, which weirdly had a a wind issue, or maybe it was Western
Illinois that the wind issues the way.
Yeah, that was it. So those weights that slide over
the legs are a good move. But I will say, if it's really
windy, don't put a canopy up. I'll always remember the Penn
State. It was the, IT was actually the
game that Pennix blew out his knee the first time there was a
highwind warning that happened I think about two hours before the
game. And it came through and it like
massacred all of the canopies that were set up in the Memorial
Stadium tailgate area, including mine, like, and mine was largely
massacred because my neighbor's canopy flew right into our
canopy and knocked the crock pots over like it was a huge
mess. So my, my point is, if you're at
all concerned or not certain about the weighing down, you're
almost better off standing in the rain because they fly in
canopy and and highwind is, is no joke, folks.
Yeah, you want to try to avoid that as much as possible.
So does your insurance company. So just maybe keep that in mind.
But a lot of different things that are going to be happening
around this game. Hopefully a big crowd.
Supposedly only about 4000 tickets left for this game.
So, you know, hopefully the weather cooperates.
Might have a wet crowd, but it should be fun.
It'll be warm outside at the very least and should be a
really fascinating event. So Taylor, any final thoughts
before we wrap up? No, no, Galen, you know, ready
to watch the Detroit Tigers in the play offs, but yes.
From the Tigers, I love it. It's great.
Yeah, I can't be distracted. Well, folks, we'll go ahead and
wrap up then. Taylor, really appreciate the
time as always and thanks to all you folks for listening in.
We'll be back. Actually, I don't know whether
this is going to drop before or after, but check out Scott's
interview with the folks from Punt John.
Punt. We got them out of retirement.
They're going to talk some IU football.
So go check that show out and also check out our recap coming
up on Sunday for Taylor Layman. I'm Galen Clavio, you're
listening or watching the Crimson cast.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the
Bison. Stay never daunted.
So long, everybody.