You're listening to the back home network.
Presented by home field, apparel, Happy Thanksgiving
week, folks. Galen klaviyo.
Here it is Friday. Black Friday, the day after
Thanksgiving and The second to last day of the IU football
season as the Hoosiers, enter into this last game of the year.
The old Oaken Bucket game going to Purdue and frankly at this
point needing some miraculous turnarounds in several phases of
the game to put up a good showing maybe even pull off a
victory. We're going to talk a little bit
about that and there's not a whole lot else to talk about
beyond that. It's been a rough season
everybody. I think is Worn out at this
point. And we're looking forward to
talking more about the basically, the breakdown of what
happened with this season and where Indiana goes from here as
a program. But we're going to save that for
after the bucket game because we really need to focus on the
bucket game because it is important and it's one of those
games where you just you have to take it as almost an entity unto
itself. So we're going to talk about
that. But first, I want to talk about
our presenting sponsor on the Back home, network home-field
apparel. If you know us, you know that we
do a lot of home field apparel ordering and wearing both Scott
and myself and really pretty much everybody else that's on
this podcast. On a regular basis, big fans of
home-field apparel, Ultra Soft, Ultra stylish, Ultra, retro.
A variety of different types of apparel.
Whether it's t-shirts or three-quarter, length, long
sleeve shirts or hoodies or crew, necks or stickers.
They've got a little bit of everything.
And if you're listening to this right now, before the Purdue
game before, the Indiana game starts against Purdue, you've
got an opportunity to get 20% off anything on the home field.
Apparel website. I placed my order earlier today,
picked up a few things that I've been keeping an eye on but
haven't purchased yet and you can do the exact same because
the sale goes all weekend goes all the way through to Cyber
Monday and basically while supplies last, there's going to
be plenty of great stuff on there.
A wonderful place to shop for the sports fans in your life or
just people that want to be stylish which they should and
maybe if they don't want to be stylish you might go ahead and
buy them something from home field anyway because it might
push them down the stylish Road just slightly, it couldn't hurt
anyway, go to home field, apparel.com and you'll find
their entire stock 20% off Place some mortars.
Make some people happy make yourself happy get your
Christmas shopping or holiday shopping done early.
And you don't even need a code. The Just twenty percent off
everything. Anyway, let's go ahead and dive
in to the football as Indiana. Comes into this game, to a 90 on
the season, coming off, another disappointing loss.
At home this time to Minnesota, meaning that Indiana only won
one game at home throughout this entire season, and that was
against FC. S opponent Idaho, in the first
home game of the year. So Indiana currently on a
seven-game losing streak and in That time they've only broken 15
points on offense once. And that was of course, in the
loss to Marilyn back on the 30th of October.
This has been a season that has been circling the drain.
Now, basically, since October started.
And if you watch that Minnesota game, we talked about it quite a
bit. Obviously, in the postgame press
conference, there's just not much to take out of this team's
performance. That would make you think.
Oh yeah. I you, they'll be able to figure
it out. Bucket game against a motivated,
Purdue team, the offense has just continued to be frankly,
just an Abomination. I mean it's I said this before.
I've said it for several weeks now and I hate saying it because
it sounds like I'm being over-critical.
I'm not when I say that Indiana. At this point has one of the
worst Power 5 offenses, I've ever seen.
I mean it like it's you know we talked about this in the podcast
on. And a this past week.
But Indiana has managed to assure itself of not having the
record for the worst scoring offense in the nine-game, Big
Ten Conference season ERA but just barely and they still have
to score a couple of touchdowns to get themselves out of the
second-worst scoring offense in the nine-game conference season
Big Ten era. That's a real bad offense all
the way around. And, you know, when you dive in
and look at individual numbers, Just it's hard to find a lot of
positive things to talk about with this offense and I think we
finally saw Tom Allen really to some degree kind of hit the wall
when it came to his patients on talking about this offense and
what's going on you look at Pro Football Focus which as you know
we're want to do here because I think they do a good job of
helping to quantify things in college football.
There's there's 130 teams in division one FBS and you have to
scroll all the way down to 119th to find Indiana's overall
offensive ranking. They are only ahead of two other
power 5 schools. One of them is Vanderbilt, who
is of course, to a 9 on the season and the other one is
Arizona, who's 1 and 10 on the season?
So, you're talking about a really bad, Indiana offense, not
just in terms of scoring, but in terms of just, Overall
performance, you know, and, and really, for Indiana it's hard to
nail down a single area where you would point to and say,
well, that's the absolute worst, but really, it's the passing
game has probably been the, the part of the overall offense that
has been the worst for Indiana. Surprisingly, it's not the worst
by itself. Like, you look at the overall
rankings and it's again, it's 119th in the country.
There are some schools that have worst passing a tax right now.
In fact, three of them are in the Big Ten, Rutgers
Northwestern and Illinois, who are, of course, the Gabriel
Byrne, Benicio, del Toro and Kevin Pollak of teams, you know,
when you talk about that offenses.
But Indiana, I guess is filling the Stephen Baldwin role in this
instance. I'm not sure who Kevin Spacey
would be in this metaphor, maybe well, this year, it's Wisconsin.
Weirdly enough will anyway, but bad passing offense.
This is not Category. We've seen Indiana in as much
over the course of time and unfortunately that has been the
real Bugaboo and what makes Indiana's offense.
So bad is that there's not really a counterbalance
elsewhere that you can point to and say, hey at least they've
got this going for them because it just it doesn't exist right
now within the Indiana sphere and you can really just kind of
throw a dart in the general direction of the IU offensive
board as we know, and you're just, you're going to hit
something that is problematic. When it It comes to how this
team is playing offense. Now they play a team in Purdue
who has been a bit up and down, like you look overall, I mean
produce offense is pretty good in general, their overall
offensive rating is 42nd in the country which again, is not a
bad rating. This is not a particularly good
Purdue team, from a defensive perspective.
In fact, this is the one area where Indiana over the course of
the season has outperformed, Purdue Purdue is ranked only
105th in defense in terms of overall ranking on Pro Football,
Focus Indiana's 83rd which is nothing to write home to Mom
about but is at least better than their opponents.
The problem for Indiana and this has really been the case in the
last few games. Is that even if you get some
good individual series out of the defense early, the
combination of the number of injuries that this team has
suffered and the number of issues that Indiana Anna has on
offense creating opportunities for the opposing team's offense
over. And over again has eventually
rendered this defense kind of impotent when it comes to doing
what we expected to do. You still got some good
individual control contributors out there?
Mike McFadden has certainly continued to do what he does out
on the field pretty well. But by and large, this defense
has kind of been dragged down, not just by injury.
But I think to a large degree by the Stark reality.
Whatever they do out there is probably not going to matter
because the offense is eventually going to stop moving
the ball and it's going to put the defense in positions that
they just can't ultimately stopped down the line.
That's really what happened in that Minnesota game defense
started out pretty well, and really played well, I thought
through most of that first, half up until that interception
return, that put Minnesota in a position to score their third
touchdown of the day right before half.
And at that stage, it's hard to ask the defense to do a whole
lot else. But you know, as you go through
the season and you look at what this Indiana defense is done,
it's hard to say they've been bad, they've been they haven't
been great. And certainly, you know, they
you haven't seen the turnovers being generated and things like
that. There's been some regression in
that area, but it's hard to blame the defense for the
problems that the offense is had when the offense is problems.
And the Special Teams problems to some degree, are directly
creating additional issues for the defense.
So, Purdue team that Indiana plays has been a little bit
Jekyll and Hyde in terms of its overall performance has this
season, you know, the Purdue has had only one loss that I would
really point to and say, well, that's a peculiar one and it's
the loss that they suffered earlier on in the season, to
Minnesota for whatever reason. PJ Flex seems to have Jeff
Brahms. Number Minnesota, winning that
game. Actually dropped Purdue to 3 and
2. And with Purdue at that point
having to Able to Iowa, this was right around the beginning of
October. Like a lot of people thought
that produce season could really go downhill but instead returned
around beat Iowa, like a drum and really killed off, whatever
chances in Iowa, had of maintaining even a top 10
ranking for the rest of the season.
They kind of got exposed in that game.
Purdue did get beaten pretty soundly by Wisconsin and I think
you could say that was their worst overall effort of the
year. And then, of course they lost
it. In order to aim, they lost it,
Ohio State. But I think you'd be
hard-pressed in either of those games to say that Purdue it
played as badly as Indiana has played in some of their losses
at least offensively. I mean Purdue put 31 points up
against Ohio State on the road. Indiana could only put seven
points up at home against Ohio State, so I think it's dangerous
to look at this Purdue team and draw a lot of equivalencies with
IU. You know, Purdue has managed
over the course of this season to pick up a lot of really
impressive wins. They stand seven and four on the
season, going into this game. And, you know, even the
defensive numbers that I talked about earlier are a little bit
misleading when it comes to Purdue because Purdue is really
been a feast or famine team from a defensive perspective.
And as we dive into those numbers, let's go ahead and talk
a little bit about another one of our sponsors here on the back
home network and that is the power rank.
You know, if you not use the power rank before, they have a
free newsletter, Which gives you sports betting, advice with a
PhD Edge. Also if you're not a better, you
can just help get, you know, some better understanding of
sports from an analytical level, Ed Fang.
Who's the guy that is the, the brains behind the power rank
uses data and analytics to make accurate football and college
basketball predictions. Both, he writes an incredible
March Madness guide, every year and we'll have a special offer
on that coming up later on this basketball season.
But But still good for football and particularly with the bowl
season rolling around here within the next month or so you
want to get as much analytical info as you can.
So, check out the power rank.com / AC and you can subscribe to
that newsletter again. That's the power rank.com /.
AC be sure to check it out. Get yourself smarter in these
areas, get some angles and thought processes that perhaps
you hadn't thought of up to this point.
Again, the power rank, be sure to check them out.
You look at produced performances over the course of
the season when it comes to their defense, their defense, as
I mentioned, this pretty low rank but for the most part
they've had consistent outings from their defense.
In terms of the areas that we would most be focusing on how
well are they stopping the Run? How well are they tackling?
How well are they getting pressure on the quarterback?
How well do they covering receivers the problem for Purdue
has been when they've played teams that have been able to
overwhelm, Well, name them from a, an offensive perspective, for
one reason or another, they really struggle in those games.
And certainly that Ohio State game was probably the biggest
example of that. That was their worst overall
defensive performance of the year and really, it was in the
running game that they really struggle, but they also
struggled covering receivers. And you know what, you ended up
with all of that was an Ohio State team that almost hung 60
on Purdue now, they've run into trouble and a couple of other
games in order to aim was certainly able to take advantage
of Meanwhile, Notre Dame, did not throw a ridiculous number up
on the board. It was clear that Notre Dame was
the better team that day and then that Minnesota game.
And that's the one I keep coming back to Purdue was just
incapable of stopping the Run, consistently in that game and
that helped to lead to the defeat even though they didn't
give up a tremendous number of points.
You look overall on the season and produce averaging 26 points
scored and only giving up 21.7 points on The season but they're
rushing attack, surrendered per game.
There's they're giving up 4.4 yards, a carry while only
picking up two and a half yards, a carry themselves.
So you look at that and you say well is there a chance that
Indiana might be able to take advantage of that a little bit
and that might end up being the one route that Indiana could
focus on and say, look, we know that Purdue has struggled at
times, not just to run the ball themselves, but to stop the run
and You know, if Indiana can figure out a way to get there
running blocking together and pick up four yards and attempt
in the running game. They have a lot of the pieces
that you would want for that. Yes, you don't have, you might
have Stephen Carr. We don't know for sure, I'd be
surprised if you play, but Tom Allen was trying to leave the
door open for car, as well as several other Hoosiers.
I mean, he mentioned an ex he mentioned Tuttle, I'd be
surprised if any of those players ended up playing, but I
guess I wouldn't be shocked because it got mentioned during
the press conference. But you do had, you know, no,
David Ervine Poindexter. You've got some other backs that
Indiana has tried to use and then you've got about a McCauley
who has not passed the ball very well or enough.
I guess if we take the commentary from Tom Allen
himself and the Monday press conference, but he has shown an
ability to run and especially going into this last game of the
year you do get these sorts of situations where sometimes
anything goes as far as your offensive plan is concerned.
And while Indiana has Certainly struggled mightily with being
able to pass the ball, they have shown a commitment For Better,
or For Worse to trying, to run the ball on a regular basis.
And and using that as their primary methodology of getting
the ball down the field. I don't know if that's actually
going to work against Purdue, but I don't think it's
completely out of the question that Indiana could keep this
competitive for a bit simply because that particular aspect
of, I use offensive game if they dedicate themselves to it has
shown somewhat of a consistent ability to at least pick up some
yards early on most of the problems Indiana's running to
whether it was against Rutgers or Minnesota and certainly
against some of the bigger teams is that the opposition was
eventually able to figure out what Indiana was doing.
Make adjustments accordingly and then Indiana had no plan B to go
with the other question ends up. Being how much of Grant Grumble
do we see Of this Indiana team and The more I've thought about
it, the more I'm saying to myself for whatever reason,
Nick, Sheridan and the offensive coaching staff seem to feel more
confident in Grant Grumble, to throw a variety of routes than
they do Donovan McCully. And I think that's been obvious
in the couple of times we've seen grumbles so far this
season. He gets the ball out relatively
quickly. He's pretty good about finding
targets and I think you might end up seeing Like a true dual
quarterback approach here, where you've got McCulley in for
running downs and maybe a little bit of passing and then grandma
Lynn for, you know, passing the ball.
I would hope that they won't do it play-by-play.
Like we've seen in some of the series and would instead do it
series by series just so they're not too terribly predictable.
But I think there's a possibility there and you know,
if Indiana can figure out some kind of a rhythm on offense,
where they can at least gain some yards and put themselves in
scoring position. It's not inconceivable that
Indiana could At least keep this within a touchdown or two
heading into the second half. All that said, I really don't
see Indiana winning this game. So Purdue, you know, just with a
lot to play for just in terms of Bowl positioning, and putting
themselves in a better higher tier bowl.
And they've got a really good shot at that.
They probably don't have a realistic shot at getting to the
Big Ten title game. But they have a realistic shot
of going 6 and 3 in conference and they have a realistic shot
of you know potentially getting a Florida Bowl.
Not too different from the situation that Hannah's been in
the last couple of years and for a Purdue team that certainly
struggled the last couple of years, this has been a nice
bounce-back for Jeff brohm. Now we've seen in bucket games,
Indiana teams with chances to go to bowls, get derailed by Purdue
we've seen Purdue teams, you know, your struggle in important
games, because of the way Indiana's played.
I just really worried about whether this Indiana team has
anything left in the tank and whether they've, Basically
gotten to the point where they can see the finish line and they
just want to get across the finish line and try to regroup.
It's a peculiarity to me trying to evaluate exactly what the
mentality of this team is going to be heading into this final
game because there's just, there's so many opportunities
for Indiana from a mental perspective.
To say, you know what, we, this was the season didn't work out.
And at this point we just don't have any fire left in us.
We've seen that happen in past games.
I mean, and it's not one of those situations where I'm
saying Indiana is going to quit. But when you have two teams that
are on very different motivational spectrums you end
up with a situation where the game snowballs.
Yeah, I remember very clearly that game in 2000.
Indiana had a very disappointing season.
They came into that game, three, and seven, really didn't have a
lot to play for. Meanwhile, they played a Purdue
team that needed to win that game to secure a rose.
Bowl bid and not only, did they win that game but they
annihilated Indiana. I was at that game.
I broadcasted that game for student radio, when I was a
student and it was one of the more mortifying football
experiences, I think I'd ever seen just give, just because of
how fired up Purdue was, and how not fired up.
Indiana was, you know? And then certainly there have
been examples going the other direction as well. 2007 was a
good example of that although that one wasn't a blowout by any
stretch of the imagination. 2015 was a great example of that kind
of thing, though. Indiana needing to win to go to
a bowl. And not only did they win?
They won at Ross Aid and they won very convincingly.
So, you have to think that the motivational factors and the
intangible aspects, all of those elements really do add up in
favor of Purdue for this game. It's been interesting though
because, you know, as I've been keeping an eye on the betting
lines for this game, it's They'd right around 15.
It was 15 and a half for a little bit and I was very
surprised about that because if you look at Indiana and the way
that they played and their inability to really get anything
going on offense, you would assume that given how well
produce offense has played in general that they would have
been a much bigger favorite. Maybe a three touchdown favored
but they're barely a two-touchdown favor.
And in fact, the line is dropped from 15 and a half back down to
15. So I don't know.
Vegas knows something or if they're just trying to In that
spot where they can get enough people betting on Indiana to
keep the rhythms of the bets, right?
About equal either way. But when I look at this in
general I you know I think the Indiana can probably come out
will probably score maybe on that first drive since they seem
to do pretty well on those scripted drives and then you
have to if you're going to look for Indiana to try to do any
more damage beyond that they got to force some turnovers which is
something They really have been able to do all year and they've
got to try to get Purdue in a situation where they start to
feel a little bit nervous. You're not going to fully get
that here because like the worst that will happen for Purdue is
that they'll finish 7 and 5, which is still a perfectly good
season, that probably sends them to the Music City Bowl, or the
Las Vegas Bowl that, you know, certainly nothing to sneeze at
in either case, but it just, it feels like one of those games
were produced got a lot to play for.
They don't have a whole lot, that would be negative if they
lost, so they can kind of go. Out there with a minimum of
pressure Indiana to some degree has to win this game to keep
their whole season from looking like a complete failure.
And you know, this is the one thing that I think that Tom
Allen on this coaching staff could do to try to redeem a
little bit out of the Season, would be to win the bucket game.
It's important to remember that Alan has only won one bucket
game so far. Yes, they didn't get to play
last year, but they lost those first two bucket games in his
first two years as head coach. And these are the Kind of games
where if you can essentially galvanized your forces and get
everybody to forget about what's happened up to this point and
figure out a way to get everybody excited enough that
they can win against a superior opponent.
Just based on record that goes a long way towards taking a little
bit of a bitterness of the taste of the Season out of people's
mouths and getting them at least a little bit excited for the
offseason that said, I don't see it happening.
I think this game might end up looking very similar to what
happened in the Minnesota game. Close early, as both teams, find
their sea legs. And then the team that's playing
better. In this case, Purdue gradually
pulling away as it gets a little bit further in.
So I'm going to give it a similar score.
I'm going to say, Purdue 38, Indiana, 10, and that would be
it for the season for Indiana. Will have a lot to talk about
afterwards, one, way or the other on this one.
So my thanks to all of you for tuning in throughout the course
of the season. On these preview podcast, it's
been a lot of fun just to talk about IU football, even if the
results certainly haven't been much fun.
But we've always appreciated the input and the thoughts that you
folks have been kind enough to send in, whether it's via
Facebook or whether it's via Twitter, sometimes we'll get DM,
sometimes we get email messages, but it's always gratifying to
know that there are people out there listening and is a long
time. I a football fan, it's exciting
to know that there's enough people out there that care about
IU. Football that they're willing to
at least, spend some time, listening thinking and
occasionally, contributing to the podcast.
So thanks to all of you for a great season.
Be sure to tune in this weekend as we will have our recap
podcast, where we talk about, what happened in the bucket
game. We talked about some of the
things to think about going into the offseason.
Some of the things that Tom Allen is going to have to do to
get this program back on track after a disastrous 2021 and
we'll do some forecasting as As what next year would look like.
And how Indiana navigates the spring and the summer heading
into fall of 2022, that will wrap it up for us today.
My thanks again to the power Rank and the home-field apparel
also wanted to remind you all go to dark canvas.
Design company on Etsy. They've been sponsoring us
throughout the course of the Year, some great prints, some
great things to buy for the IU fan in your life.
Some of them are Athletics related, some of them are not
But some great individual prints, check them out on Etsy,
dark canvas, design company, and I use the code Crimson you get
some money off. I think you'll, you'll enjoy
that as you will find a bunch of interesting things that you can
put in your cart and hopefully get up on your walls and the
walls of your friends and family this holiday season my thanks to
that my thanks to the power Rank.
And also my thanks to home-field apparel is always and thanks
again to all of you folks for listening in throughout the
course of the Season. We will catch You on the flip
side, for Crimson cast, I'm Galen klaviyo.
Bring back the Bison so long, everybody.
You on the flip side, for Crimson cast, I'm Galen klaviyo.
Bring back the Bison so long, everybody.