You're listening to the back home network presented by home
field apparel, welcome back to Crimson Cass Galen, Claudia
Jordan, you Friday, football preview, it is the 4th of
November. Happy November everybody.
As we get ready for the ending, portion of the IU football
schedule, as it gets closer and closer and it's hard to believe
that. I you finds itself back in the
position that they're in again here, three and five,
essentially needing to win three out of their last four games to
officially get boiled ability. They could technically be Bowl
eligible. If they go five and seven, I
guess really, the only need to win two of their last four, but
that still seems like a tall task.
We're going to talk about that a little bit on the preview
podcast and also talk about what's not shaping up to be a
great day at least in the lead-up to the game tomorrow.
So I want to make sure you folks have all that information that
you need as you make your decisions about when to come
down what to do while you're here in Bloomington.
First of all, just a reminder that Crimson cast is part of the
back home network. The back home network is brought
to you by home field. Apparel your place to go for the
finest in college fashion, the softest fabrics and some of the
coolest logos out there, just a tremendous array of various
collegiate products. They've had a lot of fleece
coming into the realm here lately and this is the time of
year, although it doesn't feel like it outside right now.
It's 70 degrees here in Bloomington, but it's going to
get cold soon and you're going to want to bundle up.
You're going to want some stuff for basketball season.
So, head over to home-field apparel.
I know many of you Very excited understandably and I think
rightfully so by the start of IU basketball season and home
field, you know got their start as a company that made IU
apparel. They've got a ton of really cool
basketball apparel on the site. So go to home field apparel.com
use the code home H ome get 15% off your first order.
If you've never ordered from home field apparel, you're gonna
be in for a treat, so go check them out.
Also be sure to follow them on Twitter at home field apparel,
you will be glad that. That you did.
Alright, let's set the scene for this weekend's game.
Indiana taking on the Penn State Nittany Lions.
Penn State comes into this game 16th in the country.
And it's been, you know, if there was an archetype for a
Penn State season, this has been it, you know, they struggled a
little bit on the road at Purdue, but they ended up
winning that one. They've been pretty dominant in
most of their other games. And then, of course, they've
gotten blown out by Michigan. And then they, Tide against
Ohio, State at home, and then eventually lost because that's
what they do against Ohio State, and so Penn State once again,
clearly the third best team in the Big Ten East that seems to
be a mantle, that they really have trouble shaking and that
said, this Penn State team I think, has done a decent amount
of things, right offensively. They're averaging 33 points a
game, you know, they've been pretty good on the ground
averaging, just a little bit shy of five yards, a carry on the
season. And and offensive ly.
They're averaging about six yards, a play which is pretty
good and defensively, they've not been terrible.
I mean the Michigan game. Did not help the defensive
numbers and they led to Ohio State score 44, but they really
did keep Ohio State at Bay for most of the first half of last
week's game. And you know, they've, I think
acquitted themselves fairly well.
Overall, this will still be looked at as a disappointing
season in Penn State land, but they can finish very strong.
I will bleep be in contention for a new year, six bowl.
If you look at the remaining schedule that they've got they
no longer play ranked teams and the four teams that they play
are Indiana at Indiana. Maryland at home at Rutgers
Michigan State at home. That is not a particularly
challenging set of games. When you get right down to it.
Maryland could be an interesting one.
I'm actually kind of curious to see how the Twitter the the
Terps play in state college. But certainly the The three
you'd have to look at them and say, yeah, Penn State just out
talents all of the teams that they're going to be playing.
So, you know, I think certainly 10 and 2 still in the cards for
this Penn State team, nine and three, you know, is certainly
also on the cards but if your Penn State, you have to like,
where you're at at this stage in terms of, yes, we're going to
have hit double digit. Wins most likely whether it's in
the regular-season, or adding the bowl or, you know, and but
still for Penn State, what they want to do is be where Ohio
State's at Or beware Michigan's at and that just doesn't seem to
be happening for them at this point.
So they play Indiana who kind of wants to be where Penn State's
at right now, but looks more like we're Rutgers is at 3 and 5
on the season and the season, it just feels like the wheels of
falling off. For this IU team, they've lost
five games in a row and you know, they've given up, you
know, the minimum amount of points they've given up in that
five-game, stretch is 24. And they've given up at least 20
points in every game this year. They've given up 30 points in
all, but three games this year and the offense just isn't
working either to the point that after that Rutgers loss and in
the press conference immediately following on Monday, Tom Allen
came out and stop me. If you've heard this before said
well we're going to look at everything.
We're going to re-evaluate everything, you know, even
starting quarterback might be up for grabs and not off the table.
And it just really folks, it feels like we're back to where
we were last year with this IU football team, where you have a
coaching staff that seems bereft of answers and you have got an
offensive system that dust does not work for any long period of
time. You've got a defense that hasn't
played horribly, but hasn't played well, enough to actually
be able to stop teams when it matters.
And you know, you look across the board at this IU team,
they're one of the few teams. That is, you know, kind of bad
in both offense and defense to a level where if you were gonna,
you know, put a map together of the bad teams in college
football. You would.
I think have to very clearly put Indiana in that mix.
They just haven't been very good.
You look at Pro Football, Focus, we've been keeping track of the
grading. I you right now is 121st out of
131 teams in the Pro Football Focus overall grades.
They great out. Just barely ahead of of Akron
and right behind Middle Tennessee, State and Utah State.
They've dropped behind in Northwestern finally.
So, you know, those two teams look very similar and it's
interesting because, you know, I think Indiana's record.
You look at them three and five and you're like, wow, how can
they be that bad? If they've won three games, but
as we've talked about several times this season, the winds,
statistically look like losses that they had earlier on, in the
season, the win against Western, Kentucky, looks like a loss like
they had a relatively Low post game.
When expectancy there, they shouldn't have won the game
based upon how the game went they did.
But it doesn't look like they did statistically.
Same thing with the Illinois game.
Illinois statistically won that game, but Indiana managed to win
the game in terms of the final score which matters, but when
you're trying to grade the season out, overall it's hard to
draw any conclusion from the numbers.
Other than this is not a good Indiana team and it hasn't been
from the start of the year. And while you look at
Northwestern and there one in seven or you look at Colorado
and there one in seven and you're like, well, clearly
Indiana has to be better than them because they've got two
more wins. Realistically statistically, not
so much. So now the question comes like
what happens moving forward with this Indiana team?
I was really, I don't want to be dramatic because I mean I
wasn't. It wasn't like I had to get
like, you know, smelling salts and go sit on the fainting
couch. When I heard Tom Allen talking
in the press conference a couple of weeks ago about you, them,
you know, basically re-evaluating everything again
but it's just very disappointing and, you know, I think as we
move forward and I'm sure pending what happens in this
game that Scott and I will talk about it, some on Sunday, it's
pretty inexcusable You know, two-thirds of the way through
another season after a season that went completely off the
rails for Tom Allen to come out. And essentially say, well we
don't really know what's like, how to fix things.
We don't really have answers. We're going to have to
re-evaluate everything. You shouldn't as a college team
is, especially Indiana, especially in this case, where
you've turned over offensive coordinators, you've turned over
defensive coordinators. You supposedly spent, the entire
offseason, kind of Structuring and reorganizing and really
getting back to basics and really getting back to this idea
that, you know, the team wants to like recommit to each other
and recommit to this, the idea of having a successful football
program, it does not make much sense for them.
Once again to be in a position where they don't have any
answers where they've lost to Rutgers where they've lost to
Maryland where they've lost to Nebraska and they've lost five
games in a row and are staring. You know what could potentially
be a 1 and 8 season in the big 10 in the face, having just come
off in 2009, season in the big tent.
And I think the thing, the quarterback situation I think is
really emblematic of the core problem that is currently
happening with IU football, which is that the problem is not
Connor, basil, act, and you know that there's a lot of people in
our mentions on Twitter who I understand point out issues with
basil, lacks accuracy. No question.
He did not have a good. Game against Rutgers, he's had
some trouble in terms of getting the ball where it needs to be in
an accurate manner. A lot of that has to do with
pressure, some of that has to do with hearing footsteps and you
know if you were standing behind this offensive line, I think
you'd be probably hearing footsteps as well.
But, you know, the problem to some degree.
It's like after a while the it's not the Personnel, it's the
system and this is the second year in a row really, to some
degree, the third year in a row where you've had to rely.
If your eye you on extraordinary performances from individuals to
overcome, the shortcomings in the system.
If you go back to 2020, a lot of people have very fond memories
of 2020 and rightfully so So that was a very successful year.
It was a very fun year, you know, but I think it's important
to keep in mind that a lot of the underlying numbers for IU in
that year weren't great in terms of what they were doing on
offense. It was, it was a team that
largely played over its head and a lot of that came from
essentially relying on the Brilliance of Michael penix, in
being able, to make things work and figure out.
How to make plays in times when protection had broken down and
whatnot. I mean, Indiana went six and two
in 2020 and Michael penix was around for most of those games.
He has he got injured in the Maryland, game was out for the
Wisconsin game and then was out for the bowl game and he ended
up papering over a multitude of sin, particularly, with pass
blocking. That was one of the worst grated
pass. Blocking years that we've seen
out of Indiana football in a long time, and yeah, Indiana
went X + 2 statistically I think if you really dug into the
numbers, you know, they probably should have gone for 14.
And you know, it's funny if you think about how different our
perception of IU football would be if that had been the record
now it wasn't the record but if you think about the way that I
you football has descended over the last couple of years.
There's some important lessons to learn from that and one of
them is you take Michael penix. Who is we've seen at Washington?
While not a Fect quarterback is a pretty damn good.
Start starting quarterback at the college level.
You know when you take him out of the equation it suddenly it's
like turning a rock over and all the like the you know the grubs
are like flying everywhere. You start to see what's crawling
underneath the service and it's like this really doesn't work in
reality. And last year you didn't have a
functional Michael penix because of injury and so you benched
him. Well he got injured you bring in
Jack, Tuttle Jack tunnels not able to The throws, Jack, Tuttle
has all kinds of problems with accuracy.
Then you go to Donovan. McCulley who couldn't make the
throws and couldn't operate in the offense.
You end up with a walk-on who can functionally make some
throws But ultimately a lot of it was a problem with the
underlying issues of the offense as a whole, not just the
blocking and the overall offensive line play.
But the Personnel in some of the skill position sets and what
they were doing, you know, and certainly I think the overall
play call Being approached more aspirational than drawing off of
what your personnel can provide you.
And you know, certainly a lot of issues with IU, I think come
down to both last year. And this year, this idea that
this is not a really functional offense.
This is not an offense that has the ability to block.
And as we've heard, Zach, Osterman from the Indy star,
quoting Kevin Wilson over and over again.
It's like your offense is what you can block and Indiana
hasn't. The block anything the last
couple of years. And it took essentially, if you
go back and look at 2020 took a really extraordinary performance
from the quarterback threw most of the season to get Indiana to
the point where they could be 6 and to where they could, you
know. So they could be six and one
going into the Outback Bowl. So I look at now L that is a
preamble to thinking about now. And then, I think the very real
possibility that Jack tuttle's going to be the starting
quarterback on Saturday And I don't begrudge, Jack, Tuttle,
the the opportunity to start, you know, certainly his career
at IU is not played out the way that he thought it would and the
way that the coaching staff thought it would and he's
already got his name in the transfer portal.
I hope that he performs very well and that puts him in a
position where he can go somewhere and have a good
conclusion to his career. But the fact that it's week,
nine, essentially and IU is even contemplating that tells me That
this is less about this is like, more just like, well, let's hope
that if we throw Jack Tuttle, and it will create a spark
rather than what we've looked at the offense.
And this is actually what we need.
It just strikes, it smacks of a level of desperation on the
coaching staff because they don't seem to know how to fix
the problems. And that really is concerning
and the fact that the same thing happened last year in a slightly
different formation is. I think even more concerning
long term when you think about where I you football, Is that I
have a hard time believing that basil act who yes, is had some
accuracy issues but has looked like a pretty competent
quarterback overall throughout the course of the Season.
You're going to pull him out and put a guy in who couldn't win
the job throughout an entire offseason despite having started
games before and who was in the system already and has been in
the system for multiple years, like that just doesn't bode well
and furthermore, I think Just kind of again, mrs.
This the the core point which is that the underlying structure of
the offense just doesn't work and hasn't worked for a couple
of years and I don't know what happens at this point moving
forward. I mean, if Indiana pulls one of
these flash four games out, that's great and I'd be curious
to see how they did it. But if they don't now, you put
yourself in a position as a program where it's like what do
you do you fired your offensive line coach early in the season
in you know? What a pretty young, not, not
completely unprecedented, but surprising that you would go
through an entire offseason with a guy and then fire him for
games into the season when it had to be cleared during the
offseason. If you knew what to look for,
that the offensive line wasn't up to Snuff just as it had not
been up to Snuff the previous two years.
So you know you have to hire a new offensive line, coach fine.
But you've got an offensive coordinator at this point who,
you know, doesn't seem to be able to effectively We adapt to
the Personnel that he's got the system that he's got.
I don't know what exactly is going to change their.
So you got to make another change at offensive coordinator.
Where is all of this headed? Like what is the direction of
the program? This is a really bad game to try
to figure some of that out in and, you know, going back and
looking at this Penn State game. I don't know.
I mean, if they end up starting basil, a candy doesn't play?
Well, I don't know that. That necessarily will tell you
anything because of the weather conditions that IU is going to
be facing in this Penn State game.
It's going to be a wet field. It'll probably rain for the
first part of the game and then taper off, but it's going to be
very windy and I think it's going to be a struggle for both
offenses to kind of get things going.
And that's something that I you really doesn't need his like,
more struggles on offense, in addition to the Personnel items.
But once you bench basil, lack, it's hard to see.
You going back to Basil, act the rest of the year, you know,
unless there's some kind of an injury that forces.
That to happen. And that's the only way that you
could do it. Where even if you do it that
way, you've kind of, essentially, you've taken
basal-like off the table is an effective leader.
Because now if I'm playing on offense, I'm like, well, that
guy just got benched for someone who didn't win the job in the
offseason. It's hard to put the same level
of trust and confidence in that person's ability to lead the
offense as you go through the rest of the season.
So I just the whole thing is, is troubling.
It just feels Again, like a desperation move if that's
indeed what happens. The fact that was even being
talked about, to some degree. It really kind of waves that red
flag of. We're not exactly sure what the
problem is. And that is really, really
problematic, not just for this season, but the but for the
program as a whole. So I hope that that gets figured
out. We'll have to see how it goes.
I mean, statistically, speaking, this is going to be a difficult
game to project because Penn State overall, you know, they've
they've run hot and cold and some of these games.
A lot of it, I think for IU, is going to really come down to
this idea of how their defense is able to handle certain
situations. I mean, Penn State, you're
looking at them from a, from a PFF perspective, is not
considered one of the best teams in the country by any means.
And I think that it's, you know, what's fascinating about this
Penn State team is that even though they're six and two
statistically, they've somewhat under produced especially when
it comes to something like the running game.
Or they just, they haven't been consistently good in blocking
their offensive line hasn't been great, really, an either pass
blocking or run blocking and even though they're six and two
and ranked 16th realistically, they're probably kind of a
middle tier team. I think they, you know, playing
against an equivalent team from the SEC or the Big 12 in a bowl
game. They probably get smashed.
And and yet I think in the Big Ten, they probably measure up to
right about where we see them about third in the Eastern
Division. You know, will Penn State be
able to take advantage of Indiana's inability to come up
with turnovers and inability to stop drives?
I think that ends up being kind of the big question.
You look at the games, they've been the most successful and so
far this season and it's generally been teams that they
have been able to consistently pass well against and it's been
teams that, you know, just haven't put up as much of a
fight from an offensive perspective and and I feel like
unfortunately, Indiana kind of fits both of those categories
very well. You know the closest analog I
guess for Indiana would be Northwestern or Purdue.
There's not really a great analog on what Penn State's had
on their schedule. This far this season.
That's about the closest that you can get, you know, Purdue
took advantage of some mistakes on Penn State offensive
approach, but they couldn't stop Penn State on their own
defensive approaches. And I think that helped There's
quite a bit Northwestern was just kind of a slog as
Northwestern does Penn State should have won that game by
more, you know? But they were able to rely on a
pretty stout defense to keep, northwestern's subpar offense at
Bay. And that's the big question for
me is like, you know, with Indiana uncertainty at
quarterback. No Camp.
Camper for the rest of the season.
Who unfortunately, went out with an ACL tear and no real
established running game. Like, where's the ball going to
go? How's the ball?
Going to It's past the line of scrimmage, consistently because
I use offensive line just has not shown an ability to provide
the kind of blocking either in the pass game of the Run game to
make that happen. It's a 13 and a half point
spread right now and I guess, you know, for me the big
question is, is the weather bad enough that Indiana can keep it
within 10, you know or just Penn State figure out a way to
manufacture yards on the ground, get a lead and then Indiana has
to try to throw consistently and they're just not able to do
that. You know, to some degree, I
think a little bit of everything is on the table and, you know,
probably a little bit of a stay away if you were in the wagering
game because 13 and a half is right around.
Kind of the question mark point. You think about last year's game
in Happy Valley, Indiana lost that game. 24 to nothing.
And that was, it was just not a particularly fun game to watch.
It was it was we've seen that game a lot with Indiana and Penn
State. We're kind of stages kind of
establishes physical dominance and Indiana's not able to do a
whole lot with they're their possessions.
And so, you know, my perspective on this one is, I think Penn
State. This feels like a 17 to 20 point
victory for Penn State, probably somewhere in the realm of like
27, 27 or 30 to 10. I'm not sure how reliably
kickers will be able to get the ball through the uprights
tomorrow so that could skew things a little bit.
I don't think Indiana is really got a shot at winning this one.
They just haven't shown much of a spark.
Could all the last month and a half.
But, you know, I also would be surprised if they got blown out,
simply because I don't think Penn State has that in their
Arsenal at this stage to be able to do so, that's going to be the
the thing to watch. I guess, tomorrow is how all
that plays out. And I'm curious to see what
occurs and I'm curious to see what Indiana ends up doing on
offense and whether any sort of change makes a difference and
also who steps up in the wide receiving Corps, you know,
whether that's a Maurice Evans or Anderson, Kobe or DJ.
Who's getting more targets or AJ Barner getting into the offense
more, something differents going to have to happen with no Camp
camper and I don't know what direction they'll go with that.
So we'll see last thing to cover for tomorrow.
The weather I've been watching this whole week and man it just
gets worse and worse. Every time I check it in the
original forecast was for like mid-70s and a little bit of a
breeze and that is devolved to now they're forecasting, you
know about probably somewhere between a Order and a half inch
of rain and winds that by the time you get to around 1:00,
2:00 will be steady out of the south-southwest at about 18 to
20 miles an hour with gusts up to 40 That's not ideal by any
means. That's bad tailgate.
Whether that's bad watching football, whether I will say, it
does look like the rain is going to according to the projections
taper off right around the start of the game.
So you may want to maybe not a I mean you can do whatever you
want. I'm not going to dissuade
anybody from trying to go out and tailgate.
I'm still debating exactly how long I want to be out there, but
I'll say, you know, you may want to maybe consider biasing a
little bit closer to game time as opposed to getting out there
at the crack of dawn, because this is going to be wet, it's
going to be windy, it's going to be hard to put canopies up, and
that, that's a bad combination. Like it's one thing if it's
going to be raining in a little bit.
It's another, if it's all of those things and you can't
shelter yourself. So I would say just use caution,
check the forecast. Before you go to bed tonight.
Before you make any final determinations, it could be
worse. I mean they've actually banned
canopies at Purdue and and I think they're doing the same
thing at Northwestern. They've said for this weekend,
winds are going to be too strong.
It's going to be too dangerous. You can't put in a canopies up.
It's funny. That Penn State of all things of
all teams is that the game that Has got with another windy
contest. I remember clearly think it was
five years ago, Indiana, playing Penn State.
It was actually the game that Michael penix, tore his knee up
the first time. But my tailgate spot which is
kind of between Assembly Hall and Memorial Stadium.
We had people that had set up next to us, they set their
canopy up, everything that's about three and a half hours
before the game. And then they had to leave to go
like to a youth soccer game, and they were going to come back and
we're like, yeah, we'll watch your stuff and then Remember, I,
you Personnel driving through on golf cart saying, hey, there's a
high wind warning and it's supposed to come in about 30
minutes and we're like, yeah, sure, no problem.
And then it hit like, 30 minutes later like they said.
And our stuff was fine because we'd secured it the stuff that
the people left behind who had gone to the youth, soccer game
all blue into our stuff. So, like, canopy got destroyed
lost a Crock-Pot in the process that got knocked off a table, it
was pretty scary. Like it was, it was one of
those. Has moments where you're like, I
might not survive this I might got my might get hit in the head
with a canopy, and that's it. And so, we spent a lot of time
having to clean up and that was, it was not ideal and that whole
game was bad. If you went to that game, you
probably remember like the third and fourth quarter, the wind
just swirling garbage in Memorial Stadium, it just a nun,
an inhospitable environment by and large.
And, of course, Indiana cap that off with losing that game.
So not not the Situation. So if you do go out, be careful
of the wind, you know, no storms tomorrow, or anything like that.
So nothing to worry about there but just be cautious and use
your best judgment and you know, this might not be the worst
thing, you know, day in the world, instead of grilling out
there to come up with a crock pot recipe that you could
utilize bring that with you. So you're not beholding to
having to cook out in the wet. You know, try to find some
alternate Solutions. I think that's probably the best
bet at this point. So anyway, Way, good luck with
everybody. I hope you all have a good game,
whether you come down and watch it in person, or whether you're
watching it from home, we'll be back on Sunday with a recap
podcast where we talk about what happened.
We've also got some basketball content coming up soon.
I'm going to be joined by some special guests, as we talked
about the two exhibition games, and the start of the season for
IU men's basketball the start of the season for are you women's
basketball coming up here soon as well?
Good luck to IU men's soccer, is they play in the first round of
the Big Ten? Tournament today against Penn
State. I'm Galen.
Klaviyo. Will catch you folks on the flip
side? Bring back the Bison, so
everybody