Indiana Coaches Encouraged and Excited by Scrimmage Last Saturday

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Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)

With the 2020 fast approaching the Indiana Hoosiers are taking an NFL approach to their season opener against Penn State on October 24th by playing three preseason scrimmages. he first came last Saturday and left the coaching staff feeling encouraged and excited by what they saw.

“I think Coach Tom Allen mentioned this, but I was encouraged because it was a relatively clean scrimmage. There were not a lot of balls on the ground, there were not a ton of penalties pre-snap or procedural things. It was not perfect, but I think we are trying to eliminate the bad football so we can start playing good football. We know you need to go through the process of guys getting the signal, guys lining up, guys being confident in what the call is, playing fast and eliminating negative plays” offensive coordinator said this week on a Zoom call.

Eliminating penalties is an important step for the Hoosiers who ranked 111th nationally by averaging 63.8 yards in penalties per game. “If you can eliminate those negative plays, they allow you to be a good offense. There were some signs of us trending in that direction. I think there is still more to be done, more work to be had, but I like where the group is at” Sheridan added.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Hoosiers have to focus on the physicality of the game. Having not played a game against an opponent since early January, the Hoosiers may have rust to knock off before facing a solid Penn State offense.

“I thought for a first scrimmage it was exciting to see because the physicality was there. Our ability to line up and communicate with ones, twos and even some of our threes did a really good job. But probably the most exciting thing was the tackling” defensive coordinator Kane Wommack told reporters.

Last season the Hoosiers opened the season with 23 missed tackles against Ball State and Wommack does not want a repeat performance in 2020.

“I think we have more players on the field that are stronger, faster and bigger, all those things, but, more importantly, they know what it feels like to hit a grown man in space” Wommack said of the defense. “They know how to bring those guys down way better than they did a year ago. I think our emphasis in tackling, if I can say it is cutting edge, I think we are doing some great things and in finding a way to build real life scenarios on the field, without tackling people live. We are finding ways to emulate what that is going to look like on game day. That was an exciting piece and the execution was an exciting piece. It just goes to show when you tackle well and you can execute, you can do good things on defense.”

Head coach Tom Allen agreed with the sentiments of his coordinators saying,  “I feel like that for the first time doing some of those things in a long time, it was pretty clean. There were not a lot of false start penalties on the offense, not a lot of penalties in general terms, it was pretty clean execution from my perspective. I think that that is good in regards to the fact we have got a lot of guys back and so you can expect that in some ways.”

“We still had mistakes and still had things that that we have to clean out, but it was not one of those sloppy scrimmages that you sometimes find yourself in when you do it for the first time in a long time. That was definitely something that I was encouraged by” Allen said. The Hoosiers will hit the field again Saturday for preseason scrimmage number two and try and clean up those mistakes.