Matchup to Watch: Indiana's Tackling vs. Eastern Illinois Skill Players

Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)

Indiana’s Tackling vs. EIU’s skill positions

This week’s matchup to watch isn’t one position against another or one star against another star, it’s an aspect of the game versus a group of players.

The Indiana Hoosiers missed 25 tackles in last week’s win over Ball State. Improvement is necessary if the Hoosiers are going to instill any kind of confidence in their fan base. Gone are the excuses of ‘it’s week one’, ‘we haven’t gone live in a while’.

Eastern Illinois will not have the five-star athletes that the Hoosiers will see in Week Three when Ohio State rolls into town, but they can spread the ball around. 16 different Panthers put their hands on the ball via reception or rush. The Panthers were led by quarterback Jonathan Bentley who threw for 103 yards and rushed for an additional 29. The run game is spearheaded by Jaelin Hayes-Benefield who had 49 rushing yards.

The Panthers love the short passing game. 10 EIU players caught passes, and five players had at least three receptions. The Panthers longest pass play was just 24 yards, so they probably won’t go over the top too much. However, if the Hoosiers don’t tackle well those short passes could, again, turn into big plays for the opponent.

Tackling has been a priority this week for the Hoosiers. On Monday Indiana head coach was steaming over his team’s performance on defense. “Tackling, after watching the film, was just as bad on film as it was live” he said, “so disappointed in that, but that will be fixed. We had 25 missed tackles. We were very aggressive on identifying those, for 181 yards, we felt like they lost -- they were after contact that we gave up when we should have got a guy on the ground. That's significant and something that I take personally.”

Indiana won’t win or lose this game just because they improved or did not improve tackling, but the Hoosiers can make it easier on themselves, the coaches and the fans if they do.