I know a lot of people, including me on Twitter, were mad that IU had a bit of a lull in the second quarter of their 56-9 win over Kennesaw State on Saturday. They were outscored 9-7 after IU missed on a 4th down in Owl territory when it looked like a perfect spot to try Nico Radicic from inside 50.
Then they came roaring to life on both sides of the ball.
I know this IU team is still a work in progress with all the new pieces but I think we finally saw what we all thought this team might show out of the gate in the second half. Remember, Kennesaw isn’t a good team but they did come off a week where they should have beaten Wake Forest on the road so they’re not Western Illinois from ’24.
First, I’ll recap my predictions/betting and then I’ll get into the breakdown of KSU and end with a small ISU preview.
IU Reactionary Betting Record: 2-2
IU Reactionary Prediction: IU 45-7
IU ended up easily covering the spread, winning 56-9 and going over the 51.5 to get me back to .500 and 2-2 on the year. Glad to get back on track here with a big win and kind of how I envisioned this game going.
The game went about how I expected, although I was hoping IU would get to play their back ups a bit more but that is very hard to do when you’ve played just 100 total defensive snaps through two games. Your starters need game reps. IU dominated the second half and was firing on basically all cylinders on both sides of the ball after a bit of a sloppy couple of possessions on both sides of the ball.
On to the break down of the game itself…
The Brothers Mendoza:
We’ll obviously start with Fernando Mendoza, since he’s going to make or break IU’s season…I thought he was much more crisp today than last week. He really seemed to trust IU’s elite pass blocking unit (rated #1 overall by PFF) and was very solid all day going 18/25 for 240 yards (9.8 ypa / 10.1 aDOT…average depth of target) and 4 TD’s while finishing with an elite 86.6 PFF passing grade. He’s pushing the ball down the field while not sacrificing a ton of accuracy and I think he’s only going to get more decisive as he continues to grow into this offense.
I thought he looked very good and probably would have had another TD had EJ Williams not dropped a slant in KSU territory (EJ is getting eased back in so this is the times when you want him and Cooper dropping TD’s and not against Illinois). Regardless, he seemed to better feel the minimal pressure (4 total) and moved around the pocket nicely to make plays with his arm or legs.
An interesting anecdote is that Fernando has basically graded higher in his PFF grade the further down the field he pushes the ball…
Behind LOS: 64.7 / Short (0-9 yards): 66.6 / Medium (10-19 yards): 74.9 / Deep (20+ yards): 82.3
Three of his four TD’s have been medium or deep balls.
Mendoza has a howitzer and it appears, like we saw with Michael Penix when he was at IU, it takes a bit of time for receivers to adjust to the speed of a Kurtis Rourke throw and a guy like Mendoza. This isn’t Kurtis Rourke slander either…Mendoza just has high level arm talent that very few QB’s possess.
I saw what I needed to see from him to know that progress has been made with his progressions, trusting his OL and throwing strikes to his WR’s.
I had to mention Alberto Mendoza because he came in as the clear #2 on the depth chart and looked the part. He through a really nice back shoulder to Charlie Becker for his first passing TD (and Becker’s first receiving TD) while finished 3/3 for 35 yards and eclipsing his big brother PFF passing grade with a 90.4.
He looked like a different player in year two. He’s bigger and much more confident. That makes total sense from a human perspective because I felt much more confident as a sophomore at IU than I did as a freshman…Either way, it’s exciting to have a young QB to be excited about.
Riley Nowakowski:
Have to shout out Riley Nowakowski…Not a ton to really add here except that he and Holden Staes, the two top TE’s, were critical on the Omar Cooper 75 yard run of blocking downfield. He also had the awesome FB dive for the TD early out of that diamond look they’ve now run in consecutive games.
Nowakowski was a guy I had pegged for that hybrid role but he’s really stepped up and does all the things you need to do to be on the field. He finishes blocks, he catches balls in his area and he’s will to blow people up in order for his guys to get a couple extra yards. Terrific job by the coaches for recognizing the talent, creating the vision and Riley for embracing it.
The OL:
Again, the bad opponent caveats apply but the OL was awesome again. IU is now the #1 pass blocking unit and #24 run blocking unit in the nation per PFF.
First, I need to shout out Drew Evans. Among *all* OL in FBS with at least 50 pass blocking reps, Evans has the #1 overall grade in the nation (90.8). To do that after Achilles surgery ~10 months ago is nothing short of spectacular. He is a cyborg. He’s not a one trick pony either…he’s also 94th (out of 420) OL in run blocking. Looking at it from a Baseball Savant perspective, Evans is in the 100th percentile of pass blocking and 78th percentile in run blocking. Elite stuff.
As for the rest of the OL, out of 534 players with 100 blocking snaps, IU has Evans, Carter Smith (84th overall OL per PFF offensive grade) and Kahlil Benson (103rd) all in the 80th percentile or better this year.
And that doesn’t count Pat Coogan (81st overall pass blocking grade) and Bray Lynch (171st overall pass blocking) who have “struggled” in the running game but still have graded out well in the passing game. I put “struggled” in quotes because from my eye test, they’ve been better than their very middling run blocking grades.
If you’re a real sicko you’ll understand where I’m going with this one…For the people who love the two deep that we never get…When the two’s came out for in the 4th for IU the line up was different than I predicted:
LT: Evan Lawrence / LG: Zen Michalski / C: Austin Leibfried / RG: Baylor Wilkin / RT: Adedamola Ajani
I’ve been super high on Wilkin since he signed. Long way to go there but seems like he could be a player.
But I want to focus on Ajani at RT. He’s only 6’4 but we’ve seen workout videos of how quick and athletic he is. Pair that with long arms and if you squint, you can see a OT prospect. Just an interesting anecdote.
Elijah Sarratt:
There was a concerted effort to get IU’s best receiver the ball and he paid it off by catching 9 of his 13 targets for 97 yards and 3 TD’s. That included a one contested catch and two miss tackles forced.
Sarratt showed why he’s one of the best players in the B1G and was essentially not guardable in this one and you can see the chemistry starting to build with he and Mendoza. And he also was just as critical as the two TE’s I mentioned above on the Cooper TD run blocking downfield. I really think he’s one of the better blocking WR’s I’ve ever watched and it’s critical to breaking big runs.
Glad he’s “back” even though he really had gone anywhere.
The Running Game:
I was really good on the ground again…Not much to say here other than that IU has three really good backs who all seem very adept at running the ball. Obviously Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black are familiar to IU fans as B1G vets but Lee Beebe has been extremely impressive in his own right. Since the RB’s last year were the Ninja Turtles…Is this Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze? I should see myself out after that reference.
IU now has three backs averaging 75 ypg through two. That might dip as I don’t expect them to play as much against Indiana State but it’s a testament how well the backs and OL are playing.
Beebe finished with 11 carries for 90 yards (8.2 ypc) and a TD, including 59 of those yards coming after contact for an elite 5.36 YCO/A (yards after contact per attempt). He’s a load to bring down and already had 9 total missed tackles forced. Very excited to see him continue to grow in the backfield.
The Front 7:
I don’t want to seem like I’m mailing in the defense because outside of about 4 total drives where there were 8-10 total plays that weren’t good, IU was very good defensively.
I thought IU’s front 7 (6 really) played pretty well in this game but not up to the standard they set last season. They didn’t blow any assignments that went for 75+ yards again and finished with 30 Defensive Stops (tackles that constitute a “failure” for the offense) on 54 snaps. That’s a really elite rate.
With how both ODU and Kennesaw play, there just isn’t going to be a ton of big sack or pressure numbers but Aidan Fisher and Mikail Kamara each had a sack.
That said, IU finished with just 8 pressures on the day…This was a team that averaged nearly 22 pressures per game and had pressures on 35% of the snaps they played in ’24. So far, through two games, IU has just 21 *total* pressures combined. I get that there has been some running QB’s they’re trying not to lose but I need to see more from this defensive front 7 to feel better about our chances going into the Illinois game in two weeks.
Lastly on the front 7: Buffed in Prime on Twitter pointed this out and I agree – IU runs a ton of stunts inside to create pressure, even in the run game, but in this one, IU was giving up chunks of yards on the ground if the offense ran into it, leaving big holes. This is something I’m sure the staff sees and is probably working on this week.
I thought Stephen Daley played very well again. Kellan Wyatt has gotten a ton of the press and has backed it up on the field, but through the first two weeks, Daley is second on the team in PFF defensive grade (77.6) and first in run defense grade (82.9). He’s had 42 total snaps and lined up as a DE in 81% of those (the others inside as a DT) so he’s clearly making his presence felt from the outside in more of that true DE position that Kamara played last year.
I think Daley is going to be an integral part of the defense moving forward and wanted to shout him out here.
The Secondary:
This was easily their worst performance and it was kind of overshadowed by Jamari Sharpe getting burned because they didn’t know what the defensive play call was, recovering and stripping the ball carrier after a huge passing play.
Again, I think a lot of the confusion in the secondary had to do with the tempo that KSU played with. They didn’t always run tempo, but when they did, it didn’t seem like calls were being relayed fast enough. A number of times it looked like the secondary didn’t know if it was man or zone and a better team hits those plays for TD’s.
IU had just one secondary member get above a 70 defensive grade in this game (D’Angelo Ponds at 70.2) while Sharpe and Amare Ferrell had the worst grades on the team. Both were repeatedly beaten in the pass game. Obviosly they’re being thrown at more than other positions but Sharpe, Ferrell and the typically very steady Louis Moore allowed 151 of the 182 yards against.
Again, I don’t think they were catastrophically bad in anyway…I just think they were confused after a QB switch and kept getting caught flat footed by the pace of the Owls offense. Those are things that can be corrected and why you schedule games like this to work out those kinks.
Giving up big plays on defense:
IU gave up 9 plays of 15+ yards and Kennesaw had four drives of 44+ yards in a row that resulted in 9 points. Curt Cignetti was not pleased about that in his ISU presser on Monday and he’s absolutely right. He blamed his team but also KSU’s tempo. IU wasn’t lined up correctly for a couple of bigger plays and it cost them. That must get cleaned up or Illinois is is going to put a lot of points up even though they’re not a tempo team.
Jonathan Brady:
Jonathan Brady now has a 91 yard TD return (against ODU) and had a 35 yard return that he nearly broke last week. He seems like he’s becoming a true weapon in the return game so I just wanted to give him some love and hope that him being back there will cause some bad punts attempting to not give him the chance to return it.
Charlie Becker:
I had to shout out my guy Charlie Becker. Becker had his first career receiving TD called back on a terrible OPI on Lebron Bond. But he was not to be denied! Becker had a “ball don’t lie moment” by catching a beautiful fade from Alberto Mendoza. Becker caught both of his targets for 35 yards and the aforementioned TD.
In my bold prediction piece, I said Becker would finish with 35 targets…He needs to get going to get to that number, as he has three total in two weeks, but either way, I think he has a chance to be a really good player for IU moving forward.
Indiana State…
I don’t really have a ton on this. IU is going to win this game. I’m not going to post a betting prediction because, as of this writing, I can’t find a line at DK or BetMGM.
SP+/Bill Connolly have this game as IU -41 with a projected 47-6 score in his algorithm.
ISU is 2-0 but it’s just so hard to know what that actually means. They’ve put up points averaging nearly 40 points per game but are Eastern Illinois or DII McKendree any good? The fact that they gave up 24 points to a DII school is pretty telling.
They will also be out their starting QB who has a collarbone injury, but the back up came in and played well last week so I’m not sure just how big a loss this is.
IU needs to build depth and this a game to do it. I said this way up top, but IU has only play 100 total snaps on defense. That’s like a game and half at most so I get why they weren’t really subbing a ton.
That said, if IU loses Louis Moore to his NCAA court ruling, they’re super thin in the back end. When their second team defense came on the field against Kennesaw late in the 4th, IU had walk on Anthony Chung playing. Nothing against Chung at all, but for IU to get to where it wants to be, it’s going to need legit talent in the safety room. That’s truly my biggest concern for the entire season now.
IU needs Byron Baldwin to get healthy and get some run, along with guys like Jah Jah Boyd, Ryland Gandy and Amariyun Knighten to see if any of them can help out back there if Baldwin misses more time or Moore is ruled ineligible.
This week, IU needs to win on the field and in court. They need to stay healthy. They need to get depth pieces some run against ISU. All of this is a lead up to what is going to be one of the Saturday night on NBC vs Illinois.