Not much more you can say about what Indiana is doing to most of it’s opponents.
It’s just such a fascinating place to be where I was more worried about IU not covering the spread I bet before the game than I was them having a hiccup and losing.
I watch a lot of college football and it’s just very hard to win.
Just this week we saw Vanderbilt squeak by Mizzou in a game where both teams looked inept for long stretches.
Alabama was handed a game by 3-5 South Carolina after being down 8 with 10 minutes to go in the game.
LSU, PSU, VT and others all looked so bad they fired their coaches in October.
And IU just continues to make it look easy. This game was over before halftime. It was fairly obvious that there was no way UCLA was going to move the ball enough to keep it close.
Do not take that for granted.
We’ll break it all down on on this weeks Reactionary Take.
IU Reactionary Prediction: IU 41-13
Final Score: IU 56-6 — IU COVERS -24.5 and OVER 53.5
Season Betting Record: 8-6
Went 1-1 again.
When my preview was written, the line was IU -24.5 but it went all they way up to -27.5 before kick…I still covered with my score prediction, but IU got the OVER by itself.
Despite a couple of very close 0-2’s mid season, I’ll take 8-6 given how big some of these spreads are…
IU will travel to Maryland on Saturday and they’re already three TD favorites…That makes me nervous because it’s friggin’ crazy that Indiana football is a three TD favorite on the road in a conference game.
I feel like I typically end up shouting out a lot of the same players. They keep performing so I have to. But I wanted to highlight some of the guys that don’t get talked about as much or who’s performances in this game need shouting out first.
Devan Boykin
Talk about a breakout.
The NC State transfer sat out all of last year with a knee injury and had looked, in my opinion, a bit rusty early this season.
Not on Saturday.
Boykin was all over the field with shades of last year’s S Shawn Asbury. Both are shorter, fast and unafraid of hitting but Boykin showed incredible coverage skills. It’s a hard stat to quantify but PFF had him at an elite 87.8 coverage grade and a 90.0 overall defensive grade.
Per PFF, he allowed just 1 catch on 5 targets for 5 yards. He finished the day with 7 tackles, 1 INT, 2 passes defended and 3 Stops (tackles that constitute a “failure” for the offense).
He did all that in just 41 snaps as the game was out of hand and IU had back ups in for lots of the 2nd half.
He simply hadn’t shown those coverage skills at IU but he seems to be coming into his own and that’s a very good thing for IU as some injuries have cropped up in the front 7.
Quick aside: I know people get a bit annoyed by how long the starters play in some of these blowouts, but it’s hard to blame the staff when the teams you’re playing don’t possess the ball very long.
IU ran 81 offensive plays in this game…UCLA ran just 53. IU’s defense has been so good that they just don’t get the game reps the staff feels they need and so they have to leave them out there to get game reps.
It makes sense but it’s also scary because injuries can happen when games are out of reach.
EJ Williams
I’ve shared my feelings on EJ numerous times. I think he’d be WR1 on most teams in college football, but at IU, he’s WR3 because he’s playing with Omar Cooper and Elijah Sarratt, two elite talents dominating this season.
But this was EJ’s time to shine.
UCLA basically said “we’re going to double team both Cooper and Sarratt and make someone else beat us”. They were playing super tight man coverage with Sarratt, alone, accounting for multiple pass interference penalties. UCLA was determined to force the refs to make calls so that they weren’t beaten by IU’s two All American candidates. They finished with a combined 4 catches for 8 yards and a TD (by Sarratt). That doesn’t include all the penalty yards that they racked up.
Back to EJ…He showed again why he’s such an awesome compliment to the two mentioned above and that if you do what UCLA did and try, at all costs, to take away Cooper and Sarratt, that EJ is going to be hard to cover in 1 on 1s and that showed again.
He had a brilliant scramble drill 64 yard TD where he immediately broke off his route as he saw Fernando Mendoza moving out of the pocket to his right. EJ was going across the field to the left, stopped, and his defender fell down. And Mendoza hit him in stride with a jump pass while being hit. Just a brilliant play all around.
Williams finished with 5 catches on 7 targets for 109 yards (21.8 ypc) and two TD’s.
On the season, Williams is up to 24 catches on 33 targets for 324 yards (13.4 ypc) and 5 TD’s…He also should probably have had a 6th TD if that dumb toe/heal rule is fixed.
He’s going to be a big part of this offense down the stretch depending on how teams play the other two, so putting this clinic on tape was a big deal.
Kaelon Black
Black is talked about but he also plays the second fiddle to RB1 Roman Hemby. Hemby scored two TD’s in the is game but I’m here to talk about Black.
Black is a hard runner who rarely goes down on first contact. He’s not going to blow you away with speed but he’s a punisher in the open field.
He finished this game with 10 carries for 70 yards (7.0 ypc) while adding 1 catch for 10 yards. Had the game been closer, he’d probably have gotten to 100 rushing yards. He didn’t force a missed tackle but had 2 runs of 15+ yards and let the RB’s with 3.90 YCO/A (yards after contact per carry).
He’s such a great compliment to Roman Hemby and is going to be needed in the stretch run.
Fernando Mendoza
Back to the usual suspects…
Mendoza had a pass tipped at the line that went right into the hands of a defender on IU’s first offensive drive. I admit, I wasn’t really nervous, but I was annoyed. It was pretty unlucky and just his third INT of the season.
But after that, Mendoza cruised to a 15/22 for 178 (7.6 ypa) with 3 TD’s and that tipped INT on the day.
The passing was fine. It wasn’t spectacular but it was effective.
I’m here to talk about Mendoza’s legs.
The wrinkle to the game that IU didn’t have last year with Kurtis Rourke is Mendoza actually being a real threat to run. Mendoza had 5 carriers for 45 yards (9.0 ypc). That included a really nice 20 yard TD run that really showed off his athleticism. Mendoza also forced 3 missed tackles.
Mendoza isn’t a short area, jump cut type like UCLA’s Nico Iamaleava or MSU’s Aidan Chiles, but he’s got long strides and very deceptive top end speed. His legs make him so much harder than he already was to defend. He’s trusting his OL to block, which he wasn’t earlier in the season, and if he needs to run, isn’t afraid of sticking his nose in there and taking a hit (which, probably isn’t that great since IU needs him healthy…but still).
Mendoza’s running ability is something that should also help hold LB’s closer to the line and enable him to hit the crossers that he’s been so successful on this year.
It’s just a hugely positive development for IU.
Tyrique Tucker
Don’t want to gas myself up too much here but I did write about him being my “Spring Breakout DL” guy in my blog way back in spring last year and he’s proven to be even better than I thought he could.
Tucker finished Saturday with 4 tackles, 2.5 TFL’s, 1.5 Sacks, 2 pressures in 29 snaps. He’s graded as the 27th best iDL by PFF and is up to 4.5 sacks in 8 games which is elite for an interior guy.
He’s a machine and is basically unblockable if he gets a little bit of an edge because of his power and short area quicks.
Mikail Kamara
I keep saying the breakout is coming.
It is coming.
Kamara finished with 2 tackles and a 0.5 TFL’s but he was in the backfield a lot, finishing with 6 pressures in 41 snaps.
The counting stats aren’t there but the havoc he’s creating is helping everyone else.
IU’s defense had 32 pressures on 53 snaps (more on this later). I felt bad for Nico Iamaleava. I think he’s a talented guy but IU’s DL was just destroying the UCLA front line.
DE Stephen Daley paced IU with 7 pressures which was great to see given the long term injury to DE Kellen Wyatt but it was also great to see Kamara up there again and he’s up to 25th among all DE’s with 28 pressures.
Aidan Fisher and Brendan Franke
Fisher had the INT for TD on the second play of the game but went down with a knee injury after getting twisted while making a tackle. HC Curt Cignetti mentioned in his post game presser that it was precautionary but that they’d have the imaging done to make sure...That led to Curt Cignetti saying Monday, “I would list Aiden Fisher as probable.” That is very good news.
LB Isaiah Jones filled in admirably in his absence and was given the green dot (helmet communication). That means the staff fully trusts him to get people aligned correctly but losing Fisher for any amount of time, but especially with three of the final four games being on the road, would be a very tough blow for this defense.
KOS/K Brendan Franke was hurt on the first kick off of the game with K Quinn Warren coming in for kick off duties. Warren has a big leg but Franke has been arguably the best KOS in the nation and drilled that pressure filled 58 yarder against Oregon.
It didn’t look good either as he was not putting weight on his kicking leg and the injury seemed to be non contact. It would be a big blow if he’s out for an extended period.
Cignetti said Monday that he was “questionable” but the way he was helped off the field, we will see, I guess.
Quick Hits
Not going to go totally in depth on some other standouts but wanted to either shout guys out or just highlight interesting things.
- OT Carter Smith – I tweeted this out but I’ll throw the stats in here: Carter Smith didn’t allow a pressure against UCLA. Smith hasn’t allowed a pressure in the last 4 games. Smith has allowed 1 pressure in the last 6 games. Smith is 3rd overall in offensive grade and in pass blocking by PFF among *all* OL’s. If he measures close to 6’5 with decent arm length, we’re looking at a 1st round pick.
- DE Andrew Depaepe – Depaepe is a former top 150 overall HS DE who transferred to IU as a walk on and missed last year with an ACL injury. The RS Sophomore quietly got out there with the 2’s on defense and had 2 pressures, 2 tackles and 0.5 TFL’s in just 8 snaps. The talent is there for him to be a B1G contributor…Did we see the first inklings of that last week?
- The IU defense held UCLA to 1/11 on third down and 1/3 on 4th down and just 201 yards total. IU allowed just 12 first downs and IU’s offense possessed the ball for nearly 36 minutes. Just crazy numbers for a conference game.
- S Byron Baldwin – Baldwin made a nice tackle on special teams, shedding a blocker and form tackling the return man. He also played 6 defensive snaps, had 3 tackles total and allowed 1 catch (on 1 target) for 4 yards. Another weapon that is finally getting some run. The sky is the limit with him.
- IU’s defense ended the day with 3 sacks, 7 TFL’s but it that doesn’t tell the real story. As I said above, IU had 32 pressures on just 53 snaps for an insane 60% pressure rate. They have 166 pressures on the season and are getting pressures on 37% of opposing teams snaps…It’s just very hard for opposing offenses to do almost anything against this defensive front.
- WR Charlie Becker – Becker keeps getting worked in a bit more each week. It appears to be that he comes in for breathers or if someone is dinged up for a minute but he caught both of his targets for 35 yards and actually finished as IU’s highest graded WR by PFF (80.4).
- IU is still PFF’s highest graded team through 8 weeks (97.1 overall grade), a full 1.1 ahead of OSU. They’re tied with OSU in offensive grade (92.7) and second in defensive grade with 94.3 (behind Texas Tech – 96.9). They’re also 5th in special team grade (90.1). IU is a machine in all three phases this season.
IU is 8-0…It’s something that just seems normal but it’s not. I think IU will face a real test at Maryland this week despite being early 3 TD favorites but that’s for the preview…