Numbers That Mattered: No. 5 Indiana vs. Northwestern

Numbers drive so much in today’s world and the sports world is no different. Now more than ever teams are hiring and building analytics teams to get every edge possible over their opponents. Over the course of the season, we’ll look into many of those numbers following each of the Indiana Hoosiers’ matchups each week, so be on the lookout for that!

Without further ado, let’s get into it:

T-4th

…Represents, during Indiana’s 20-game win streak, where this win over Northwestern ranks among the closest games point-wise. The Hoosiers beat the Wildcats by a margin of six (29-23 final), which ties the National Championship game over Miami, whose score was 27-21, also six points. The three games closer than this Northwestern game over the 20-game win streak are (last chance to test your memory): Indiana’s win @ Iowa by five points (20-15), Indiana’s win @ Penn State by three points (27-24), and then Indiana’s win over Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship game by a score of 13-10.

This margin of victory against Northwestern is both important and a nothing-burger all at the same time. It’s important because it’s earlier in the season than the other games above, there is some real concern for the IU secondary, and the opposition is probably the lowest level among the teams mentioned above as well. Those are the important aspects to this. However, I believe more so in the ‘nothing-burger’ category. Indiana is still running very vanilla plays and not bringing much complexity at all to the opposition, the IU secondary will get healthier and, while not having Ponds this year is a big loss, I fully believe in Bryant Haines and this team to right the ship, and Northwestern might actually be a good team – Cignetti said so himself.

My expectation is that Indiana is 6-0 heading into the Ohio State matchup. If Indiana is not 6-0, I will start to worry a bit about playoff qualification. If Indiana is 6-0, I really believe there is nothing to worry about until something presents itself in a game where we have our full playbook open.

5th

…Represents where Indiana quarterback Josh Hoover ranks in EPA/Play among all quarterbacks in the nation (min. 100 snaps). He is just behind Miami quarterback Darian Mensah and Penn State quarterback Rocco Becht, but is currently ahead of Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr, USC quarterback Jayden Maiava, and Mississippi State quarterback Kamario Taylor.

Josh Hoover has simply been fantastic this season. He is 3rd in the country in passer rating and is one of the remaining 13 quarterbacks in the country with at least 80 passing attempts on the season (110 in total) thus far to not throw an interception. Not bad for a kid from TCU who couldn’t control where the ball goes. Hoover has all the talent in the world to repeat what Fernando Mendoza did for the Hoosiers just last season, and this is with my crimson-colored glasses taken off too. If he keeps this up, he very easily could win the Heisman Trophy and lead Indiana to become back to back champions.

As with any quarterback, there are a few things to clean up in Hoover’s game. He knows that, Coach Cignetti knows that, Mike Shanahan knows that, the whole team knows that. This team has accountability – no doubt that is a quality Cignetti and company likely search for in the recruiting/transfer world. If anyone is able to continue to grow, develop, and be the best quarterback they possibly can be, it is Josh Hoover surrounded by this phenomenal coaching staff.

+3.15

…Represents Indiana’s average yards gained per play on offense thus far in 2026, good for 7th in the country, per gameonpaper.com. It’s often joked that if you could gain just 3 yards every single play, you’d never lose as no one would be able to stop you. Well, Indiana is putting that joke/theory to the test.

The only teams ahead of the Hoosiers are, in order, Ohio State (4.50 yards per play), Georgia (3.89 yards per play), BYU (3.66 yards per play), Mississippi State (3.35 yards per play), Utah (3.34 yards per play), and Kansas State (3.33 yards per play). Then, Indiana pops up with their 3.15 yards per play. This is quite encouraging to me. As I mentioned above, the Hoosiers’ playbook is very much not opened right now. Play calling is intentionally vanilla and basic. Once the play calling becomes more complex and the playbook opens up, I firmly believe the Hoosiers will end the season in a top-five position in this metric. Definitely something interesting to track over the coming weeks!

As always, thank you for reading! We’ll be back next week with more numbers and takeaways from the Hoosiers’ matchup against Rutgers this coming Saturday. Go IU!