Hoosier Offense Struggling with Inexperience and Inconsistency

Written by Matt Smith'

Indiana’s offense has been struggling throughout the season with a continuous change in quarterback due to injury and many players not playing like they did last season. The Hoosiers have only scored 73 against Big Ten opponents.

One of the reasons for the struggle is that true freshman quarterbacks always seem to struggle when they start without spring practice. This is true for Donaven McCulley who was thrown into start without a spring practice.

“Certainly it's a challenge to play quarterback in this league, regardless of your experience based on the quality of opponents that you play,” offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan said. “When you couple that with getting here in June, there are certain things that happened on Saturday that shouldn’t happen.”

This included a muffed snap and bad handoffs that resulted in fumbles recovered by Rutgers and gave their offense very good starting field position that they took full advantage of.

Sheridan said they are trying to eliminate those plays that have been happening the entire year. He also said they are playing “losing football,” which they can’t do if they want to win games against a tough Big Ten.

Jack Tuttle also received some snaps against Rutgers as he was feeling healthy enough to play. This took practice reps away from McCulley as well. Tuttle went down with another injury early in the game after throwing two interceptions.

“I would say Donaven got plenty of reps to prepare him, but as the week went on Donaven was getting healthier a little bit quicker than we anticipated and you split out those reps pretty easily,” Sheridan said.

The coaching staff was not expecting for Tuttle to be as healthy as he was as the game got closer. Sheridan said Tuttle is tough and a great kid, and appreciated him fighting hard to get back on the field regardless of the results of his play.

The run game was hindered this week with the loss of Stephen Carr to an ankle injury suffered against Michigan. This led to different walk ons getting carries for the Hoosiers.

“I think we need to run the ball more effectively, we got some new runners in there and make sure that we catch the snap and hand the ball without turning the ball over,” Sheridan said. 

Sheridan was impressed with the new running backs at times, but the Hoosiers need  to execute better first before they focus on running the ball.

The Hoosiers need more big plays, which is hard without the speedy DJ Matthews on the field. That has taken a lot out of the offense because the Hoosiers rely on the big play a lot. However, there were some missed opportunities for big plays on Saturday. 

With Tuttle injured again and Penix still recovering, McCulley will most likely start against Minnesota on Saturday in the Hoosiers second to last game.