Hoosiers Limit Damage in the Red Zone and Force Four Takeaways in Win

The Indiana defense celebrates a takeaway on Saturday Image: Sammy Jacobs Hoosier Huddle

Written by Nathan Comp

Indiana snapped a 4-game losing skid today through a more aggressive offensive attack, but the victory can ultimately be credited to the play of the defense. By bending without breaking and forcing takeaways, Tom Allen’s young defense was able to secure an elusive fifth win, 34-32 over Maryland.

The first of two factors that propelled this Indiana defense to victory was its ability to bend without completely breaking. When looking at the stat sheet, it’s hard to imagine that Indiana’s defense was the squad that won this game. Maryland racked up 353 rushing yards, 189 passing yards, converted 8 of their 15 third downs, and nearly doubled Indiana in time of possession. However, today was not their day, and much can be credited to the defense’s change of scheme to allow smaller gains without allowing explosive plays. Maryland’s offense runs on misdirection and its ability to grind out small chunks of yardage until eventually, they break loose for a long scoring play. Coach Allen took into account the youth of his defense this week and adjusted the defensive scheme to accept smaller gains of yardage, as long as they did not lead to explosive scoring plays.

“The scheme is a little different, and that’s why we didn’t want to give big plays up. They do a lot of eye candy. They get you spread out and then they bring you back in. It’s a lot to process,” said linebacker TD Roof postgame.

Roof and the defense handled the eye candy and forced Maryland field goals on multiple occasions. Although Maryland continued their 100% scoring efficiency on the season when inside the red zone, many of these scoring plays were only 3 points. Limiting the Terps offense late in drives into four Joseph Petrino field goals was key to victory.

“I was determined not to give up explosive plays to their offense, to make them drive the football, because I felt like we could force them into mistakes,” said Coach Tom Allen.

The second factor that drove the Indiana defense to victory was just what Tom Allen suspected: mistakes. The Indiana defense continued a Big Ten best sixteen straight games, dating back to last season, with a takeaway. It was also the third game this season in which the defense forced four or more takeaways. Two of those three have come in the last two games: the first time an Indiana defense has forced four takeaways in consecutive games since 1996. While not only shifting momentum back to the Hoosiers, these takeaways were also consistently turned into Indiana scoring drives. Seventeen of the Hoosiers’ points today were scored off of Maryland turnovers, bringing the total points scored this season off of turnovers to 76 (24 total takeaways).

While it was not always pretty, and the box score would suspect otherwise, the Indiana defense was critical in securing the Hoosiers’ fifth win. Indiana has had plenty of games in which it looked the better team on the stat sheet but lost, so this was a nice change.

As Tom Allen eloquently put it, “The objective is to finish the game with more points than your opponent. We were fortunate enough to do that today.”

If they are fortunate enough one more time, Indiana will be bowl bound for just the 12th time in program history.