Week Three Matchup to Watch: Indiana’s Edge Defenders vs. Louisville’s Speed

Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)

The Indiana Hoosiers will face a familiar offensive scheme on Saturday when they take on Jeff Brohm and  the Louisville Cardinals. The scheme utilizes speed to attack the edges of the defense. The Hoosier edge players, that includes Bulls Myles Jackson, Lanell Carr and cornerbacks Nic Toomer, Louis Moore and Kobee Minor as well as others need to be able to set the edge of the IU defense.

“They've got a really, really talented receiver corps, two really good running backs and a good quarterback that knows the system. Obviously recruited him to Purdue. Plummer is a big athletic quarterback with a big arm. And they love to stretch the field vertically, and they also stretch it horizontally.” Indiana head coach Tom Allen said of the Cardinal offense.

The Cardinal offense leads the nation in plays over 70 yards (3) and is in the top 10 in plays over 20 yards (19) as quarterback Jack Plummer is completing 64.2-percent of his passes. Receivers Jamari Thrash and Kevin Coleman each average over 17 yards per reception and running back Jawhar Jordan is averaging 16.5 yards per carry.

“It's not about who the opponent is.” Defensive coordinator Matt Guerrieri said. “It's about us every single week. I said I'm no different than Ohio State or Indiana State or here we are playing Louisville. It's about us every single week. And again on another good here's the things we have to get better and there's plenty of coachable moments in the game.”

Brohm’s offenses get the ball out of the quarterback’s hands quickly, so as to offset the rush from the defense, but stopping the offense will start upfront for IU. The Hoosiers have done a relatively good job of stopping the big play as they rank 16th in the nation in plays of 10 or more yards allowed. Some of that is due to playing Indiana State, but IU limited the catastrophic plays well against Ohio State.

“It all starts up front.” Guerrieri added. “You guys have heard me say that before it all starts up front. We challenge them early on. And I think for our first two weeks, they've taken that challenge, you know, each week though it's got to continue to climb you know, so that's been our challenge every single day is technique and fundamentals.”

The Cardinals will put up some yards against IU, but the Hoosiers have to contain and set the edge of the defense so they do not turn big plays into catastrophic errors.