Brendan Sorsby D-1 QB? 'I would’ve laughed in your face.' Now, his play has given IU hope.

BLOOMINGTON – There’s irony in Brendan Sorsby’s problem with sliding.

Indiana’s redshirt freshman quarterback has always liked the contact side of football. Long before he was a quarterback — he dabbled in halfback, played receiver — Sorsby found he enjoyed absorbing that first big hit of the game. It helped him settle in.

Of course, teams need their quarterbacks to slide. Taking hard shots in the open field isn’t conducive to the long-term health of the player whose long-term health is most important.

Sorsby, an equally accomplished baseball player at Denton (Texas) Lake Dallas High School, should be a natural at sliding. Fair to say, it’s still a work in progress.

“I like the physical aspect of the game. I like to lower the shoulder every now and then. Hopefully, it fires the other guys up when they see a quarterback lower his shoulder,” Sorsby said. “I do like giving the hit every now and then.”

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The past three months have come with their share of lessons. Sorsby battled all offseason for IU’s starting job, only to flip it back and forth with good friend Tayven Jackson through a 2-3 record and a coordinator change.

It’s his now, unquestionably and through his own share of growing pains. Still, Jason Young never would have believed five years ago Sorsby would be where he is right now, so he’s not about to start lowering the ceiling on his former player now.

“It’s insane,” Young, Lake Dallas’ football coach, said. “If you would’ve seen him his freshman year, physically, not only physically, mentally, you’re gonna tell me he’s going to be a Division I quarterback, I would’ve laughed in your face.”

Young got hold of Sorsby when he was a freshman, probably not 5-9 and part of a class that ultimately didn’t develop quite the way Lake Dallas had hoped.

Sorsby’s classmates weren’t bad players or poor workers, but Lake Dallas plays big-school football in one of the most competitive regions of perhaps the most competitive state in the country. Margin for error is a pipe dream.

Then a growth spurt hit. Sorsby burst past 6-feet, eventually stretching to 6-3. On the field and the diamond, strength and athleticism came with maturation.

As a junior, Sorsby shared time behind center with an older teammate. That’s when he told Young he’d play wide receiver whenever necessary. Anything to see the field.

“He didn’t have a whole lot of help around him,” Young said. “But he was always just hyper competitive, trying to get everybody else going. Just to watch him take over as a leader … was really a pretty cool thing to see.”

Sorsby eventually took that starting job, just as he now has this one.

As a senior, injuries limited Sorsby to just seven games, and yet he still managed to roll up 1,271 passing yards, 823 rushing yards and a combined 29 touchdowns. Even playing well less than a full season, Sorsby performed well enough to be named Denton Record-Chronicle quarterback of the year in 2021.

“Starting his senior year and actually having some success, once he had some success with it, his confidence grew and grew,” Young said. “We asked a lot of him when he was here. Physically, he was a lot bigger than a lot of the teams we were playing against, and he had a cannon of an arm. We designed a lot of it around what he could do.”

All of which left Young confused by Sorsby’s lack of recruiting attention. His team’s lack of success might have dampened interest, but surely, Young thought, it wouldn’t snuff it out entirely.

By Christmas of his senior year, Sorsby reported offers from schools like Abilene Christian, Lamar, Western Carolina and Texas A&M Commerce. He saw a surge in offers in the new year, Delaware, Fordham, Army and Navy all pitching in offers.

Then came Indiana.

The Hoosiers had just changed offensive coordinators and lost Josh Hoover, their quarterback in the 2022 class. IU coach Tom Allen needed another signal caller, and he needed one quickly, with the February signing window looming.

"First thing that stuck out to me,” Allen said, “was his athleticism on film. First step you do when you find somebody on film you want to evaluate, you see them on film, and he was a guy that was making plays with his legs, you could see the natural arm talent was there, and you say, ‘OK, is this guy really as big as he’s listed?’”

Allen dispatched newly-hired offensive coordinator Walt Bell to Texas to run the rule in person over the baseball player with the promising — if injury limited — tape.

“He’s a guy that just didn’t have a lot of film,” Allen said. “Coach Bell went and watched him in person, watched him throw and was able to make that evaluation: ‘Hey, this guy has got something to him.’”

Sorsby’s recruitment accelerated within hours.

IU offered Jan. 19. Sorsby visited Jan. 21. Then he committed Jan. 23.

“He's a guy that just didn't have a lot of film,” Allen said. “I think that gave us a chance to kind of maybe get in on a guy that wasn't being as highly recruited as he probably should have been.”

Sorsby spent most of last season running Indiana’s scout team, after enrolling in the summer. He did see brief action against Penn State, completing three of his six pass attempts.

Then, as so many do nowadays, the offseason brought upheaval in IU’s quarterback room. Connor Bazelak and Jack Tuttle each transferred. Dexter Williams’ knee injury, suffered in the Purdue loss last season, sidelined him for months.

The Hoosiers added Tayven Jackson, via transfer from Tennessee, and Allen opened up the competition between them. As they jockeyed for position through spring and summer, the two redshirt freshmen became close. They practiced together, studied together, even golfed together. Just this week, they sat courtside together for IU’s men’s basketball season opener against Florida Gulf Coast.

“Tayven’s always a guy that’s gonna be right there on my heels, and I want it to be like that,” Sorsby said. “Whenever he was the guy, I was pushing him to be better. Whenever I’m the guy, I want him pushing me to be better. I feel like he’s done that and he’s been a great teammate for me.”

Allen pushed their competition into the season, before naming Jackson the starter ahead of Week 3 against Louisville. Then Bell was fired. The bye week turned that position upside down again. Eventually, Bell’s replacement, Rod Carey, settled on Sorsby, who’s occupied the No. 1 solo spot since the Oct. 21 loss to Rutgers.

As he’s improved, Sorsby has repaid Carey’s faith.

Across his past three games, the Texas native is completing 58% of his passes, for 581 yards and five touchdowns. He’s thrown just one interception in that time, and rushed for two more scores.

Sorsby delivered the Hoosiers’ first Big Ten win last weekend, passing for one score and rushing for another in a 20-14 defeat of Wisconsin. His performance made more impressive by how little Sorsby practiced in the build-up, nursing the bangs and bruises that come with playing quarterback in the Big Ten.

“It’s an aberration for sure. That’s not usually how football works. Credit to him on the extra prep he did,” Carey said. “Credit to him. I thought it was a whale of a game by him, all things considered.”

Now, Sorsby and his teammates confront genuine opportunity for the first time in a long time.

The Hoosiers travel to Illinois on Saturday. They arrive as underdogs, but knowing each of their final three games — at Illinois, Michigan State, at Purdue — is winnable.

It will take all three to reach a bowl game, and turn this into the kind of season Indiana dreamed about when it began. Which will require the best of Sorsby, even better than what he’s delivered so far.

Backing their four-game losing streak with a four-game winning run will be among the most unlikely outcomes from what remains of 2023. Fitting work for a player familiar with beating long odds.

Just so long as he avoids a few more of those hits.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IU football QB Brendan Sorsby playing better as Hoosiers dream of bowl