Indiana football vs. Rutgers: Scouting report, prediction
BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football dropped to 2-20 against Power Five opponents since 2021 with its loss to Michigan last week.
Whether it’s a coaching issue or talent issue, the Hoosiers haven’t had what it takes to match up against the Big Ten.
The close losses to Ohio State and Louisville to start the season made it seem like they were knocking on the door of a potential breakthrough, but all that progress went up in smoke over the last three weeks.
While Indiana’s game against Rutgers was supposed to be one of the more winnable ones on the schedule, it doesn’t feel that way anymore.
Rutgers rolling into Bloomington with some swagger
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before,Greg Schiano is turning Rutgers around.
Schiano has the Scarlet Knights on the verge of clinching a bowl appearance for the first time since 2014 after one of the most unlikely comebacks in the FBS this season.
Rutgers beat Michigan State 27-24 last week after trailing by 18 points in the fourth quarter. They held the Spartans to minus-20 yards in the final 15 minutes and recovered a pair of fumbles to spark the comeback, one on a perfectly executed sky kick.
The Scarlet Knights’ has been built around running back Kyle Monangai and a defense that ranks statistically among the best in the FBS.
Monangai has been a workhorse for his team with 17.1 carries per game, a number that ranks second in the Big Ten and 18th nationally. He leads the conference with 635 yards and is tied for second with seven touchdowns.
It was his go-ahead 21-yard score against Michigan State that completed the comeback.
“He's matured and now he's a grown man playing running back,” Schiano said, earlier this week. “And I look back at over the history of the program, whether it was Ray Rice or Brian Leonard or it was Pop (Isiah Pacheco), very, very aggressive, physical backs, downhill backs, that run violently, and he fits right into that category of guys that as they developed, became more and more violent downhill runners.”
On defense, Rutgers doesn’t have very many weaknesses having brought back seven starters and landing Ole Miss transfer Flip Dixon, who has been one of the best safeties in the Big Ten.
The Scarlet Knights come into the game ranked No. 12 out of 133 FBS teams in scoring defense (16.0 points allowed per game), No. 5 in passing defense (160.6 yards allowed) and No. 8 in total defense (276.4 yards allowed).
No easy answers for IU’s quarterback conundrum
Indiana coach Tom Allen has backed himself into a corner with the way he’s handled the quarterback situation this season.
It’s not unheard of for teams to start a season by rotating quarterbacks especially if both players competing for the starting job are inexperienced.
The indecisiveness was justifiable if the goal was to spend 2023 building the program around whoever won the job between Tayven Jackson and Brendan Sorsby. Fans would have tolerated missing out on a bowl game if the Hoosiers went into the offseason with their quarterback of the future firmly in place.
It’s what makes Allen’s decision to bench Jackson after he showed so much promise against Louisville seem shortsighted.
Jackson didn’t even get all the first-team reps until he was named the full-time starter in Week 3, and that designation lasted all of three weeks. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where he looks sharper against Akron if he had been given more team running the offense.
He didn’t play well in the 29-26 overtime win over the Zips and those struggles continued against Maryland, but the coaching staff had to expect those growing pains from a quarterback who attempted all of four passes before this season.
Allen went looking for a “spark” at Jackson’s expense.
The “flip-flopping” as receiver Donovan McCulley described it earlier this week certainly looked like it impacted Jackson’s confidence in the second half against Michigan. He played five snaps — turned it over twice and the offense got a delay of game — and looked nothing like the quarterback who orchestrated a near comeback against Louisville.
So now what?
It’s hard to imagine they go back to Jackson for a third (or is it fourth?) time. That leaves Sorsby or Dexter Williams, who is close to coming back from a torn ACL. He dressed out last week for the first time this season and was available as an emergency quarterback.
Sorsby is the likeliest of options, but he faces a lot of the same challenges as Jackson did.
The best case scenario for Allen now is that Sorsby defies the odds and leads IU to bowl contention otherwise the program could be starting over at quarterback this offseason for a third straight year.
Prediction: Rutgers 28, Indiana 13
Indiana coaches pointed to the success they had in the first quarter against Michigan this week as evidence they can pull things together. That’s one way to look at it, the other way would be to point out how far the Hoosiers still have to go. The offense looks like it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up and the defense is playing like a group that was stitched together with a bevy of transfers. Rutgers would have to make some uncharacteristic mistakes to lose this one.
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on Twitter @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Previewing Indiana football's 2023 matchup against Rutgers prediction
