Previously: Indiana Offense

We turn attention from a struggling Indiana offense to a struggling Indiana defense. Though the Hoosiers held Ohio State and Louisville, to undefeated teams, to

The Film: We're sticking with Louisville, which we used for the offense. Reasonably recent opponent who is also good and a contest where Indiana played pretty well, so we can get a sense of this defense on a good day, as opposed to all the terrible tape. 

The Personnel: Click for big.

[Seth: JJ got his shield. Henderson has LT locked down. I also had to show Bredeson somehow.]

Like usual, Indiana is playing with three true defensive linemen and then a stand-up BULL on the defensive line, two true ILBs + a "HUSKY", functionally a slot corner + four true DBs. I have always described this as a 4-2-5 and feel it's the most convenient definition. Those defensive line spots are headlined by EDGE Andre Carter, a transfer from WMU who is a pretty solid player. Why Indiana was the P5 school he ended up at, I'm not quite sure, but they are lucky to have him. He clocked in just below star status for me and PFF agrees, but Carter is Indiana's best DL and had some nice bullrush moments against Louisville. 

The defensive tackle starting jobs are held by Philip Blidi and LeDarrius Cox, who are somewhere between "meh" and "not great" for me. Blidi is a guy PFF likes but I did not come away impressed, while we are in agreement on Cox being subpar. The reserves are Marcus Burris Jr. and Patrick Lucas Jr., with Burris coming on in passing downs and showing me some rush moves I liked. Lucas was not memorable, on the other hand. The stand-up BULL spot has been split between Lanell Carr Jr. and Myles Jackson. Jackson got a lot of playing time against Louisville and I was not impressed at all, with his 240 lbs. size still making him vulnerable to getting thumped by a tight end, even if he's the larger of the two options. Neither Carr nor Jackson have great pass-rush grades (and both are poor in coverage) but PFF does like Carr more as the rusher. 

The traditional inside linebackers are Indiana's two most used defenders by snap count, both playing at least 88% of the team's defensive snaps this season. Aaron Casey is the star of this tandem- and the defense- an aggressive MLB who has his flaws as a tackler but is a force to be reckoned with running downhill and firing into the backfield for a pressure or a TFL. His fellow starter is WILL Jacob Mangum-Farrar, a Stanford transfer who was pretty up-and-down against Louisville, some nice plays and some ugly miscues but treading water okay. Matt Holht is the primary backup at ILB, only getting a few snaps in the game I charted but they were not pretty ones. Indiana wants Casey and Mangum-Farrar on the field. 

HSP/"HUSKY" Noah Pierre is the other returning starter on this decimated Indiana defense after Casey, a savvy veteran who can do a little bit of everything, decent tackler, can defend the run, cover alright, and is a key blitzer at Tom Allen's disposal. Their two starting outside corners are Jamari Sharpe and Kobee Minor, neither of which are lockdown guys but Minor was a pleasant surprise against Louisville in my charting and PFF backs it up with a grade surpassing 70. Nic Toomer and Jamier Johnson are the reserve corners for Indiana, I don't have a ton of notes on Toomer but Johnson didn't look great vs. Louisville.

Finally, at safety, Phillip Dunnam and Louis Moore are the every-down starers, with Dunnam being a curious case for me, a player I thought was terrible against the Cardinals but the PFF grading is uniformly positive on. Veteran Josh Sanguinetti is the third safety but has been seldom used this season, even though he's been dotting FFFF charts for three seasons now. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Meh]

Base set: This one is really quick, as Indiana runs a 4-2-5 like they have each season that I've run this piece: 

Because the BULL end can move around, they did flash one pseudo-3-3-5 look: 

The only deviation from the 4-2-5 personnel package was lifting a DB for an OLB, which in this case was Anthony Jones. That package appeared only in a short yardage situation where Louisville was backed up to their own 2:  

Pressure: Last season Indiana was the blitziest team that I charted, rushing more than four on 60.1% of snaps (and they never rushed fewer than four). That number was vintage Tom Allen but much like the tempo component on offense, the signature ability of the Indiana defense from last season has been watered down: against Louisville they rushed more than four on only 26.7% of snaps, while rushing fewer than four defenders on 10% of snaps. Through the first two-thirds of this game, IU was almost always rushing four or three, with the blitzing only picking up later, a sharp deviation from what defined the Hoosiers last season. 

Man or zone coverage: Indiana is mostly a zone team, still running a lot of Cover 2 like years past. They mix in other kinds of zone coverages, as well as flashing a little bit of Cov1/Man depending on the blitzes, but zone is the correct label as a whole for the Hoosiers.  

Dangerman: The first player we get to look at today is MLB Aaron Casey. At 303 defensive snaps this season, he is Indiana's most used player and to say he's been around in his NCAA career is an understatement. He redshirted in 2018, barely saw the field in 2019, then was a reserve in 2020 and 2021. Casey was elevated to a starting role last season, earning honorable mention All-B1G honors, and then opted to return for a sixth season using his COVID-shirt.

Last season Casey was a bit of a chaos player, popping up in a lot of right situations but I was negative in totality due to Casey's struggles with tackling. This season has been a much better go of things, an excellent showing against Ohio State to kickoff his super super senior campaign and he impressed me against Louisville. I don't think he's the second-coming of Devin Bush as a collegiate linebacker, but Casey has taken a step forward in his caliber of play and much stronger tackling this season suggests that this old dog has learned a new trick (PFF has upped his tackling grade from 54.2 to 69.7). On the first drive of the game Casey made a tackle that suggested he's a new man: 

MLB #44 lined up on top of the hash

His biggest impact on the game was seen in the second half, when Allen was ramping up the blitzes. Casey is at his best running downhill at the QB or RB and here he has a great rush that eventually turns into a devastating intentional grounding penalty: 

Last season that ability to fire into the backfield and cause havoc meant that Casey was able to rack up 10.5 TFLs. He got one in this game that looked like 2022: 

But there were also more subtle strong plays in run defense, as Casey slams into a pair of OL here and blunts the second puller, helping the rest of his team stuff this run: 

I don't have a ton to say about Casey's coverage in this game, but PFF rates his coverage grade at a respectable 72.7 for the season. He's playing well in all phases right now and was Indiana's best and most impactful defender against Louisville, hence the Dangerman label. 

Overview 

If you are familiar with the trajectory of the Louisville/Indiana game that I charted but didn't watch it closely, I know what your first question for me is.... how did Indiana come from 21-0 down at halftime to nearly tie the game in the second half? There are a few things here, they recovered a surprise onside kick to begin the half and their offense hit a couple big plays to get the momentum turning, but the defense did indeed do a much better job in the second half. How'd they do it and what changed from the first half? What can we take away from the experience of delving through the tape? 

In the first half, Louisville was able to run the ball pretty consistently on Indiana and that didn't as much as you may think in the second half. Clips like this were too common on the ground: 

Both of the starting tackles, Philip Blidi and LeDarrius Cox, are moved on that play, a theme throughout this game. I hit Cox with the cyan circle while holding off on Blidi due to PFF's praise of him otherwise (something I'm a bit puzzled by) but neither tackle was providing as much resistance as I'd have liked to see. However, when Louisville scored their two rushing TDs, both were attacking off-tackle and BULL Lanell Carr Jr.: 

Setting the edge was a pretty consistent problem for Indiana in this game, be it Carr there or Myles Jackson, who was getting thunked by the LT/TEs too often for my liking. At 240/250, both of these players are undersized to handle these matchups and coming off the outing that Michigan's TEs just had in blocking, you have to think that's a matchup that the offensive coaching staff is eager to exploit. 

While Louisville was churning out 4-5 yards per carry consistently on the ground in the first half, the other piece to the puzzle of success for the Cardinals was taking the top off the Hoosier defense. This is a TD if the ball isn't underthrown: 

This one was a TD, however: 

The deep safety on both of these plays is Phillip Dunnam, the player I mentioned in the personnel section for the source of my grading confusion. Being on the hook for two deep bombs is a major negative for me, but evidently not for PFF, who liked his game overall in this one. Dunnam isn't the only Indiana defender who got exposed in the first half in coverage, as Louisville also exposed LB Jacob Mangum-Farrar on this play, but the ball was again underthrown and it gave Noah Pierre time to make a play on it: 

Attacking the flats ceded by the dropping corners also brought Louisville success in the passing game and helped stitch their drives together by picking up short/medium yard conversions: 

All of these pieces together, the bombs deep, the shorter throws taking advantage of the flats, and churning out yardage on the ground, helped Louisville cobble together 302 yards of offense and 21 points in the first half. Seems pretty good! But what changed? To be honest, I'm not sure it was as much as you may think. Louisville was still moving the ball decently well on a down-to-down basis, as they had in the first half, it was just the appearance of one crucial negative play each drive killing the drive. 

On the first drive, I thought Louisville QB Jack Plummer missed two possible open receivers that would've converted a 3rd & 4, instead keeping the ball long enough for his OL to commit a holding call (drawn by DT Marcus Burris Jr.), which nullified an eventual completed deep shot. The backed up Cardinals were unable to convert on the much longer 3rd down thanks to a poorly thrown ball on what I thought was good coverage from my favorite IU DB in this game, Kobee Minor: 

The second drive lasted three plays, with the third being a deep shot for a receiver open deep against Pierre, the ball hits him in the hands and not just does he not catch it, but the bounce off his hands lands into the arms of Dunnam: 

A good blitz but also a whiff from Aaron Casey on that play, one of the few flashback plays to the poor tackling of old. That play was nearly a touchdown but instead it's a turnover because of a miscue and a massive EPA swing in the process. 

Louisville's third drive was chugging along pretty well until the disastrous intentional grounding from Plummer, which I showed you in the Dangerman section, resulted in a 10 yard loss + loss of down. If you want to scroll back up and see that play again, you'll notice that Plummer had multiple chances to throw that ball away and did not. If he does, it's quite possible that the drive keeps going considering it would've been 3rd & 5 in possible 4-down territory. Instead Louisville waved the white flag and punted. 

The next drive was indicative of the schematic change that did work for Indiana in the second half, which was ramping up the pressure. Their pressure metric ticked up considerably on those final few drives and in some cases, they were able to get home by better disguising their rushes. The 3rd down that saw them get off the field (thanks to a cowardly punt by Jeff Brohm on the next play) is only a four-man rush but the LB blitzes while you get some edge drops: 

But when it was time to put the game away on the last drive after the goal-line stand from the defense, Louisville went back to the ground and was able to shove Indiana around again. This one includes a weird hurdle attempt at the end but it was another chunk play that got the drive going: 

After converting on a 3rd & 4 on the ground with under a minute to go, Louisville was able to kneel the ball down and run out the clock. For the game, they rushed 37 times for 186 yards (5.0 YPC) excluding kneel downs and this is pretty in line with what Indiana has ceded this season. YPC clips allowed in the other three P5 games this season: 4.6, 6.6, 5.2. Marcus Burris Jr. has shown some nice passrush ability, but otherwise these DTs have seemed like just guys (at best) to me. 

In pass defense as a whole, we saw the vulnerability deep exposed and the ability to pick up yards underneath and in the intermediate game with decent success. If Jack Plummer gets the ball out quicker on a couple of those crucial plays, or the receiver holds onto the ball instead of biffing it into an interception, Louisville likely pulls away with no problem. Even with that, Louisville gained 422 yards on 62 plays (6.8 YPP). Being held to 21 points was the result of turnovers, cowardly punts (they punted three times on drives that entered IU territory!!), and a missed 38 yard field goal. 

Before we wrap it up, I do want to shout out EDGE Andre Carter from WMU, who is a good player. He's popped up rushing the QB on a few plays I've shown you already, but here he is combining with Casey to force an underthrown ball and thus an incompletion (also like the coverage from Minor again): 

DE #1 to the bottom

If Indiana wants to have any chance of making this interesting against Michigan, methinks they will need to be even more aggressive ramping up blitzes and hoping the tandem of their impact players in the front six, Carter and Casey, are able to get a few sacks/TFLs to nerf Michigan drives. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

There are some individual players I like on Indiana's defense but the parts do not add up right now to much of anything to be frightened of. Yes they did a nice job to hold Ohio State to 23 points, but they got a takeaway well into IU territory and forced FGs of 40, 22, and 22 yards. On a per-play basis, the Bucks still gained 5.7 YPP and that was in a game where they were breaking in a new starting QB and OL. Akron gained a nearly identical 5.6 YPP, Louisville went for 6.8 in this game and Maryland hung 8.3 on the Hoosiers. This defense is not good. 

The rush defense, with defensive tackles being moved by Louisville, an undersized stand-up edge vulnerable to being caved in, and linebackers who sometimes miss where the play is coming from, is not a great combo for Michigan's rushing offense. Neither is a pass defense that saw its top get taken off multiple times by the Cardinals and now have to face Roman Wilson's deep threat. Not to mention that Michigan can run Donovan Edwards, Tyler Morris or even a Semaj Morgan into those flats that Louisville was targeting. The Wolverines should be able to move the ball easily and consistently against IU without any preparation for this game and the only big question is whether Michigan converts in the red zone and takes care of the ball (unlike LVille/OSU) to ensure that the scoreboard properly reflects the lopsided matchup.