Previously: Indiana Offense

Indiana's offense has been the anchor dragging the boat down this whole season (as we outlined on Wednesday), but the Hoosier defense has been quite respectable. They rank 41st in SP+, which isn't great, but it is still miles better than the offense. Nestled in there are several very strong performances, including holding Penn State and Michigan State to under 25 points, in addition to a strong showing against Cincy that looks much worse on the scoreboard because of how IU's anemic offense and poor special teams gave the defense no help. Bad showings against OSU (well, who doesn't have that?) are in the file of evidence, too, but overall, this is a pretty solid unit. Now let's dig into the weak spots and the stronger areas: 

The Film: There are a handful of Indiana games that are not applicable. Idaho is off the list due to being a distant mid major, WKU and Maryland have dissimilar offenses to Michigan, OSU's offense is not comparable in quality and Iowa's is also not comparable in quality, but in the opposite direction. That leaves us with PSU, Cincy, and MSU. I wanted to do a B1G foe, so that removes Cincinnati and I ultimately landed on PSU. Mostly, I picked Indiana's game against Penn State for this because the conditions were similar (night game on the road), and also because I didn't want to think about or watch any more Michigan State. So PSU-IU from early October it is, a game that Penn State won 24-0. 

Personnel: Seth's chart, click for big. 

Indiana runs with four defensive linemen. The DTs are held down by NIU transfer Weston Kramer and DeMarcus Elliott, the latter of which has gotten the cyan designation for two consecutive years. Elliott's issues have caused them to rotate Sio Nofoagatoto'a and CJ Person in at defensive tackle when necessary. The ends are split between the standard hand-in-the-dirt end, which is played by Ole Miss transfer Ryder Anderson, and the "BULL" position, who normally stands up and sometimes drops into coverage, held nominally by the weak Alfred Bryant. When Bryant comes off, Jaren Handy comes on, while James Head Jr. also gets involved some at the other end position behind Anderson. 

The LBs are Micah McFadden and Cam Jones, both multi-year veteran starters who have been around and play close to every snap. Occasionally you see Aaron Casey or James Miller come on the field, but those two starters will be leaned upon heavily. McFadden in particular is the star of the defense and the Dangerman of this piece. Those two traditional LBs are joined by Indiana's HSP, known as the "Husky", which is my favorite HSP name. Marcelino McCrary-Ball has been at Indiana for a zillion years (he featured for IU against a Michigan offense that had Jake Butt and De'Veon Smith on it!) and is the nominal starter at Husky, but he rotates heavily with Bryant Fitzgerald. 

Corner is the strength of the defense, with Tiawan Mullen and Jaylin Williams entering the season as the best CB tandem in the conference. Mullen's injuries have hurt their level of play, but they are both good. Reese Taylor is next man up at corner, but is dealing with injuries. Noah Pierre is also on the two-deep at the position. Devon Matthews and Raheem Layne are the starters at safety, though Josh Sanguenetti gets on the field a decent bit as well. 

One last note which you may have gleaned from the diagram, but Indiana has an extremely veteran defense. They are starting 10 seniors (!) and the 11th is a junior (Jaylin Williams). If they can't get a few COVID-shirts on these guys, IU could be in a full scale rebuild next year. 

Base set: Indiana runs with a base 4-2-5, but unlike MSU last week, they have the truly designated Hybrid Space Player, the aforementioned Husky position. The personnel is pretty consistent but the manner in which Indiana lines up that personnel is pretty varied depending on the play. Also notable: they throw in a decent amount of 3-3-5 and a staple of the 4-2-5 look is a stand up end who drops into coverage on some occasions. The blend of these formations leads to a decent amount of deception when it comes to what IU is going to throw at you. Here is the most generic type of 4-2-5 alignment they run and I guess this would qualify as the base set: 

The blue circle notes the stand up (BULL) defensive end on the far side of the formation, while the red circle notes the Husky. In between them you have three down linemen, and then at the second level are the traditional LBs, McFadden and Jones. The corners are watching their receivers, and then the two safeties are lined up deep, aligning with Indiana's traditional Cover 2 coverage. They also throw heavy DB looks at you on 3rd & long plays: 

This time you have three linemen, one standing up, the two LBs are still there, but now there are four players lined up in coverage to match the four receivers, three corners plus the Husky. The two deep safeties are also still present. Michigan went with more formations that saw the receivers spread out last week against Michigan State when the short passing game was really clicking, and this is how I'd reckon IU counters it. 

Man or zone coverage: Indiana is base Cover 2 but they use plenty of Cover 1, which Tom Allen used pretty heavily before transitioning more to Cover 2 last season. So put them more in the zone category, though obviously there's plenty of man inherent to Cover 1. 

Pressure: We've made a bit of an alteration to the pressure metric at the request of The Mathlete. Instead of averaging it out per play, we're going with % of plays where more than four rushers (or less than four rushers) were sent, as the new way to calculate it. So, with that in mind, Indiana comes in at 27.8% of plays with more than four rushers and 5.6% of plays with less than four rushers. That's a little bit lower than their blitzy nature last season, but is perhaps a function of PSU spreading out so many receivers wide in this game. Their blitzes were pretty effective though. 

Dangerman: Last season's IU dangerman, corner Tiawan Mullen, is still on the roster and remains a critical piece of the Hoosier defense, but this year I think the honor has to go to LB Micah McFadden. McFadden was an All-American last season and has followed that performance up with another incredible campaign. His 10 TFLs through 8 games ranks in the top 15 in the country, and he's also top 50 in the country in sacks, with five solo tallies. McFadden is a menace as a blitzer but also is a fine run defender as well, while coverage tends to fall on the shoulders of other players on the defense. You want to see evidence of his blitzing ability? I give you: 

LB #47 to bottom of the formation

Look at the way he hammers the RB (#24) right back into Clifford's lap and manages to get a piece of him on the sack. Still a non-believer? How about this: 

LB #47 

When Indiana sends a fifth rusher, it's normally McFadden, but he's used more often than just that blitzing, as he'll often rush when the Hoosiers choose to have the stand up "BULL" end drop into coverage, in which case McFadden represents the fourth rusher in those situations. Indiana regularly got pressure in this game, partially because I think PSU's OL is not good, but also  partially because McFadden shows an incredible ability to burst through the line and thump blockers, as we saw in the earlier clip.  

He's not just a pass rusher though, with the ability to chase down ballcarriers in space running sideline to sideline. Example A: 

LB #47

And of course, he's good in run defense between the tackles: 

Again, look at that thundering hit he thumps on the RB. Just stops the guy's progress dead in his tracks.

There were a few mistakes from McFadden in this game, but he's a big reason why Indiana's got a solid run defense and he is the player who they need to pop off to get pressure in a given game. Michigan will need their offensive line and quarterback to know where McFadden is before every play. 

Overall

So what do I think about the Indiana defense? My biggest takeaway from watching them is "they're fine." Their counting metrics are all between 30th in the FBS and 100th in the FBS (pass, rush, and total defense), not shutting anyone down but (with the exception of OSU) not getting totally run off the field. They're very good at giving up between 20 and 38 points (7 of 8 opponents have fallen in this range), which is generally enough to win a decent amount of college football games if your offense isn't abject (oops, Indiana's is). 

There are some great players. I highlighted McFadden earlier, and CB Tiawan Mullen is another one. Mullen was terrific as a freshman in 2019 and then blossomed into a First Team All-American last season and started to get NFL hype in the offseason. This year has been injury plagued (he missed this game), but Mullen will play on Saturday (we are told) after returning last weekend against Maryland. I don't know if he'll be 100%, but even if he isn't, a hampered Mullen is still probably pretty good. Here are some clips Seth collected last year: 

CB #3 

He can play. His running mate, CB Jaylin Williams also entered this season with sky high expectations and he looked sharp to me. It's often hard to grade a corner based on a single game, and I didn't see a ton of him (which is generally good news). But when I did, I liked what I saw: 

CB #23 to top of the screen

Williams did get hit with DPI on one occasion, but outside of McFadden, the corner tandem is the strength of the defense. The drop off from Williams to CB Reese Taylor, who played in place of Mullen, was pretty big. If you scroll back up to my first formation image at the top of the piece, you'll notice that one DB is playing on the line and the other is being given a huge cushion of soft coverage. That soft coverage was for Taylor, who allowed a lot of catches because he couldn't be trusted to play tight coverage. Example: 

CB #2 to bottom of screen

If Mullen has to come off the field, that's an area to target, no matter if Taylor is playing (injury concerns), or it it's Noah Pierre (who actually has a worse PFF grade than Taylor). The safeties were alright, but I don't have a ton of notes on them. One good thing, though, was from FS Raheem Layne on a sweet pick: 

It should be mentioned that arguably Indiana's two worst performances in pass defense of the season have come in the last two weeks against OSU and Maryland, so there may be some cracks emerging in recent weeks that were not there earlier in the season. Could also be a reflection of those two teams being maybe the two best passing offenses IU has seen. 

PSU was able to beat the Hoosiers mostly on the ground, an area of the game that has been pretty Jekyll and Hyde for the Hoosiers. They completely bottled up Kenneth Walker III (welp) against MSU, and totally nerfed the Terp rushing attack. On the other hand, PSU ran 42 times for >5.0 YPC and OSU had no problem in the rushing game against Indiana. I think there is potential here for Michigan to go to work. DT Demarcus Elliott did not impress me on the interior and that's a matchup the Wolverines could target. He's culpable for PSU's best rushing play (blown out of the orbit), though the LBs were even worse: 

DT #94 towards bottom of the DL

DT Weston Kramer, a NIU transfer whom Michigan targeted in the portal, was the better interior lineman but even he had some weak spots. Here's one:  

DT #99 towards bottom of the DL

Together they were able to make some plays, but the back seven was relied on a decent amount to stop the running game, and this was against a PSU OL that I'm very suspect of. If Michigan can get their guards healthy, I think they should be able to break off some runs against Indiana. Not to mention the fact that the tackling, like in the above clip, was only so-so. 

The ends are decent in pass rushing. Here's the BULL Alfred Bryant and a safety blitz from the safety Layne teaming up to bother Clifford: 

DE #92 to top of the DL

This is a combined rush from reserve BULL Jaren Hardy in addition to help from both LBs McFadden and Cam Jones: 

DE Ryder Anderson is another good player for Indiana, but I didn't get any spectacular things to clip from him. 

Despite the good pass rush, contain had a habit of breaking, which Clifford punished: 

Probably doesn't apply much to Cade, but he did scramble for a chunk against MSU. It is a potential antidote to how Indiana wants to bother you. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

I think Michigan should be able to run on these guys. There are good players in the front seven, but there are also weak spots on the interior and in run defense on the edge. They have good corners too, but it's not like Indiana hasn't been giving up passing yards. Again, they're fine. No major glaring weaknesses, but no obvious strengths (so long as Mullen remains less than 100%).

A defense that's good at not getting run off the field, but not good enough at holding their opponent to a low enough score to allow the horrendous offense to actually win games. If Michigan runs their game plan then they should, like every other non-OSU offense, wind up in that 20-38 point range without too much trouble. Which, if the defense does it job, should be more than enough for a win.