Michigan took a gut punch last weekend in East Lansing, but the season is not yet over and there is a game coming up this weekend (at least, that's what my handlers have told me). That game is slated to be against the Indiana Hoosiers, and their season has not gone as planned, to put it mildly. After last year represented the culmination of the Tom Allen era in Bloomington, a dazzling 6-1 record in the B1G (with the one loss being a one-score defeat in Columbus), reality has come crashing down hard on the Hoosiers this campaign. When IU enters the Big House on Saturday night, they will be fighting for their bowl eligibility life, sitting at 2-6 on the year. Many of the problems plaguing the team are on offense, with the Hoosiers going through QBs like Kleenex, and that's something we will examine in today's post: 

 

The Film: The QB issues severely narrowed our ability to have our choice of Indiana games. Michael Penix Jr. started the season but was injured against Penn State, forcing Jack Tuttle to take over. Tuttle then got hurt against Ohio State only a few weeks after that, making IU first turn to Grant Gremel, before then landing on Donaven McCulley. McCulley got his first career start last weekend against Maryland and Tom Allen has since confirmed that McCulley will be starting for the team this week as well. Thus, in order to properly scout the opposition's QB, we had to choose Maryland, which is unfortunate because Maryland has a terrible defense that is not comparable to Michigan's. The Hoosiers lost this game 38-35, a generally competitive game albeit one that the Terps had the lead in more or less wire to wire. 

Personnel: The chart. 

As previously stated, Donaven McCulley is now the starter at QB for IU. He's an undeniably talented QB, top 250 in the composite, and a prospect Indiana fans should be very excited about as a dual threat option. What they didn't want to have happen was to see McCulley thrust into action as a true freshman. But here we are. USC transfer and former five star Stephen Carr holds down the RB position as the option getting the vast majority of carries. Carr squeezed Tim Baldwin Jr. out of the backfield (and into the transfer portal), which has left Davion Ervin-Poindexter as the primary backup at RB. 

At WR we see Ty Fryfogle somehow still around for the Hoosiers, and he's the primary receiving target. Every other WR is way behind Fryfogle in catches, with Miles Marshall and slot Javion Swinton catching up the rear. The loss of DJ Matthews to an ACL tear earlier this season definitely has hurt the Hoosiers' pass-catching group. The other notable receiver is at the TE position, with another familiar face in multi-year starter Peyton Hendershot. He is an excellent receiver but a very poor blocker. IU does use two TE's on some occasions, and when they bring a second TE on the field, it's generally either AJ Barner or Matt Bjorson. Neither are major receiving threats though. 

The offensive line is a weak spot in Bloomington, as it often is. RT Caleb Jones is a RS Sr yet is the weakest position on the line and a real liability when it comes to keeping the QB upright. On the flip side, though, LT Luke Haggard is generally alright at his job. At guard, an injury to Mike Katic has forced Old Friend/New Enemy Zach Carpenter to start at RG and I thought he was okay in his first career start with the Hoosiers in this game. LG Matthew Bedford was up and down in the game I tracked, but curving for the fact that Maryland has one of the worst defenses that IU has seen this season, he's not great. The PFF scores back that up, and the cyan is thrown around his neck. I thought C Dylan Powell had a particularly poor game and was on the verge of cyan'ing him too, but decided to hold back because this is just one game and the narrative isn't as holistically negative on him as it is on others. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: So how'd starting a true freshman QB go for ya?]

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Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Indiana runs a full spread offense, equipped with a QB run game, three and four receivers wide, and never going under center. Table: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	35	10	22	100%
Under Center	--	--	--	0%

Indiana didn't even go under center in their third & short situations, which tells you what you need to know. They do go with two tight ends on some occasions, but that doesn't change the strategy of the offense. And here's your typical play type by down chart: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	10	19
2nd	15	7
3rd	11	5
4th	-	1

There was a high degree of predictability with the Indiana play calling in this game. They wanted to pass first to try and get ahead of the sticks, then run the ball to get the first down. The heavy skew towards the run on third down is extremely unusual given how modern football has progressed; I believe the Hoosiers are the only team I've tracked this year to be more than 2:1 in favor of the rush on third down. However, watching this game, I think it's pretty clear that that was caused by a lack of trust in their QB to throw the ball on third down. A high number of those third down rushes were QB runs out of an empty set backfield with four receivers wide. It was peculiar, but you'll see the footage momentarily. 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Given that this is a spread offense, the answer for IU is Basketball on Grass. They run outside the tackles often, utilize screen passes to stretch the field horizontally and deep shots to stretch it vertically, and like to spread all their skill position players out. Not even on third down do they try to Manball you in the vintage Harbaugh sense, even when they bring two TEs on the field. This is IU's base set: 

A lone tight end (Hendershot) with the QB and an RB (Carr) in the backfield, and then three WRs, two of which to the top of the screen (one that you can't see), and another to the bottom of the screen. This is pretty standard IU football, which deviates only in two ways, when they go to four receivers (TE is almost always one of the four, lined up in the slot) or when they bring a second TE on the field. The former: 

Here you have the four receivers, but Hendershot is one of them, lined up in the slot to the top of the screen. The other set, the two TE one, is shown here: 

Two WRs at the bottom of the formation, QB in the pistol, and then a pair of TEs, one on the left side and the other on the right, slightly behind the line of scrimmage. 

These three alignments cover the vast majority of all plays Indiana will run offensively. 

Hurry it up or Grind it out: Indiana is a pretty typical college team, hiking the ball with between 10 and 15 on the play clock. I didn't see any notable examples of tempo in this game, but they also were not moving at a slow pace. Just pretty standard, which you'd expect with a new QB. After what MSU and Nebraska have been able to do to Michigan, you'd expect to see teams start to pick up the pace against the Wolverines, but the Hoosiers may well be hamstrung in that regard by virtue of who they have as the signal caller. Taking it at a regular pace is probably the smartest option when you have a true freshman QB suddenly thrust into the job. 

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Indiana has decided that with McCulley in charge, the QB run is going to be a major feature of the offense. Here's a notable stat to back that up: McCulley has started one game at QB this season, yet is already the team's third most frequent rusher (by attempts) on the season. Another stat? McCulley has attempted just 19% of the total number of passes Michael Penix Jr. has, yet already has seven (7) more rushing attempts than Penix. Some of those are sacks obviously, but you can see how much more legitimate of a run threat McCulley is relative to Penix is just by looking at yardage: 

• Penix: 17 attempts, -24 yards 
• McCulley: 24 attempts, 21 yards 

Penix's rushes were mostly short scrambles and sacks. McCulley's rushes are a mix of bad sacks and legitimate QB runs. There are some scrambles peppered in with McCulley, but most of his runs in this game were designed. In fact, that was pretty much the go-to play on 3rd & medium: 

As we see there, one of the issues with the QB run game right now is that McCulley is still new to the speed of college defenses. He had trouble recognizing the gaps and was clearly second-guessing his initial instinct. In this play, if he bounces it outside to the left, he has nothing but green grass until the first down line but instead runs right into bodies.

Despite these issues, because Indiana doesn't trust him to throw the ball often, they've decided that the best way to maximize McCulley's talent is weaponizing his athleticism, even if his brain hasn't totally figured it out yet. I didn't really get a chance to see him turn on the jets in this one, but you can see the combo of size and running ability being a factor down the line. Poor blocking bottled up most of his rushing chances: 

Still, you have to be on high alert for contain breaking, and know that 3rd & 6 with an empty backfield is going to be a QB run more often than not. Until we know how fast McCulley is, and until he learns how to find the holes, we can't put him crazy high on the scale, but a 7 seems fair given how significant in the gameplan his legs appear to be. 

Dangerman: There are a few options here, as I think IU's skill position group is good. Stephen Carr is effective at grinding out yards that his OL doesn't give him, Peyton Hendershot is a top tier receiver as a TE, but I went with WR Ty Fryfogle. Fryfogle's numbers aren't as good as last year because he's been thrown to by either a QB who is broken (Penix), a QB who is not good (Tuttle), or a QB who is a true freshman thrown into the fire (McCulley). But Fryfogle has more potential to hurt Michigan than Hendershot or Carr because he's always a threat to burn you downfield, and he has less caveats than the other two (the OL being bad will probably mute Carr's impact and Hendershot is a bad blocker). So let's roll with Fryfogle. 

Fryfogle was named a 3rd team All-American last season after accumulating 721 receiving yards in just eight games, with seven touchdowns, and he is Indiana's favorite wide receiver by *a lot*. His importance to the deep passing game is monumental: nearly every deep shot that McCulley took in this game was targeting Fryfogle. One of them connected: 

WR #3 to top of the screen

Fryfogle features in the short passing game plenty too: 

WR #3 in the slot to the right of the line 

They also used him on an end around in this game: 

WR #3 lined up in the slot to the right of the line

Fryfogle is most dangerous as the team's lone deep option, which could test Michigan's secondary group, but there are a lot of ways IU tries to get him the ball, and that's why he is this week's Dangerman. 

HenneChart: We've talked about McCulley the runner, how 'bout McCulley the passer? 

IU vs. MD	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	PFF
Donaven McCulley	1	10	1		2	2		-	2	6	1		57%	-

This wasn't great. McCulley didn't get eaten alive, but many of the problems we saw in the rushing component (notably the "not knowing what's going on" part) reared their head here. Let's be kind to Donaven and talk about the good first. He made a really nice throw on the deep ball to Fryfogle, zipping a tight spiral in more than 40 yards down the field that lands close enough to in stride to give Fryfogle YAC opportunities. Let's see it again: 

You can definitely see some of the potential in McCulley's arm there, as well as in this clip: 

He generally hit a high percentage of the easy throws, allowing Indiana's offense to move the ball against an atrocious Terrapins defense. But you could see why the coaching staff generally did not trust McCulley to throw the ball much, putting limits on him and dialing up so many third down runs. One of the pieces of evidence that was extremely apparent was the wavering accuracy: 

And another example, showing why the earlier successful deep ball was the exception, not the rule: 

He also made a very bad decision here: 

Yes, the throw is a wobbler because of the pressure but he forces that ball into an area where there are two IU receivers and four Maryland defenders. 

I won't clip it, but on a separate occasion, McCulley had a ball go right through the hands of a defender and land in the hands of a receiver. He didn't finish with an interception in this game but definitely deserved to have at least one. 

McCulley's pocket presence was also pretty bad. Here he gets sacked for a huge loss after running backwards and then failing to recognize how little time he had until it was too late: 

He also ran into a sack on a designed run on another occasion. JT Barrett, he is not. 

In total, you have a young QB who isn't up to speed on the pace of college football, whose arm has some flashes but isn't yet consistent at the NCAA level, and who the coaches do not trust to fully orchestrate the offense, so they ask him to run the ball a lot. That + the offensive line's issues are the two biggest problems facing Indiana's anemic offense this season. 

 

Overall 

This is where we get to check in on the offensive line problems. I showed you the earlier clip in the QB section where the OL got little push, and also a clip above where the pressure came really quickly. In that most recent clip it was RT Caleb Jones (who was cyan'd) and Zach Carpenter himself who allowed the rushers to come free. Jones was a problem all game, but while pressure typically came from him or the inside, the entire line was only moderately effective at getting push in this game, which is a bad sign when we curve based on the opponent. The Maryland defense Indiana saw in this game gave up 321 yards on 5.6 YPC to the Minnesota Gophers the preceding week and was gashed for 66 points by Ohio State the week before that. They are very bad, and if you take out one long run, Indiana was sitting at 3.37 YPC for the game in this one. Not great. 

Here's a short yardage play where the OL had trouble getting push and where the Maryland defense was able to key in to stop the run: 

On the interior LG Matthew Bedford and C Dylan Powell were the most common culprits in this game. The OL just isn't getting much on the ground, and to prove it, here are the YPC clips this season against Iowa, PSU, MSU, and OSU: 2.5, 2.9, 3.7, 1.5. The state of the OL becomes more alarming when you realize that RB Stephen Carr is actually doing a lot of work to grind out extra yards for himself. There's little push here but Carr's strength bowls forward for the first:  

And here's a nice cutback he pulled out of the bag: 

When your RB has a little touch of KWIII in him when it comes to finding hidden yards, and you're still barely running for 3 YPC against good competition, that's a bad sign for your offensive line. 

There aren't many other players to talk about on the offense outside of Carr and Fryfogle, with the only notable being TE Peyton Hendershot. He's a good, strong receiver who is a weapon in the red zone. Here he adjusts well to catch an underthrown TD pass: 

We already saw what Hendershot can do in the slot too in an early McCulley clip: 

I did briefly mention this earlier, but I didn't like Hendershot's blocking, and the PFF scores back me up on that, which only further hurts the run offense. Here he is struggling to handle a defensive end, forcing Carr to have to bounce backwards and outside, which ultimately ends in a TFL: 

#86 to bottom of the line

The problem with the Indiana offense is that the entire unit can be distilled to just those two receivers, and most B1G defenses have enough coverage guys to deal with them, especially when your DL alone can whip the IU OL. Oh and again, the quarterbacking has been subpar all year. And that's why their offense has sputtered in conference play. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan?

This profiles as a very good matchup for the Wolverines. Ojabo and Hutchinson should have clear matchup advantages on the edges, and given that IU doesn't seem super likely to run hurry up with a new QB, Michigan should be able to keep their DTs fresh, who are slated to also have an edge on the inside. Sicc DJ Turner II or whoever you think your best CB is on Fryfogle and give him some safety help, and then come up with a plan for Hendershot. Beyond that, there aren't many receiving threats and you've got a QB who is prone to make mistakes. Michigan could be in line to get a couple turnovers, especially if they can get pressure on McCulley. Also, watch out for the third down QB designed run. 

It's worth remembering that this is an offense that put up 7 on OSU, 15 on MSU, got shut out by PSU, and scored 6 on Iowa. No matter who the QB is, they've been horrendous all year and the QB play hasn't improved at all. The deep problems with this unit play to Michigan's strengths, and this could be a nice get-right game for the Wolverines and Mike Macdonald's crew.