The already warm seats of Tom Allen and Walt Bell are significantly hotter after Indiana (2-3) fell to Maryland (5-0) 44-17 in a humiliating fashion on Saturday afternoon.
“I didn’t expect that to happen,” head coach Tom Allen said. “I really expected it to be a four-quarter battle in my mind going in.”
Indiana has struggled, especially offensively, for a while now. This season the Hoosiers are averaging 337.5 yards in total offense (12th in the Big Ten) with only having 321 against Maryland. The “run-first” offense struggled to execute converting on only 5-for-17 on third downs. Quarterback Tayven Jackson was taken out of the game in the third quarter after throwing only 113 yards, going 17-for-29. Brendan Sorsby took over for the starter and threw for both Indiana touchdowns but it was too late for the Hoosiers.
A big focus of criticism has been on the play-calling. Indiana has been having trouble learning from mistakes and making the necessary adjustments. Offensive coordinator Walt Bell has misled the Hoosiers during numerous key moments in several games.
Earlier this week Bell acknowledged the team struggled in short yardage situations, pass protection and third downs. While pass protection was better, it does not appear that any changes have been made to combat the other two challenges.
“When we get down to these critical downs and critical areas on the field we have to finish,” offensive lineman Mike Katic said.
The consensus from players and coaches seems to be that the team needs to “execute” better.
“I just think that we need to execute the calls better,” Allen said. “There were a lot of receivers open, opportunities to make proper reads and didn’t do that.”
However, on Saturday Indiana’s struggles were not limited to the offense.
Maryland immediately set the tone, putting seven on the board within the first 25 seconds of the game. The Hoosier defense was repeatedly beaten in the secondary, resulting in too many scores early. Taulia Tagovailoa went for 352 passing yards going 24-for-34. Wide receiver Tai Felton proved to be a challenge just in himself, having three touchdowns and 134 yards.
This is now the second game where Indiana may have had a shot if they had not dropped coverage and prevented chunk plays, the first being Louisville.
“As long as we don’t give up those explosive plays it gives us a fighting chance,” Allen said.
Heading into the bye week, Allen and the Hoosiers have many issues to assess.
“We’ll obviously use this bye week to make a lot of evaluations on things,” Allen said. “Every position has to be evaluated. We have to be productive, have to look at the guys who are making plays and the guys who are not at every single position.”
The bye week comes at a convenient time for the Hoosiers coming off a bad Akron win and worse Maryland loss, but their toughest challenges lie within the month ahead, traveling to No. 2 Michigan right out of the bye week and No. 7 Penn State soon to follow.
“The whole objective will be to improve ourselves fundamentally, get better schematically, and make sure we got the right guys in the right spots,” Allen said.
From Sunday until Oct. 14, Indiana must fix the play-calling woes, regain focus, and rally this defeated Indiana team to finish the season strong. Will two weeks be enough time for that? Only time will tell.
