The Crimson Caskey on klaviyo here, thanks for joining us once again, folks, it is Friday, the 14th of October as we get ready for the Indiana Hoosiers. Back in Action, again, this weekend as they take on the Maryland, Terrapins, Home mid-afternoon kickoff goes 3:30 kick. I think it is as that's better than the new kicks is. As you all know, from my perspective and should be an interesting one, one of the winnable games left on Indiana
schedule. We're going to talk about that for a little bit and kind of give a preview of what Maryland does well and what, to expect as we head into this game on Saturday before we get to that. Just a reminder, that Crimson cast is Art of the back home network. And the back home network is brought to you by home field apparel your place, to go for the finest and softest College apparel. Great vintage designs a little
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this past weekend. Was the thing that we were talking about and we ended up doing an emergency podcast on it. On some day, finally came to being as Tom Allen takes the somewhat unusual step of firing, Darren Hiller the offensive line coach midseason. Basically, if the halfway point of the year with the Hoosiers standing at 3 and 3 on the campaign and really at a Crossroads from a seasoned perspective, we do we've talked a lot about the deficiencies of this offensive line.
And, you know, I think for most of us who have been observing, we didn't think that there was any chance that a move was going to get made. Once the season got started, we were wrong. And as we said on this past, Sunday's emergency podcast, you got to give Tom Allen credit for seeing that a change, had to be made, and making that change.
And certainly a lot of emotional elements to that And you know, we heard a lot this week about the offensive line, you know, really having a great affinity for Darren Hiller and even the incoming replacement for Hiller talked about that in his press conference on Monday. Realistically speaking, you know, this is it's a tough business and that's something that I think we've talked about on occasion over the course of the last several years and you do get people Who are doing, I
guess, what you would consider to be there. The best that they can do and it ends up not being good enough and people feel bad and that's certainly understandable. The flip side of it is. It's also a sport that really is very unforgiving. When it comes to the manner in which your team and the individual components of your
team play. And, you know, that when you think about the way that this all went down, I think the Biggest shame in it. Is the change wasn't made over the course of the last offseason. And and that's honestly not even meant to be necessarily A criticism of Darren Hiller or the offensive line as much as a realization that things just weren't working out. And yeah, I think that ultimately what gets lost in the
shuffle a little bit. When you look at the way that I use offense, has performed over the last few years, really since the departure Caitlin de bourgh. It's that when it's looked good, you go back and look at the numbers.
You look at the underlying statistics for it and it hasn't been even when it's been good as good as you might have thought you know a lot of it in 2020 was due to the magic of Michael penix or the magic of the defense generating turnovers and getting excellent field position for IU. You know last year everything kind of went wrong and It was clear that something was trending in the wrong direction, and I don't think that's entirely Darren Hiller's fault
or the offensive lines fault. I think Tom Allen in general has really struggled over the course of his tenure. If you look at it in the in the macro with having his offense be a consistent regular contributor you take 2019 out of the picture and it's a very different landscape if you're not looking
at that year too. Balance out the kind of stodgy offense under the first two years with Mike deboard and certainly the offense the last two-and-a-half Seasons so far under Nick Sheridan and now won't bail so my hope is that perhaps this galvanizes the offensive line a little bit in the offense in general you know and hate to see that have to
happen. But the reality is sometimes sometimes and I'm not saying that it's going to happen here a shock to the system A jolt to the system by Will letting go of a coach as an accountability tactic can kind of snap the team into a position of focus. And they need that at this point, as much as we hear from coaches about not hearing outside distractions, I mean, whatever. If I mean I had to me, the outside noise is rarely going to be as important as how teams are actually performing.
Because ultimately, the outside noise is a reflection of what's going on with the team, not the cause of what's going on with
the team. And I think in this case, ultimately, this IU team has just struggled with basic execution and that was even something that was brought up over the course of a couple of press conferences this week is this idea that the execution thing Is the aspect that has to be focused on. And that's really the only hope at this stage that that IU is going to be somehow able to turn things around and figure out exactly what it needs to do to
be better. I mean, there was a statistic that popped up a couple of days ago, which looked at o-line run, push and of the 66 power, five teams the worst team in in power. I've football this year in offensive line, run, push is Iowa. Which if you've been reading any about Iowa's offense, that's not surprising, but the second-worst is Indiana and they ranked below Boston College, Kentucky, who struggled with that this year, Virginia Tech, Iowa, State Northwestern.
I mean it's just really been a disaster on the offensive front for IU. I don't know if that can be changed, you know? There was, there was a lot of conversation over the course of Of the year. It's like Rod carry the new head, the new offensive line
coach and Run game. Coordinator essentially said in a press conference and I'm not a miracle worker when it comes to fixing the offensive line but you know, he's going to do the best that he can and I think he realizes something that we talked about on Sunday. This is not a simple fix and this is probably a fixed. It's going to have to take multiple years. I think expecting Indiana to come out and have a completely different approach to the offensive line, you know on Saturday against.
And or next week against Rutgers or even, you know, by November 5th when they play Penn State, it's just probably not reasonable to expect that. What is reasonable though?
I think is for the offense as a whole to, they've got to figure out a way to put some points on the board consistently and figure out some different ways of doing the things that they've been trying to do. Over the course of the first six weeks of the season because it just hasn't been adequate and ultimately Yeah, I think the reason the move gets made now and the reason why you know, there's so much urgency to make a move is that the season is still in the balance.
I you can still make a bowl game. It it's not going to be a disaster of a season, even if they get to five and seven. But there's still two wins away from five and seven. And that is where Indiana's got to figure out a way to make it work. So they go into this game against Maryland and Maryland presents. Some very interesting problems if you Red bite-sized bison, the Weekly Newsletter by Taylor.
Layman I would suggest checking that out as he had some pretty interesting insights into this Maryland team and what they do. And what sorts of things I, you needs to be keeping an eye on, you know, overall, you look at this Maryland team and they've been pretty impressive over the course of the season, in terms of, you know, what they've accomplished and even when they fall in short, they haven't fallen short by huge amounts they therefore and to on the Year.
And you know, this is a team that should easily get to boil durability because they still have Northwestern and Rutgers at home. That's, I mean, those are two games. I think that they're going to win pretty easily, they should have beaten Purdue last week. The kind of let that one get away, they were very competitive when they went up and played at Michigan, you know? So this is a Maryland team that brings some interesting things
to the table. You know, you look at where Maryland has been best overall throughout the course of the season and it says Taylor said it is newsletter, you know, they've been very impressive at times through the air. And when you talk about Maryland's aerial attack, you're talking about tala Title, VII Aloha who he's completing. 74 percent of his passes. This year, 11 touchdowns to five interceptions over 1700 yards passing that is going to be an
interesting one for this. I you team because clearly I you secondary has struggled when it has mattered in Center these Particularly the Cincinnati game and the Nebraska game. Now, they did play better last week as they took on the Michigan Wolverines. But even that was to some degree undone by a lack of support on the offensive side of the ball for what the defense was doing. This is where ultimately, it's been more of a systems failure for Indiana than anything else.
You know, you'll get go in. You look at the, you know, some of the individual areas. Has just under water right now, in terms of points allowed versus Point scored. They're averaging 24 points a game. They're letting up almost 31 Maryland's, the opposite they're scoring 34 and they're allowing 22 and Maryland's gaining about a hundred yards more per game than Indiana is while allowing
about 50 yards. Less. So right now, despite it being at home, Indiana is an 11 and a half Point Underdog and You know, there's still you know they played well defensively last week but the reality is they're still going to likely be missing cam Jones, their talismanic middle linebacker and they're likely still going to be missing DJ Matthews on offense or at least he would be limited due to injury. So where does Indiana, you know,
how do they win this game? What is it that Indiana has to do in order to be able to be successful? Ultimately for me, Indiana, has to play its Defensive game of
the year. They you know, until the offense can get under against feet under it and until the offense can figure out something consistently over the course of multiple quarters, in terms of either getting a running game going mean, I may be getting more jail and Lucas out there may be getting more Josh Henderson out there you know or until the defense is able to generate the turnovers that they desperately need in order to flip field position and give
their offense, a shorter field. You know that goes those to me, are the main areas where Indiana might be able to be successful in this game. Maryland is they've yet to show that they are able to stop opposing offenses. Consistently in the Big Ten with the exception of Michigan state who's got its own set of problems, you know.
But Purdue was able to able to find ways on the road against Maryland to pick at their defense and put themselves in a position where they were able to do have a lead at the But the game and hold off what Marilyn was trying to do. I don't know if Indiana can do that. We, you know, we saw them to some degree. Pull that formula off against Illinois. They were able to stick around in the game. They were able to make that drive towards the end.
You know, it is that a comparable game, you know, the Illinois and Maryland are kind of comparable teams in terms of what they've been able to accomplish so far this season? You know, Maryland, I think it's clearly not as good as Michigan state, but I think they're also clearly better than Nebraska and they're probably about on Our with Illinois. I just worry about the implications of when this game
is being played. I think Illinois to some degree that win for Indiana. Give them all credit for it, but they to some degree got caught, flat-footed Illinois. Did without a lot of tape on IU or understanding what they're going to do. That's gone Indiana's. The other six games of Indiana on tape now and it's clear that opposing defenses. Have been able to diagnose what Indiana's able to do and where their deficiencies have been Especially in the offensive line.
So all said, I mean it's not a whole lot else to say about this because ultimately Indiana's going to have to play. I think the best game that they played all year to be able to have a chance at slowing down Marilyn and I think that that's going to have to start with the defense.
So you know, I think if Indiana ends up with fewer than three turnovers generated in this game, I don't if they can't get to that I don't see a route to Victory because I just don't think that this offense is Going to be able to generate enough on its own to put. Are you in a position to win and I hope I'm wrong. I hope this IU team is able to figure out some magic sauce that, you know, puts them in a position where they're in it in the fourth quarter and they're
able to pull out a victory. I just at this point, I'd be surprised because Maryland really does feel like they're putting together a season that is impressive by their standards and impressive by Indiana standards. So, I do think it'll be somewhat close for a little bit. I think in the, an old play, fairly well at home early on. So I'm going to say, you know, I think ultimately this game ends up being a Maryland Victory by probably two touchdowns.
So we'll say 34 to 20, as the final score with Marilyn coming away with the Victory. And, you know, if that's the right, the scenario that happens. Then that really puts I you with their backs up against the wall for the rest of the season, as you know, I think any path to a bowl or at least boils ability has to go through a win in this game for Indiana and I just I'm having a hard time seeing it right now, but we'll keep our fingers crossed that I use
actually able to pull it off. Anyway, quick preview, this week, some unusual recording circumstances is some technical issues have faced as the last couple of days. But appreciate you folks, listening will be back on Sunday. Talk more about what happened in this game, so be sure to stay tuned here.
To Crimson cast is will continue to have our coverage of both IU basketball and I you football left of my you basketball coverage coming up later this week as we talk about some preseason expectations and so forth. And of course, get ready to preview Indiana traveling to Rutgers to take off the Scarlet, Knights. I'll talk to you folks. Later. Catch you folks on the flip side, bring back the by C, so everybody.