How Can Indiana's Defense Fix Struggles Against Dual-Threat Quarterbacks?
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The Indiana defense has exceeded a lot of expectations in 2023.
Coming off a disastrous 2022 campaign where his team surrendered 33.9 points per game, the 120th-worst mark out of 133 FBS teams, coach Tom Allen rebuilt his entire defense. He brought Matt Guerrieri to be the new defensive play caller, and a boatload of players from the transfer portal to restock the cupboards.
And it's worked.
Even after facing the high-powered offensive attacks of Ohio State and Louisville, the Hoosiers' defense is allowing just 19.5 points per game. That doesn't even take into account that Indiana State scored its only seven points off a Jaylin Lucas fumble, and that Akron scored 10 of its 27 points in four overtime periods. The Indiana defense has also held opponents to 106.5 fewer yards per game than it did in 2022.
Yet, the cream and crimson defenders have had one achilles heel through the opening month of the college football season — scrambling quarterbacks.
Now, saying that a defense is finding it difficult to contain a dual-threat quarterback is far from unheard of. Go all the way back to 2012 when Johnny Mannziel and Texas A&M upset Alabama. Even then, fans and pundits decided that one must have a quarterback who can punish a defense on the ground in order to stand up to the Tide.
Like a basketball player who stands 6-foot-8 but possesses the skills of a guard, there is no perfect defense against a mobile quarterback who can tuck and run or escape pressure to create new passing windows.
Akron quarterback D.J. Irons was a perfect example of this in Week 4. Even on plays where Indiana's secondary blanketed his receivers in pass coverage, Irons was able to break lose and hurt the Hoosiers all night with his running ability.
Irons finished the game with 18 carries for 141 yards and two touchdowns on the ground.
Similarly in Week 3, Louisville quarterback Jack Plummer was able to seal a 21-14 win for the Cardinals by breaking contain and scrambling for first downs several times on the final drive of the game.
For as well as the Indiana defense has played through four games, everyone recognizes that they have a problem with quarterbacks who can run the ball. Coach Tom Allen is working to fix it.
"We're going to do some things specifically in drill work as a defense to be able to work through this," Allen said Monday. "I got to do a great job simulating that. We're going to make some adjustments schematically. It hasn't been one of our strengths the last two weeks, and it's going to have to be [a strength] on Saturday."
Reading that answer from the Hoosiers' coach, you can see the dilemma the team faces. There is no easy fix to this problem. Some of it's having a more conservative scheme in place that better contains the quarterback. Other times it's as simple as asking defenders to react and tackle better on the field when they see the quarterback breaking lose.
Coaches have said it forever, and it still remains true — even the best defense can't take away everything. Everything is a give and take, especially with defending something as dynamic as a dual-threat quarterback.
"It starts with design, and what's the intention of the game plan going in, and what it is the pressure and amount of risk involved at times vs not," Guerrieri said when asked how his team can combat dual-threat quarterbacks like Irons.
"There were times that we took calculated risks to create pressure and it resulted in takeaways. There were also times where we did that and we weren't as disciplined as we needed to be from a rush lane stand point, and then you don't have eyes on him from there."
Both Guerrieri and Allen have emphasized the importance of a defenders' eyes over the past two weeks ad nauseam. It started with Allen harping on the lack of eye discipline that plagued his team's corners in the first half against Louisville, and led to several explosive plays for Jamari Thrash. This week, it's all been focused on how eyes relate to defending a scrambling quarterback.
"It's the balance of playing man vs. zone," Allen said Wednesday. "With a quarterback that is really athletic like that, the danger of playing man is that you don't have eyes on him if he breaks through the front line. So [against Akron] it was the challenge of being able to balance those two. If you play too much zone, you kind of create some spots where if they find those spaces, you give up yards that you don't want to give up."
"You got to make sure that you got eyes on him when he does take off, so that not everyone is just chasing their man and not seeing the quarterback."
Based on how much IU struggled to contain Irons, and how there were very few defenders ready to meet him in the second level on some of his later runs, it looked like the Hoosiers played more man than zone defense on Saturday.
Allen and others have referred to Maryland quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa as a similarly styled quarterback leading up to Saturday's game, but there's a distinct difference.
Irons ran more times during last Saturday's matchup than Tagovailoa has all season. The Maryland quarterback only has 11 recorded rushing attempts for 53 yards through four games.
That's not to say Tagovailoa isn't a mobile quarterback. It's quite the opposite, in fact. Tagovailoa uses his shiftiness to escape pressure in the pocket and keep passing plays alive, similar to what Indiana fans saw from Tayven Jackson in the second half of the Louisville game.
"We've got a big challenge for ourselves this week in a quarterback who can create off schedule," Guerrieri said. "He can run the ball, [and] he can throw the ball when the play breaks down. We need to be very disciplined with the way that we're containing the quarterback for sure."
The difference between Tagovailoa and guys such as Irons and even Plummer is their size. Both Irons and Plummer stand at 6-foot-4 and are far from string beans. Tagovailoa is 5-foot-11. Maryland coach Mike Locksley doesn't want his star quarterback on designed runs or scrambling every other play for yardage. The ball carrier on those plays takes an absolute beating, and it's a lot easier for a 6-foot-4 Irons to absorb those hits all night than it is for a quarterback who's shorter than the person writing this story.
Some might want Indiana to shift to a zone-heavy approach on Saturday after how badly Irons carved the Hoosiers up on the ground against primarily man coverage. But Irons didn't possess anywhere near the accuracy and arm talent of Tagovailoa, and sitting in zone against him is just begging to get shredded by a fifth-year quarterback.
So what should Indiana do?
Unfortunately, there is no perfect answer. That's the problem every defense faces against a dual-threat quarterback. But the stout Hoosiers' defense has to improve against these mobile quarterback that can scramble and create. On a team that is struggling mightily on the offensive side of the ball, there's very little margin for error the defense can allow.
Guerrieri said it best. The defense needs to be more disciplined. It needs to go from getting shredded by dual-threat quarterbacks, to only taking a few nicks and bruises from them.
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