Indiana Defensive Line Overpowers Michigan State With Sacks, Tackles For Loss

Indiana’s defense looked vulnerable early against Michigan State, but it dominated the final three quarters with seven sacks and 15 tackles for loss as the Hoosiers won 47-10 and improved to 9-0.

Indiana's Mikail Kamara sacks Michigan State's Tommy Schuster at Spartan Stadium. / Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Containing Michigan State quarterback Aidan Chiles would be one of Indiana’s biggest challenges going into Saturday’s game against Michigan State..

And early on, he burned the Hoosiers in a variety of ways. The 6-foot-3 sophomore completed three of his first four passes, including a 33-yard strike to set up a Michigan State field goal, which gave Indiana its first deficit of the season. 

Chiles converted two third-down plays with his legs on the next drive, and Indiana had trouble containing the Spartans’ screen game. He scrambled to evade several pass-rushing Hoosiers, then threw on the run for an 18-yard touchdown to wide receiver Nick Marsh, who tip-toed the end zone boundary. 

After two Michigan State drives, Indiana trailed 10-0, and the dynamic Chiles was a handful. The Hoosiers hadn’t faced that much adversity all season, but they knew how to handle it.

“10-0 away in the Big Ten? Psh, let’s go play,” Indiana defensive lineman Mikail Kamara said. “That’s all it was.”

“Cool, calm, collected. That’s what they preach to us,” Indiana defensive lineman James Carpenter said.

Indiana's Rolijah Hardy (21) and Marcus Burris Jr. (92) chase Michigan State quarterback Aidan Chiles at Spartan Stadium. / Dale Young-Imagn Images

The rest of the game took a completely different path. Michigan State generated 123 yards of offense in its first two drives, but it totaled just 75 yards across its final 10 drives. That stretch included five three-and-outs and three drives with negative overall yardage. Indiana safety Amare Ferrell intercepted Chiles twice, pushing Chiles’ season total to 11, tied for second-most nationally.

Carpenter admitted he had bad leverage on one of Chiles’ big plays early. He said defensive tackles coach Pat Kuntz said the 10-0 deficit was the defensive line’s doing and that they needed to do a better job corralling Chiles. Carpenter thought they did a better job in all of those areas on their way to a 47-10 victory.

“I think it was just us getting our footing in,” Kamara said. “I think it was just, again, we’ve been playing at home for a while and this was our first away game in a while. I think we had a little bit of nerves, a little jitters, and then once we started getting snaps, started getting going, we just locked back in. That’s all it came down to.”

Indiana’s defense finished the game with seven sacks, its most since eight sacks in a win against Illinois in 2017, and 15 tackles for loss, its most in a game since at least 2005. 

Michigan State finished with minus-36 rushing yards on 32 attempts, which includes yards lost from sacks. That marks the fewest rushing yards allowed in Indiana program history. Saturday’s game was the sixth time this season Indiana has held an opponent under 100 rushing yards, tying the 1990 Hoosiers for most in a single season since at least 1950.

Coach Curt Cignetti said postgame that Indiana created havoc up front and swarmed to the ball. He thinks the Hoosiers play with a relentless edge defensively and are never satisfied. But Saturday may have been their best game yet. 

“That’s really impressive. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen those kinds of numbers on a team that I’ve coached,” Cignetti said. “That’s a great credit to our defensive players, staff, and they got after them up front. You gotta win up front. That’s the first thing you gotta do to win games, win up front on both sides of the ball. I know we did knock the quarterback out at one point. But wow, yeah, I mean it was pretty dominant. It got pretty dominant there at one point.”

Michigan State quarterback Aidan Chiles (2) sacked by Indiana defensive lineman Mikail Kamara (6) at Spartan Stadium. / Dale Young-Imagn Images

Kamara led the way in an overpowering performance from the defensive line. He finished with 2.5 sacks, which is tied for sixth-most in a game in Indiana history, and increased his season total to 9.5, good for a sixth place tie on Indiana’s single-season leaderboard. He also made 4.5 tackles for loss, tied for third-most in a game in program history and the most since 1997.

Cignetti said Kamara’s twitch and explosion stand out, and he saw that type of play from him throughout the spring and fall. Carpenter considers Kamara one of Indiana’s hardest workers and credits his personal success to his understanding of the big-picture defensive scheme.

“They’re just dominant,” linebacker Aiden Fisher said of the Indiana defensive line. “No matter who’s in the game, no matter what front we’re in, it’s just dominant play all across the board, especially Mikail Kamara. Everybody’s got the national attention on him, and they should. He’s a great player, and he does phenomenal things for us.”

Kamara thinks he has taken his game to another level. He said the key is to get off the ball quickly, then play with a good combination of power and finesse. 

But he made sure to shout out his teammates and coaches postgame. He’s learned a lot from defensive tackles coach Pat Kuntz and defensive ends coach Buddha Willliams, and said his individual success wouldn’t be possible without other defenders doing their jobs and defensive coordinator Bryant Haines dialing up the right plays. 

That combination leads to outcomes like Saturday, when Kamara, Carpenter, Isaiah Jones, Jacob Mangum-Farrar, Lanell Carr Jr., CJ West and Tyrique Tucker were all credited with at least half of a sack. Fisher, Terry Jones Jr., D’Angelo Ponds and Rolijah Hardy added to the effort with tackles for loss. 

“It’s a team sport, man,” Kamara said. “... At the end of the day, our d-line is one of the best in the country, and we just gotta keep putting that on tape every single week.”

“I know when other guys watch tape, the opponent watches tape, I know when they get to the game I know they’re a little bit nervous. And I know it breeds our confidence, because we see us win on swipes, we see us win on straight power, we win in every single facet.”

Five of Indiana’s six sacks came in the second half. As the offense got rolling, scoring 21 points in the second quarter and 12 in the third, the defense knew Michigan State would be in frequent and obvious passing situations. Kamara said that allowed them to pin their ears back and get off the ball quickly in pursuit of the quarterback. 

Indiana held Michigan State scoreless across the final three quarters and allowed just one red zone appearance all game. Michigan State finished 5 for 15 on third down and 1 for 4 on fourth down. 

Kamara agreed it was their most relentless performance of the season.

“For sure. It’s not the last, though, but this is definitely trending in the right direction,” Kamara said. “We still got a lot of things to clean up, which is probably scary for anyone else we have to play. But I like the way we’re playing for sure.”

Michigan State fans chanted “overrated” at the Hoosiers early in the game. Kamara said they heard that, along with plenty of other chirping, but they didn’t let it affect them. It sounded much different by the end. 

“Then all of a sudden it was silent,” Kamara said. “That’s the best feeling.”

Indiana defensive lineman CJ West pursues Michigan State quarterback Aidan Chiles. / Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Indiana improved to 9-0 on Saturday and moved up five spots to No. 8 in the AP Top 25 Poll on Sunday. The first set of College Football Playoff rankings come out Tuesday, and all signs point to the Hoosiers making the first bracket projection.

Kamara and Carpenter were part of Cignetti’s successful James Madison teams. They came to Indiana wanting to prove themselves at the Big Ten level, and they’ve played key roles in putting the Hoosiers atop the Big Ten standings at 6-0 and achieving the program’s first 9-0 start.

Belief in their head coach opens their mind to even greater heights.

“There’s no ceiling, bro. We just gotta keep on winning, keep doing what we do, go 1-0 every single week so we can hopefully go out there and win a natty,” Kamara said.

“It’s what we set out to do from the jump when we came in in January,” Carpenter said. “Coach Cig came, like he said, he wasn’t taking a back seat to anybody. This isn’t a surprise to us. We’re gonna keep it going.”

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