Indiana's Troubled 2021 Season Hits Rock Bottom in 38-3 Loss to Rutgers

Indiana committed six turnovers and its offense was non-existent once again in a brutal 38-3 home loss to Rutgers at Memorial Stadium. The Hoosiers are now 2-8 on the season, and 0-7 in the Big Ten.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Indiana coach Tom Allen never allows injuries to be an excuse for losses, and he's not about to start now. And even though his team is missing several stars at key positions, he expects the next man up to play well, regardless of the circumstances.

He certainly thought that would happen in Saturday's game with Rutgers at chilly Memorial Stadium. After all, he said his Hoosiers had a good week of practice and this was Rutgers, a team they had beaten five years in a row. Despite all the injuries, Indiana was still a 7-point favorite against a Rutgers team that is the worst in the Big Ten.

But this turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, right from the very first snap. The Hoosiers turned the ball over a whopping six times and got blown out by the worst team in the league, 38-3.

And now Indiana, which is 2-8 overall and 0-7 in the Big Ten, is clearly that worst team in the league.

"There's really nothing positive to say,'' Allen said. "It was very disappointing and very  frustrating, a bad performance by our team. I'm very upset about it, and we'll just have to evaluate it and address it and continue to press on.

"Yeah. I know we've got a whole bunch of guys out, but that's not the point. To me, that's just irrelevant. You still play hard, you still play physical, you still execute and do what you're coached to do. We didn't do that. Not at all.''

Indiana was a mess from the very first snap of the game, when true freshman quarterback Donaven McCulley botched the exchange and fumbled. Rutgers recovered — the very first snap.

It would be the first of six turnovers on the day of eye-bleeding brutal offensive play, two fumbles my McCulley, two interceptions by Jack Tuttle, who was seeing his first action in three weeks, a fumble by wide receiver Miles Marshall and a sixth on special teams when Ty Fryfogle botched a punt.

No one wins a game with six turnovers, and Indiana didn't have a chance either. They were literally giving away points the entire game, putting the Indiana defense in an unenviable position of trying to defend very short fields.

Here's what Rutgers did with the six turnovers:

• McCULLEY FUMBLE (15:00, first quarter): Rutgers scores a touchdown four plays later on an 8-yard run by Isaih Pacheco, going 21 yards in four plays to take a 7-0 lead.
• TUTTLE INTERCEPTION (0:10, first quarter): Tuttle came in on Indiana's third possession and had two straight three-and-outs. On the first play of the fifth possession, he throws into double coverage and is intercepted. Rutgers takes over at the Indiana 24, and kicks a field goal to make it 17-0.
• TUTTLE INTERCEPTION (9:24, second quarter): Indiana was moving the ball, but then Tuttle threw an interception in the end zone on a woefully underthrown ball.
• McCULLEY FUMBLE (1:39, second quarter): Indiana went for it on fourth down at the Rutgers 40, but McCuilley mishandled that snap too, and Rutgers recovered but did not score.
• FRYFOGLE FUMBLE (12:35, third quarter): The usually sure-handed Fryfogle muffed a punt near the goal line and Rutgers recovers at the 10. They would score a touchdown on the first play to go ahead 24-3.  
• MARSHALL FUMBLE (1:08, fourth quarter): Marshall fumbles after a completed pass from Grant Gremel, ending Indiana's last scoring threat. Rutgers would run out the clock.

Indiana quarterback Donaven McCulley (0) barely gets off a pass as he is tackled by Rutgers defensive lineman Julius Turner (50) during the Scarlet Knights' 38-3 win. (Marc Lebryk-USA TODAY Sports)

Execution issues, to be sure, and struggles right from the start.

"It was a bad exchange. I fumbled the ball and they recovered it. You can’t start the game like that,'' said McCulley, who was 7-for-20 passing for 98 yards and ran 10 times for just 7 yards. "It just set the tone for the rest of the game, and it was just hard to come back from that.''

There's no doubt that things never got better. Rutgers scored 17 points off the turnovers, going a grand total of 31 yards for those 17 points.

It was a mess, from start to finish. Nothing went right, for 60 minutes

"You've got six turnovers. Not handling the football right from the first play on. And just execution in that regard. Dropped balls, missed tackles,'' Allen said in short, quick burst, biting his lip often. "And I get it. I understand this is hard. That's fully understandable. But you have to also take a strong, hard look at yourself and how you want to be known and remembered and identified by how you play the game. And that's what it is.

"You put that out there, and you put it on film. And you've got to own that. And we've got to own that as coaches. So that's the part that really disappoints me was just the lack of execution and just doing things the right way.''

Allen said he didn't expect such a brutal performance because the Hoosiers had practiced well all week. He was expecting a solid performance.

He didn't get it. Not even close.

"To me, that's the biggest thing that sticks out is that's not how we practice. Had it been that way all week, I kind of maybe would have felt a little different,'' Allen said. "But you fumble the first play of the game, I think you just unfortunately set a tone that we never seemed to snap out of. But, yeah, this was very, very frustrating.''

It's been a tough ask for McCulley at quarterback. He's only 18 years old, and just a true freshman who just arrived on campus in June. Injuries to the guys ahead of him — Michael Penix Jr. (shoulder), Tuttle (foot) and even Dexter Williams (torn ACL in the spring) has forced him into duty far too soon.

Tuttle, who led a scoring drive on Indiana's first possession of the Oct. 23 game with Ohio State but injured his foot on the touchdown pass, has missed the ensuing two games. He was ready to play by Saturday, but didn't play well. He was 5-for-6 passing for 26 yards, with those two interceptions.     

"The thought process was that obviously Jack was the starter before getting injured, but we really weren't sure when the week started how that was going to play itself out and how that looked,'' Allen said. "But I felt like that he made progress each and every day.

"We knew that Donaven was going to be the starter because we just didn't want it to be the case where we didn't know how long Jack would be able to go. We felt good by the end of the week he was going to be able to play. And then kind of see how he did when he was in there, how his foot held up and then expected to play both of them. We wanted to kind of complement the two together, based on how each was doing and how the game was flowing, we'd kind of just gauge the rest of it from there. And then, obviously, Jack ended up getting injured. It wasn't even the foot that he had already injured. It's a different one. Once he went down, obviously, Donaven took the rest of it.''

Jack Tuttle was back on the first for the first time in three weeks, but the Indiana quarterback threw two interceptions and left with another injury. (USA TODAY Sports)

Indiana couldn't run the ball well, either, with starter Stephen Carr out with an ankle injury. Walk-on backs Davion Ervin-Poindexter and Chris Childers combined for just 22 yards on 11 carries. Walk-on Charlie Spegal (5 carries, 14 yards) and true freshman David Hollomon (2 carries, 13 yards) saw action late as well.

The Hoosiers, who were 6-1 in Big Ten games a year ago, are now 0-7 in the Big Ten and have lost six straight games. But Saturday was the worst, a no-show at home against a team they've owned during the Tom Allen era.

"It wasn’t really what Rutgers did,'' McCulley said. "I just need to complete better balls and throw better passes to put my receivers in a position to just make plays, and I feel like I didn’t do that.

"You just have to keep pushing. It’s going to get hard, like your life is going to be hard. You just have to keep fighting. You can’t give up. We’re just going to try to win these next (two) games.

Indiana has its final home game of the year on Saturday against Minnesota, a 6-4 team that lost to Iowa 27-22. The Hoosiers close the season on Nov. 27 at Purdue, with the Old Oaken Bucket at stake. 

No. 19 Purdue lost on Saturday as well, falling to Ohio State 59-31 to fall to 6-4 on the season as well. To read the Ohio State-Purdue game story, CLICK HERE.

Watch Tom Allen's postgame press conference