Indiana Secondary Highlights List of Open Competitions Entering Fall Camp

Indiana coach Tom Allen held his first presser of fall camp on Tuesday and said that he expects open competition at nearly every position group on the roster, but particularly in the secondary.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Entering his seventh year as head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, Tom Allen has a team with a lot of new faces. 

The Hoosiers brought in 25 transfers for 2023 to go along with 15 incoming freshmen, giving IU a whopping 40 new scholarship players on its roster. The team is not lacking experience, much of which has come at other schools, so Allen expects open competition at nearly every position group entering fall camp. 

In particular, Allen mentioned the defensive backfield as the position group with the most open competition. Indiana lost veteran, All-Big Ten cornerbacks Tiawan Mullen and Jaylin Williams, as well as safeties Devon Matthews and Bryant Fitzgerald, all multi-year starters.

"The one that probably sticks out the most would probably be the secondary," Allen said. "Both the corner position, as well as the safeties, I just think that with the number of turnover and guys that had played for several years here, [they] did such a great job. So those guys graduating and moving on to the NFL, it's really critical that we find the top guys." 

Despite widespread changes, Indiana's secondary returns a few familiar faces that project to log heavy minutes. Defensive backs Noah Pierre and Josh Sanguinetti are all but confirmed starters, and they're two players on the 2023 roster who were present in 2019 and 2020, when the team hit its highest points under Allen. Pierre has experience at cornerback, but in 2023, he took hold of Indiana's husky position, a hybrid safety-linebacker role. Sanguinetti played 11 games at safety last year.

Defensive back Noah Pierre is entering his sixth-year at Indiana under head coach Tom Allen, and is expected to be a team leader in 2023. 

© Rich Janzaruk/Herald-Times / USA TODAY NETWORK

Cornerbacks Kobee Minor, Jamier Johnson and Nicolas Toomer — transfers from Texas Tech, Texas and Stanford, respectively — will likely challenge for starting roles in 2023. The Hoosiers also brought in a pair of JUCO defensive backs in Tyrik McDaniel and JoJo Johnson, while safeties Phillip Dunnam and Louis Moore appeared in all 12 games during their first seasons at IU in 2022.

Indiana also has a quartet of young talent in the secondary in redshirt freshmen Jamari Sharpe and James Monds III and incoming true freshmen Jordan Shaw and Amare Ferrell. All four were ranked as three-star prospects on 247 Sports, and the trio of Shaw, Sharpe and Monds III all originate from Florida, where Allen has famously landed most of his team's defensive backs. 

Monds III and Sharpe redshirted in 2022 and only appeared in five games combined, while Shaw and Ferrell have obviously never taken a snap in a college football game to date. The four freshmen likely will not start, but could push for second string backup roles and slide in should injuries arise. 

Altogether, it really is a wide open position group behind Pierre and Sangiunetti, as Allen said. Fall camp should reveal who has physically improved the most over the offseason, and which of the many candidates fits best in new defensive coordinator Matt Guerrieri's system. 

While Allen said the secondary's competition entering fall camp stuck out the most to him, he mentioned practically every position group on the roster when listing off open competitions. Quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight ends, offensive line, defensive line — you name it. The head coach even made sure to reiterate that there's a kicking battle going on in camp between freshman Nicolas Radicic and redshirt sophomore Chris Freeman. 

The only position group Allen did not mention on Tuesday as having open competition was the linebackers. Sixth-year senior Aaron Casey led Indiana in tackles last year, and Austin Peay transfer Joshua Rudolph should help bolster the middle linebacker position alongside Casey. Other returning linebackers such as Matt Hohlt, Kaiden Turner and Aaron's brother Jared Casey should all be locked into starting or significant second string roles as well. 

Transfers like Jacob Mangum-Farrar (Stanford), Lanell Carr Jr. (West Virginia) and Anthony Jones (Oregon) should help Myles Jackson at the outside linebacker and bull positions.

Allen also gave critical updates on the state of the wide receiver and offensive line rooms. The coach said that redshirt sophomore pass-catcher David Baker has received an NCAA Medical Hardship Waiver for 2023, while fourth-year offensive lineman Cameron Knight has retired from football due to ongoing injuries. Allen said that Knight has graduated from IU.

Allen was also asked what the team needed to do on the field in order to return to the success it enjoyed in 2019 and 2020. 

"The two things that stick out the most was our ability to create takeaways defensively and to protect the football in offense so that the turnover ratio, which is obviously something we've always emphasized," Allen said. "We did a really good job of that in '19 and '20."

As Allen said, it's obvious that every college football team wants to have a good turnover ratio, but forcing more takeaways as a defense stands out as stark area of improvement needed for Indiana in 2023. Over 24 games in the last two seasons, the IU secondary came up with just 12 interceptions. That stands in contrast to the 24 interceptions Indiana's defense racked up in 21 combined games in 2019 and 2020, when the Hoosiers possessed one of the most opportunistic secondaries in the country. 

With a wide cast of new players in the cornerback and safeties room, as well as three critical returners in Pierre, Sanguinetti and Dunnam, expect the competition for snaps in Indiana's secondary to be a major talking point this fall. 

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