BLOOMINGTON — Curt Cignetti, beginning the day he first arrived at Indiana, spent the entire offseason talking the talk.
He talked with a brash confidence that wasn’t often associated with IU football over the years, and deliberately inspired Hoosiers fans to think the same way. Cignetti always acknowledged that his players would have to back it up on the field and make the fans believe in them, but asserted that they would — he never suggested the possibility that Indiana wouldn’t back it up.
Ultimately, it was nine months of talk, without any meaningful football on the field. Saturday’s game against Florida International was the first true look at what Curt Cignetti’s Indiana is at the beginning of his tenure, what he wants it to be, and what could keep it from getting there. And IU’s 31-7 win at Memorial Stadium on Saturday showed all of those things.
Plenty to like
For most of the first half, Indiana showed its potential to be a very good team.
Yes, grains of salt are necessary when analyzing this game against a Conference USA team that’s unlikely to be a bowl contender. But IU showed a lot of positive signs to be excited about. The running game was dominant all day, with a strong run-blocking performance by the offensive line and running backs who capitalized on it. Quarterback Kurtis Rourke made use of his weapons and rarely put the ball in harm’s way. IU’s offense looked really strong in the first half.
If the Hoosiers run the ball as effectively all season as they did Saturday, they may have a lethal rushing attack. IU racked up 234 rushing yards as a team on 40 attempts.
“I feel like a lot of the run plays were working really well,” tight end Zach Horton said. “I feel like we were just picking out what we want and seeing what they were doing and adjusting to it, and keep picking them apart. That’s what I liked about the run game.”
There’s a lot to like about IU’s defensive performance on Saturday. The Hoosiers performed well at all three levels. They allowed only one play over 15 yards all game, and came up with some big plays of their own. Their tackling was sound, especially considering they didn’t go live and tackle during camp at all.
Linebackers Aiden Fisher and Jailin Walker flew around the field making plays, and Fisher recorded a sack and two tackles for loss. The defensive line was sufficiently disruptive, as Mikail Kamara, James Carpenter, Marcus Burris Jr., Tyrique Tucker, CJ West, and Lanell Carr Jr. all finished with at least 0.5 tackles for loss — IU had eight total TFLs and four sacks. IU’s secondary provided strong coverage, for the most part, with no major lapses. And Amare Ferrell capitalized on a deflection for his first career interception.
The Hoosiers shut out FIU in the second half and held the Panthers under 200 total yards. IU will face plenty of tougher opponents this year, but this was an encouraging start.
“We were swarming the football, doing a nice job of — in the pass game for the most part, putting pressure on the quarterback, created a turnover or two,” Cignetti said. “And so, again, other than the one drive, I thought I saw pretty significant improvement and the team had a chance.”
Red flags
Cignetti grew increasingly displeased with the way his team played coming out of halftime, particularly on offense. He reached a boiling point after a frustrating sequence late in the third quarter.
IU faced third and four from its own 39-yard-line, and guard Drew Evans committed a clear holding penalty. After the teams moved back 10 yards for third and 14, the Hoosiers tacked on five more penalty yards with a delay of game. Cignetti, enraged over the implosion, walked 35 to 40 yards down the sideline, seemingly just letting out his frustration.
The Hoosiers committed nine penalties as a team on Saturday, with eight on IU’s offense. They can get away with that against FIU, but giving away 80 penalty yards could be a big problem against Big Ten opponents.
“Too many penalties. There were quite a few penalties in scrimmages. It was a focus to eliminate the penalties,” Cignetti said. “We’ve got to do better in that area.”
Indiana has been synonymous with sloppy football far too often in recent history. For Cignetti to get the program to where he envisions it, his team will have to clean things up and sustain those improvements over a significant period of time.
There’s plenty of other things IU has to fix. The pass-blocking was not good enough, with Rourke facing immediate pressure far too often. If the protection doesn’t improve, that will be problematic in Big Ten play.
But an even bigger concern is the trouble Indiana had playing with a big lead. At the end of the first half, with a 21-0 lead, IU’s defense sat back in a lot of zone coverage and allowed FIU to move downfield and score. The Hoosiers weren’t completely conservative in the second half — they still took some deep shots and took some risks that didn’t work out. But once IU built its 21-0 lead, it’s as if a different offense played the rest of the game.
“I think we had some negative plays, whether that’s a missed assignment, maybe a sack or just missing a read on my part, and that really can kill a drive. And I think we had one too many of those today, especially in the second half,” Rourke said. “I think there’s a couple shots that we missed, a couple throws that I missed that we could’ve really put another score on the board and really kind of ended the game a lot earlier than we did. The chances were there, and we’ve just got to hit them next time.”
The more the Hoosiers play with fire with leads, the more likely they’ll get burned at some point. This was one game, and perhaps it’s not indicative of a long-term trend. But these are the sorts of struggles that would make it a lot harder for Cignetti’s Indiana to really blossom.
Building home-field advantage
The Memorial Stadium atmosphere started strong for Cignetti’s first game.
The bleachers weren’t completely full with fans shoulder-to-shoulder, but the Hoosiers drew a solid crowd. The student section, in particular, showed up on Saturday. IU fans created a loud environment for most of the first half, as the team got off to its good start.
But the student section’s halftime exodus — the same thing that’s regularly occurred in Bloomington for years — significantly lowered the energy in the stadium in the second half. And the team noticed.
“There’s a lot of things we’re trying to change here. Another thing we’re trying to change, a tradition, is we’ve got to keep the people in the seats after halftime,” Cignetti said. “Need to create a power four environment in the stadium. But we’ve got to play better, too.”
In fairness, Cignetti can only change so much by his first game. He can’t snap his fingers and force students to stay for the second half, even after his loud offseason. Indiana could have played the best first half in college football history against FIU and the students still wouldn’t have stayed.
IU’s policy allowing fans to leave and come back into the stadium makes it easy for students to flee — they know they have the option of returning if they want, but very few do. Perhaps changing that policy in the future would make it a more difficult decision to leave at all.
But it takes time to build the sort of culture Cignetti envisions for Indiana football. Some pockets of the fan base are already bought in enough to change their mentality and their behavior, but for a large amount of the fan base, it won’t happen overnight. It might take a signature win, or a prolonged winning streak to open the season, for the student section to get the message. And IU may need a winning season to start seeing a major effect at the gates — next year and beyond.
Still, the players appreciated the robust tailgating scene they walked through on “The Walk” and the strong atmosphere at the beginning of the game. It was particularly eye-opening for transfers new to the Power Four level.
“It (the atmosphere) was good, until halftime. Everybody left,” running back Ty Son Lawton said. “But the walk, even the walk here, everybody tailgating, I’ve never seen that before. I came from Stony Brook. Stony Brook, we didn’t have a lot of fans like that. JMU, JMU was definitely, it was good. But here is just different.”
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