With an astounding 41.9 points per game, the Indiana Hoosiers have the 4th ranked scoring offense in the country in their second year under offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan. You could be forgiven for a double-take
there, as the legendary NFL Coach has not, in fact come out of retirement. In fact, Indiana’s Shanahan is not related to the NFL coaching Shanahan family whatsoever, and is instead a young guy who was a former Pitt WR and was still pretty new to coaching when Curt Cignetti hired him at JMU.
The main calling card of Shanahan’s scheme is that it’s highly RPO dependent. The Hoosiers run a lot – but many of those are RPO runs, and then the passing offense is almost entirely built on quick throws.
Check out this piece from Addicted to Quack, and Oregon site. It’s a few months old now as the two teams played earlier in the season, but it’s a phenomenal film study.
QB Fernando Mendoza has been the talk of the town, as the former Cal QB came in this year and took over on his way to leading the only undefeated team this year and winning the Heisman trophy. He’s averaging 229 yards per game with an impressive 71.5% completion rate and 9.4 yards per attempt with 33 TDs to only 6 interceptions.
Mendoza has been incredibly consistent all year. Whether he’s blitzed or kept clean, his numbers stay fairly steady as he tears up teams with slants all game long. He consistently gets the ball out in less than 2.7 seconds, and the bulk of his attempts, completions, and yards this year have all come from between the numbers.
At receiver, slot man Omar Cooper has been the most dynamic player on the team and leads with 804 yards. He’s fast, slippery, and is excellent at gobbling up yards in open space – he’s forced 24 missed tackles and averages 7.1 yards after the catch. Flanking him is Elijah Sarratt, a big-bodied transfer from JMU. Sarratt gets a lot of attempts as a contested catch guy, but has generally struggled to come down with them. Where he has excelled, though, is catching a 6 yard pass and bullying his way to a first down when the Hoosiers need one.
Finally, EJ Williams and Charlie Becker rotate for the final spot. Becker is a younger player, but is a guy who caught my eye more than anyone else in film study. He’s an excellent route runner, has 0 drops this year, and has come down with 9/10 contested catches. He leads the team with an absurd 17.3 average depth of target and 3.41 yards per route run. Essentially, he gets downfield and just makes big plays.
In the rushing game, the Hoosiers mostly split between Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black. They’re both similarly sized 210-lb rushers who excel as power runners. Neither are particularly explosively fast, but they churn up 5-10 yards at a time. Interestingly, both backs have had most of their success either rushing off of left end, or between the center and RG.
The Hoosiers play something of an inevitable feeling style of play. They rarely make mistakes – only giving up 7 interceptions and, somehow, only a single fumble (despite fumbling 6 total times… They’re bound to regress to the mean, right?). On top of that, they’re only averaging 3.7 total penalties per game. Meanwhile, they churn the ball in the run game and eat up yards with RPO slants in the passing game.
In a lot of ways, it’s a fairly similar offense to Georgia’s. The scheme is fairly different, but the philosophy is similar. Get the ball out quick to WRs that are good after the catch and let the RBs move the ball as much as possible up the middle.
The problem is that I don’t think any of the Hoosier’s running backs have the speed to go along with the power that UGA did, nor is Omar Cooper the athlete that Zachariah Branch is. Fernando Mendoza is a better passer than Gunner Stockton without a doubt…. but he also doesn’t have Stockton’s rushing ability that is a X factor for UGA.
So, in two games, Alabama’s defense held UGA to 21 and 28 points (with multiple of their scores in that 28 point game coming on short fields). And so, I think the Tide will similarly keep Indiana to around 20-24 points. The Alabama defensive scheme is built to have safety support ready to attack the slant spots off of RPOs, and the lack of RB speed will keep them from doing too much damage in explosive chunks, even if they find room to move the ball a bit.
Just have to hope the Alabama offense can outscore that.
Roll Tide.
