Bison Bites: Dispatch #1

Data bites touching on: Andre Carter, IU's QB experience, and James Evans' potential

Introducing Bison Bites! Each dispatch of Bison Bites is intended to be a quick-hitting list of approximately 3-5 statistics of interest between typical Bite-Sized Bison posts. Admittedly, this was the original intent of this newsletter, until it grew into something more! 

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Let’s do this!

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Andre Carter posted the 3rd-highest PFF Defensive Grade among Group of Five-to-Power Five transfers during the 2022-2023 seasons.

If you read the recent BSB piece that calculated the defensive dropoff in transfers that moved from G5 to P5 football in the last couple years and then used that calculated dropoff to forecast Indiana’s 2024 defense, you might have seen mention of Andre Carter.

Carter was the only defensive player on the IU roster last season to play 300+ snaps at a G5 school and then play 300+ snaps at the P5 level. Only 11 P5 DEs did so in the 2022-23 seasons, according to Pro Football Focus and On3 databases. 

Carter’s grade (76.4) was 3rd among those 11. That graded 11th among qualifying DEs in the Big Ten in 2023. Now, imagine Carter in a defense that prioritized havoc from the DE position – like the new Indiana staff. Unfortunately and fortunately, he is on the Jacksonville Jaguars’ roster now.

Indiana ranks 3rd in the Big Ten in snaps played at the QB position.

Quarterback is a weird spot for the conference – as it is for most conferences at the moment – with 9 projected starting QBs being acquired from the transfer portal. Passing in general is in a weird spot too, as only 5 Big Ten teams finished in the top-80 passing offenses in 2023. QBs were bad, and so were most of their offensive schemes. Indiana fell somewhere in between, with a lean toward bad offensive scheme.

With Kurtis Rourke coming to Indiana from Ohio, the Hoosiers have the third-most experienced QB in the conference, and with Tayven Jackson backing him up, the Hoosiers have the third-most experienced QB room of the 18 Big Ten teams heading into 2024. In addition to this, my former colleague at Eleven Warriors, Dan Hope, put together a small table that determined that Indiana ranks 4th in the conference in combined starts (38) and 7th in average recruiting stars (3.5).

Combine that with a transplanted JMU staff that does this, and the position is looking like one of the best in the conference at the moment.

How things change in one calendar year. There will be more on this in a future BSB.

James Madison 2023 punter Ryan Hanson finished 2nd nationally in punts downed inside the opponent 20-yard line (31).

This is significant because JMU’s special teams coordinator in 2023 was Grant Cain, who is also Indiana’s special teams coordinator (and tight ends coach) in 2024. James Evans came on strong and was one of few bright spots for Indiana in 2023. He finished 17th in the FBS in yards per attempt (45.7), but he only recorded 19 punts downed inside the opponent 20-yard line, which tied for 56th in the FBS and was likely tied to an offense that ranked 107th in available yards gained last season. It seems like the sky is the limit for Evans in 2024, and he could be one of the best in the country. This small website, Stay Alive in Power Five, ranked him 7th nationally going into 2024.

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