2025 Touts & Doubts for Indiana Football

Assessing points of excitement and points of concern for Indiana going into the 2025 season

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As we prepare for Week 1 this weekend, it’s time for the annual BSB Touts & Doubts, where some of the less obvious points of excitement are highlighted, while some points of concern are addressed as well.

The obvious touts include Fernando Mendoza (read more on his season preview here), Elijah Sarratt, Omar Cooper (read more on his season preview here), Carter Smith/Pat Coogan, Aiden Fisher, and D’Angelo Ponds. The points noted here are slightly more general and/or less discussed.

First, though, ESPN SP+ recently released its updated preseason ratings (Indiana is 23rd), meaning the win probability model adjusted slightly. Here are the expected win totals for Indiana, based on 20,000 simulations, as well as the win probabilities for each game.

What remains unchanged is that the three key games for Indiana are Illinois (59%), Iowa (44%), and Wisconsin (68%). This aligns with what Kelley Ford discovered when attempting to chart expected one-possession games (see chart below). Indiana is expected to have just three. The Hoosiers need to take care of business in expected wins, punch up against Oregon and Penn State, and put its foot on the throats of those three closer-rated opponents if it is to make the CFP again.

Now, to the Touts & Doubts…

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Touts

Defensive Front

I expect this to be the strength of this football team in 2025. What Bryant Haines did with the front the staff built for 2024 was extremely impressive. It was far from perfect, which showed in certain scenarios like red zone reps against higher caliber teams, but that’s to be expected of a front that was rebuilt in months versus built on a foundation over years. And somehow, Indiana was, by far, the best defense against the run in the second half of the season.

Indiana finished with the highest season-long EPA/play against the rush too.

And in 2025, that defensive front might be even better. The Hoosiers retain Mikail Kamara (15 TFLs, 10.0 sacks) and Aiden Fisher (118 tackles); Tyrique Tucker (graded 9th among Big Ten DTs) fits into CJ West’s role; Hosea Wheeler and Dominique Ratcliff bring particular versatility that was largely unseen in 2024; Rolijah Hardy (6 TFLs, 2.0 sacks, 2 INTs, 2 forced fumbles in only 170 snaps) is set to fill Jailin Walker’s role; and Kellan Wyatt – nearly identical in size to Kamara, at 6-2, 257 – brings a set of edge and space skills that didn’t exist in last year’s defense.

The talent is deeper. There will be constant rotation from play to play. There is much more size. But most importantly, there will be an extreme permutation of looks Haines can show to opposing offenses. Some sets will feature three LBs, some will feature five DLs, some may only have one DE, and some may have Wyatt with his hand in the ground. The possibilities are endless, meaning there will be few situations this defense won’t have answers for.

Red Zone Defense

Tied to the last point, Bryant Haines has said this offseason that he and Curt Cignetti would like to be better in the red zone, where the Hoosiers ranked 47th in touchdown rate allowed (56%). Teams didn’t often get into the red zone, a third-best 32 attempts, but when they did, Indiana struggled to stop them at times, allowing 18 touchdowns – good for 53% of the points allowed by Indiana’s defense in 2024.

Stopping a few more of those touchdowns could go a long way for the Hoosiers, and Haines addressed this by making the changes noted in the point above – adding size, depth, and multiplicity up front.

Running Backs

Indiana’s rushing attack had some great moments during the 2024 season, such as 1.) Justice Ellison’s performance against Nebraska, 2.) decisively ending the Washington game on the last drive, and 3.) fending off Michigan when the Wolverines targeted the Indiana receivers on defense. But a closer look at the numbers suggests a bit of season-long inefficiency in the run game. The Hoosiers finished their season ranked 55th in EPA/rush, 71st in line yards per rush, 72nd in yards after contact per attempt, and 68th in yards per rush. The Hoosiers also finished with the 24th-most carries for negative yardage.

Luckily for Indiana, one of the easiest positions to revitalize through the portal from season to season is the RB position, but, for uber-talented RBs, it usually comes at a price. Indiana decided to pay that price and raise its ceiling of talent when it added Roman Hemby from Maryland and Lee Beebe from UAB.

With Hemby, Beebe, and Kaelon Black, Indiana has RB depth that has become a fairly rare commodity. Hemby, who nearly rushed for 1,000 yards as a redshirt freshman at Maryland, will be looking for a shot at the NFL behind a much better OL situation than the Terps could offer, and Beebe, who ranked 11th among qualifying RBs in percentage of yards after contact (74%), will also be in a significantly better OL situation, as UAB ranked 97th in yards gained before contact. See UAB and Maryland in relation to Indiana on the chart below.

Source: FootballOutsiders.com

Here are some quick facts that help to define each RB:

• Hemby is a durable workhorse back, with 593 career touches and just one fumble. He’s recorded 119 first downs via rushes and 27 touchdowns overall, and while he’s a more volume-based back, he has breakaway speed, as he’s earned 34% of his career yardage via carries of 15+ yards.

• Beebe, as noted above, recorded 74% of his 2024 yardage after contact, and among 96 FBS RBs with similar rushing volume as Beebe, he ranked 17th in total missed tackles forced, with 46.

• Black – recently noted for his inclusion on Bruce Feldman’s Freaks List – struggles with durability but he is explosive. Nearly 18% of his career carries have gone for 10+ yards because he hits the hole as strong as anyone.

• Each of the three RBs have recorded seasons of 27+ receptions. Hemby has done it three times and is one of the most targeted active RBs in the passing game, ranking 3rd among RBs in receptions (111) since 2022. Ellison led Indiana RBs with just 13 catches last season.

Hosea Wheeler

There aren’t many DTs built like Western Kentucky transfer Hosea Wheeler, which explains why high-caliber teams were fighting hard for his commitment this offseason. I wrote this about him in a recent BSB:

The Western Kentucky DT is going to be the next Indiana DL akin to CJ West, though his play style is far different. He will have NFL scouts at IU games, and he really distorts this depth chart because of his athleticism. He is the third-largest DL on the roster (6-3, 298), yet he played 62% of his 2024 snaps outside of the B-gap! That’s the 7th-most among 286 qualifying DTs last year. He’s in a category of his own, able to play nearly anywhere along the line. That will influence both the number and type of DLs on the field for any given play.

The closest comparison to Wheeler from last season’s DL is probably James Carpenter, but Wheeler brings even more versatility and a higher ceiling. Watch this video for some film study on him.

Brendan Franke on Kickoffs

One very low spot for Indiana in 2024 was at kickoff specialist. The Hoosiers had four kickers attempt kickoffs, and Quinn Warren graded the best, which was 129th in the FBS (18th in the Big Ten). Texas State transfer Brendan Franke, though, graded 11th in the country on kickoffs.

The contrast is stark. Franke’s average kickoff traveled 70.2 yards, compared to Warren’s 63.4, and only 13.9% of Franke’s kicks were returned, versus a whopping 48.6% of Warren’s. Amazingly, 64 of Franke’s 79 kickoffs were touchbacks, while only 24 of Indiana’s 93 kickoffs were touchbacks. Lastly, Franke surrendered 2.3 yards per kick, while Indiana surrendered 9.0.

This is one of Indiana’s biggest improvements and has not been discussed much at all.

QB2

Indiana fans certainly don’t want to see him often in 2025, but signs seem to suggest Alberto Mendoza is a quality backup QB. He’s received plenty of praise from the staff, and he beat out former Old Dominion QB Grant Wilson for QB2. Wilson isn’t exactly a world-beater, but he graded well next to a solid crop of Sun Belt QBs during his only full season of work in 2023. For Mendoza to beat out a more experienced Wilson suggests to me that he could fill in when needed, despite his lack of career snaps.

Doubts