An Ode to Mike Penix Jr.
A former Hoosier competing for the Heisman Trophy
I miss Mike Penix, man. The former Hoosier, along with former IU offensive coordinator Kalen DeBoer, defined much of the goodwill felt throughout the fanbase during the Tom Allen Era, even today. Now, with former Indiana assistants William Inge (co-defensive coordinator) and Nick Sheridan (tight ends), DeBoer and Penix are tearing up the Pac-12 on their way to a potential College Football Playoff appearance.
Obviously, don’t forget about former IU defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, who has already led South Alabama to a 10-win season and has lots of excitement around his name for potential head coaching vacancies this offseason (Michigan State, maybe Miami, etc.). But this is about Penix, so I’ll leave that there.
Since he transferred, the Heisman front-runner has been the source of much pain, jubilation, and debate within the IU fanbase, beginning in 2022 and escalating into 2023 as Indiana drops below what many fans thought was “rock bottom” and Washington smashes through its perceived ceilings simultaneously. It also doesn’t help that Indiana fans carry their afternoon apathy into Pac-12 After Dark each week. Week 7 was a good example, as Penix – after an IU 52-7 loss with its third OC since DeBoer – logged what many coined a “Heisman Moment” in the Huskies’ 36-33 win over Oregon and fellow Heisman candidate Bo Nix, vaulting Washington to No. 5 in the most recent AP Poll.
At Indiana, he never played more than six games in a single season. He tore his ACL in his right knee in 2018, suffered a sternoclavicular injury in 2019, tore his ACL in his right knee again in 2020, and suffered an AC joint (shoulder) injury in 2021. He ended his career at Indiana having played 1,133 snaps in four seasons. Then, he transferred to Washington before the 2022 season and has played 1,303 injury-free snaps in the 19 games since.
Before getting into the numbers, I personally feel great pride in Penix, after talking with him throughout much of his high school recruitment and covering him at Indiana. He is genuinely one of the kindest people you’ll meet in football, and juxtaposing his unbridled excitement in 2018 about coming to Bloomington with the pain he felt during his experience here is sad. Watching him come back from that in the strongest of ways has been fun, and while it’s a bittersweet situation for Indiana, it’s also a huge indictment on how football operations are handled in Bloomington. It’ll be a weekly reminder as long as he’s playing at Washington. Penix (and Indiana fans) certainly deserved better, and the criticism toward those inside Memorial Stadium and Mellencamp Pavilion is well-deserved.
So let’s catch up with Mike after his transfer to a serious football program.
So, from the chart above, whenever Washington uses Penix in 2023, it gains an estimated 0.66 points per play, meaning the Huskies are earning 6 points every 9 plays involving a Penix pass or rush. No wonder they’re 11th nationally in passing attempts per game (38.5)!
Much of this begins with his protection. Washington’s offensive line is graded 6th in the nation in pass-blocking, and Penix is 6th in the nation in fewest pressured dropbacks (20.5%). In his three years at Indiana, Penix was under pressure on 33.3% of his dropbacks. DeBoer’s system has a knack for keeping its QBs clean, though. Within that percentage at Indiana, Penix was only under pressure on 23% of his dropbacks under DeBoer in 2019. Once DeBoer left, he was under pressure on a whopping 37.5% of his dropbacks between 2020 and 2021.
Note: Darren Hiller should probably never maintain an FBS position again after his years at Indiana.
While it certainly hasn’t been long since Washington experienced this level of offensive success, the Huskies offense finished the 2021 season rated 112th in the nation offensively by ESPN SP+. The next season – both DeBoer and Penix’s first seasons in the program – Washington finished the year 9th in the same rating. The offense, in one offseason, jumped from 115th in total offense per game (323.4) to 2nd (516.2).
In 2023, DeBoer and Penix have opened up the deep game a bit, as Penix’s air yards per attempt have jumped from 8.8 to 11.9 and the Washington offense is gaining a – somehow improved – 543.7 yards per game (3rd nationally). Penix has thrown for more than 300 yards in each game this season, and he’s hit 400 three times.
Penix is on pace to finish 2023 with the second-most passing yards in a season by a Washington QB (4,602). Obviously, with each postseason game Washington plays, that could change, but he’s already No. 1 with 4,642 in 2022. In fact, in his 19 games at Washington, he currently sits at No. 5 in Washington‘s record books for career passing yards. If he finishes with the figure he’s on pace for, he would end the regular season 3rd all-time among Washington QBs – in just two seasons. Second is also within reach given postseason play.
Through the transition in 2021, DeBoer hung onto Jalen McMillan (No. 38 2020 national recruit), Rome Odunze (No. 135 2020 national recruit), and Ja’Lynn Polk (top-500 2020 national recruit and 2021 Texas Tech transfer), all of whom are now graded as top-10 Pac-12 WRs in 2023 – Polk is No. 1. And when McMillan went down with an injury this year, Giles Jackson – a former top-300 2019 national recruit and Michigan 5-foot-9 WR transfer – stepped in Saturday and caught 5 passes for 68 yards and a TD.
This is much of what Indiana fans saw with DeBoer as offensive coordinator in 2019 – pass-catchers eat, no matter who they are. Whop Philyor (No. 1,412 2018 national recruit) had by far his best season with DeBoer, racking up 1,002 yards on 70 catches that season. None of Indiana’s top pass-catchers in 2019 were top-1,000 recruits, but the Hoosiers boasted the 15th-best passing offense in the nation. Peyton Ramsey, who actually threw twice as many passes as Penix in 2019 due to Penix’s injury, was also not a top-1,000 high school recruit, but he finished that season with the 32nd-best PFF passing grade in the nation. Penix was 18th.
Now, Penix and DeBoer are employing that same system – which empowers the QB, keeps its QBs clean, and maximizes its pass-catchers – with even more talent in Washington, both on the offensive line and at WR.
“I’ve got the best receiving corps in the country,” Penix was quoted saying in the last week by The Seattle Times. “If anybody else is saying anything different, they’ve got to turn on the tape. Those guys show it every day.”
According to ESPN SP+, Indiana has had six top-40 offenses in the 21st Century, and two came from the Penix-Peyton Ramsey duo at QB in 2019 and the Penix-Jack Tuttle duo in 2020, really the only offensive bright spots analytically since Kevin Wilson’s departure in 2016.
When considering the high amount of pressure Penix was under all season in 2020, the 114th-ranked Indiana rushing attack, and the realized competence of Nick Sheridan as an offensive coordinator, it’s pretty clear that Penix (and Jack Tuttle, of course) shouldered far more of the load that season than was understood at the time. Indiana’s defense stole the show week-after-week and was 13th nationally in takeaways, but IU’s lead RB Stevie Scott averaged only 3.6 yards per carry, and if Penix wasn’t heaving the ball to Fryfogle for 19.5 yards per catch, he was hitting Philyor or Hendershot underneath (both pass-catchers saw dips in performance from 2019). Miles Marshall – now at Miami (OH) – was his 3rd WR. Yet, he ended the season with the 25th-best PFF Offensive Grade among the nation’s QBs.
One of the most unfortunate results of the Mike Penix saga at Indiana is that there is so little of Penix that will live on in documentation. Indiana fans will obviously always remember the pylon stretch to beat Penn State and his and Fryfogle’s second half at Ohio State in 2020, but in terms of records – as he’s rewriting Washington’s record books – the only major notes of Penix are his 491 yards against Ohio State (second-most by an IU QB in a single game) and his 29 career passing touchdowns (10th-most in an IU QB’s career). Yet, Penix represents one of the greatest recruiting victories in the Tom Allen Era (top-500 national recruit, pulled away from Florida State) and arguably the most talented passer in program history, as we glimpsed at Indiana and are now seeing in full-bloom at Washington.
There’s likely a lot that will go unknown, such as exactly how healthy he ever was when he was considered “healthy” – see his 2021 season when he, by his own account, wasn’t cleared to play against Iowa but played anyway after crying on his apartment floor the day of the game – what could have been done to keep him at Indiana, and what might have happened if he did stay.
But what is known is that if he wins the Heisman and when he’s drafted into the NFL and if/when he has a lengthy pro career, he will have always been a Hoosier.