Bison Bites: Dispatch #14
Data bites touching on: Kaelon Black's role in Indiana's backfield, interesting trends from Indiana in 2024, and various teams' drive progressions and outcomes.
This edition of Bite-Sized Bison was produced on August 6.
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If you’re new enough to Bite-Sized Bison, you might not be familiar with 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.
Kaelon Black’s role in the backfield
I released the BSB preview of Indiana’s depth chart recently and received some questions about RB, where the depth is listed in this order:
Roman Hemby
Lee Beebe
Kaelon Black
Black was named to Bruce Feldman’s Freaks List at The Athletic this season, which is something Feldman has been doing since 2005. He reaches out to programs and scouts for nominations and information as he compiles the list. In 2024, he featured Jailin Walker.
Feldman noted that Black benches 415, squats 500+, and has a 40-inch vertical. Mikail Kamara was quoted saying: “He’s our biggest Freak for sure. When he lifts, everything moves so fast. He’s ridiculous. I’ve never seen him struggle (in the weight room). I saw him bench press 415 the other day, and it was butter. It touched his chest and went right back up. It looked like a warmup set. And he’s hella fast.”
Black’s inclusion on this list has many Indiana fans misplacing some hype on Black. This is who Black has always been. I wrote this about him after the 2024 Spring Game:
“Black looked tough. He saw green space on his first carry Thursday and turned the corner quickly for 24 yards. If you saw that run in person, the speed from Black was notable. On the next play, he popped Aiden Fisher pretty hard up the middle. Neither of these plays translated as strongly through the broadcast, but his explosion will be a weapon.”
It was more of the same in the 2025 Spring Game.
He is an insane athlete, but it hasn’t translated into workhorse production. Curt Cignetti has said before that staying healthy has been an issue for Black historically, and it shows. He’s only had one season with 200 or more snaps played. For reference, Justice Ellison and Ty Son Lawton played 385 and 389 snaps in 2024 – both had three and four seasons of 300+ snaps played, respectively. In Black’s lone full season, he ran the ball 145 times for 668 yards (4.5 yards per carry) and a TD at JMU in 2023.
He is absolutely a spark plug off the bench, but he is not a primary back. That is a role for Roman Hemby and Lee Beebe. Hemby has been a Big Ten starter for three years (bottoming at 471 snaps played in a season) and nearly cleared 1,000 yards rushing at Maryland in 2022. He also works in the passing game, where he’s caught 111 passes in the last three years, one of the highest totals in that span for a back of his profile. Beebe was UAB’s workhorse in 2024, playing 532 snaps, and was one of the most powerful backs in the nation – ranking 13th nationally in percentage of yards gained after contact (74%) – on his way to 884 yards (5.3 yards per carry).
See UAB’s logo on the chart below. This shows that Beebe, the lead back in that backfield, was simply running into a wall of defenders on each carry, yet found positive yardage. Beebe was a massive addition for Indiana, maybe even as massive as Hemby.
Source: Parker Fleming of CollegeFootballInsiders.com
The East-West Shrine Bowl put out its Shrine 1000 recently, a list comprised of 1,000 college players at all levels. Shrine works with NFL scouts and coaches to identify possible invitations each year, and this is the initial list. It’s a good indicator of not only who might get drafted but also who might receive invitations to camps as undrafted free agents. Indiana had 16 representatives on that list, including Hemby and Beebe. The entire list is as follows:
RB Lee Beebe
SAF Devan Boykin
C Pat Coogan
WR Omar Cooper
DE Stephen Daley
SAF Amare Ferrell
LB Aiden Fisher
RB Roman Hemby
DE Mikail Kamara
IOL Bray Lynch
QB Fernando Mendoza
CB D’Angelo Ponds
DT Dominique Ratcliff
WR Elijah Sarratt
OT Carter Smith
DT Hosea Wheeler
Here is a chart plotting each team’s number of Shrine 1000 players against its preseason ESPN SP+ rating.
Source: Quinn MacLean of SumerSports.com
This is a much more trustworthy source for understanding who some of the key difference-makers will be on this 2025 Indiana team. Black’s inclusion on the Freaks List seems more like a recognition by his teammates and coaches for the work he’s put in and the insane athleticism he has. Black is also one of the leaders in the locker room. He was one of the first JMU transfers to step up as a leader when Cignetti was transplanting his staff and culture into the IU program. He’s very important to this team.
So what might his role be on the field? Well, it does depend on Beebe’s health. Beebe has been banged up while in Bloomington, which has limited him in camps. Black’s role may be outsized in volume to start. He is someone who can work in the passing game and is a firecracker off the bench, as Indiana fans have seen in Spring Games. If he stays healthy, he should see much more volume in 2025 as RB3 than he did in 2024. He just won’t lead the team in rushing.
This is a good opportunity, though, to discuss the first Hoosier who shocked me at his Pro Day and never got a chance in the NFL – LB Clyde Newton in 2017. Newton recorded 50 tackles in a stacked LB room in 2015 before moving to RB for 2016 and never seeing much action. He posted a vertical that would’ve placed second among LBs in the NFL Combine – 0.5 inches shy of one of Feldman’s 2016 “Freaks”, Haason Reddick of Temple – and a 40-yard dash that would’ve placed 5th. He was not what Feldman might consider a “Freak,” but his numbers were better than Devine Redding’s, who participated in the same Pro Day, and he left that day as the most impressive raw athlete of the bunch – Redding, Mitchell Paige, Dimitric Camiel, Ricky Jones, Marcus Oliver, Dan Feeney, and Ralph Green.
Interesting nuggets from 2024 BSB database
As part of my Master’s in Data Science curriculum, I recently built a database for the 2024 college football season – filled with team-level data and entirely local (only accessible to me) for the foreseeable future. With this database, I was able to uncover some interesting nuggets related to Indiana.
Indiana ranked 86th in pass percentage on second down (45%). However, the Hoosiers ranked 5th in EPA/play on second down. That means Indiana found a significant amount of success on the ground on second downs. The staff lifted its ceiling at the RB position this offseason, meaning this trend could continue.
Indiana was second in the nation in defensive havoc rate, creating havoc instances – pass pressure, turnovers, forced fumbles, TFLs, etc. – on 19.2% of plays. Surprisingly, Duke finished just ahead of IU, at 19.3%.
Indiana ranked 36th in third-down success rate (44.3%), but relied primarily on the passing game to find that success. The Hoosiers ranked 90th in yards per third-down carry but recorded the 9th-best EPA/play when passing on third down. Fernando Mendoza will have big shoes to fill here.
Drive Progression and Outcomes Charts
Also related to the aforementioned database: The chart below shows Indiana’s 2024 drive outcomes, which is a good way to convey offensive efficiency and firepower.
Notes:
Indiana crossed the opponent’s 40-yard line on 55% of its drives, and 80% of those drives breached the red zone. 85% of those drives resulted in touchdowns.
When Indiana crossed the 40, it remained aggressive. Of the drives that crossed the 40 but didn’t enter the red zone, only 15% resulted in an attempted field goal; however, 44% resulted in turnover on downs. 18% were touchdowns.
A somewhat surprising note was that of the drives that didn’t cross the opponent 40, only 50% of them ended in punts. The rest ended as follows: 18% clocked out (end regulation or half), 13% turnovers, 12% touchdowns, 5% turnover on downs, 2% field goals.
For comparison, here is Purdue’s chart, where the Boilermakers failed to cross the opponent 40-yard line on 64% of their drives.
And here is Ohio State’s chart, where the Buckeyes crossed the opponent 40-yard line on 57% of their drives.
As always, I’m grateful for the insights you provide. I feel that I am better informed and can set reasonable expectations.