Bison Bites: Dispatch #5

Data bites touching on: Indiana's experience at WR, lack of offensive ball movement in 2023, and a ratings jump for Byron Baldwin

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.

Bison Bites will be subscriber-only in the near-future, so if you like what you see, ensure that you are a paying subscriber to Bite-Sized Bison so you never miss a dispatch. For free subscribers, you can upgrade to paid here; for non-subscribers, you can subscribe here.

View previous Bison Bites dispatches here:

• Dispatch 4

• Dispatch 3

• Dispatch 2

• Dispatch 1

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Indiana’s 2024 WR room brings the most collective 2023 targets in the Big Ten.

Outside of snaps, targets are the most used measure of experience at the WR position, and Indiana’s 2024 WR room collectively brings the most in the Big Ten – and by quite a margin.

Data Source: Pro Football Focus

Pair this with Kurtis Rourke’s wealth of experience in relation to other projected Big Ten starting QBs, and Indiana owns one of the – if not the – most experienced collections of contributors to a Big Ten passing attack in 2024. Now, it’s up to Curt Cignetti, Mike Shanahan, and Tino Sunseri to ensure that the sum of the parts produces as such. 

[RELATED: Indiana 2024 Scholarship Chart]

The distribution of 2023 targets across Indiana’s WR room lay out as such:

• Elijah Sarratt – 99

• Miles Cross – 79

• Donaven McCulley – 73

• Myles Price – 62

• Ke’Shawn Williams – 52

• EJ Williams – 39

• Omar Cooper – 32

• Andison Coby – 12

Obviously, there is legitimate concern regarding whether the WRs making the jump to Power 4 play can translate, and that expands to all areas of the roster; and there is concern about how collecting pieces of a passing attack from five different programs (including Indiana) can mesh in one offseason, as six of these WRs and the QB will be gone after 2024. But to both of those concerns, experience can go a long way, and Indiana has one shot at making this experience count. 

Indiana’s average offensive drive in 2023 ended around the opponent’s 45-yard line.

There is a lot that goes into starting field position – primarily special teams but also defensive performance on the opponent’s previous drive and the offensive performance on its previous drive – but for Indiana in 2023, little was working at all, resulting in the 124th-ranked starting field position, with 73.5 yards to go (own 26-yard line) on average. On top of this, according to Brian Fremeau, the offense ranked 107th in available yards gained (38.8%), meaning the Hoosiers gained around 28.5 yards per drive on average. Indiana’s average drive advanced from its own 26-yard line to roughly the opponent’s 45-yard line.

Indiana was statistically expected to score 1.17 points at the outset of an average drive, which was good for 5th-worst in the Power 5, above only Florida, Illinois, Cincinnati, and Arizona State. It actually scored 1.55 points per drive (6th-worst in P5; 113th nationally).

JMU ranked nationally in each of those categories as follows:

• Average drive starting field position: 10th (67.0)

• Available yards gained: 38th (51.0%)

• Expected points per drive: 4th (1.66)

• Actual points per drive: 35th (2.62)

Indiana 2025 safety commit Bryon Baldwin makes the jump to four stars.

If you’ve been following Byron Baldwin’s offseason, this is not a shocker. He’s been opening eyes at regional camps, and I predicted a couple months ago that he’d be a consensus four-star recruit by the end of the cycle. He’s now ranked No. 319 in the nation and No. 28 among safeties. 

• Baldwin’s 247Sports profile

• Baldwin’s HUDL tape

The Hoosiers now rank 48th in the 2025 cycle, which is the program’s third-best ranking since 2014. The recruiting class has fallen off a bit (according to ratings) since it last appeared in Bite-Sized Bison, and if you’ve followed along in the BSB Chat (paid subscribers only), you’ve seen some of my thoughts around the decommits and new commits since the class was rated 26th nationally. 

As someone noted in a question to CrimsonCast recently, Indiana’s average rating per commit in the 2025 class is not impressive (2nd-worst in the Big Ten, above only Northwestern). As the entire 2025 class begins to take shape nationally, ratings will continue to change, as some have already begun to back off some Indiana commitments, and Baldwin continues to separate himself from the rest of the class in the process.

To any concern of Baldwin flipping to somewhere else before signing day, the odds seem low, as he’s the most vocal commit about the direction of the program.

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