Pre-Spring Position of Interest: Left Guard

With three transfers and an injury set to influence the Indiana OL during the 2025 offseason, who will assume the LG position?

After discussing what seems to be the most significant question mark on the defensive side of the ball (Stud DE), let’s take a closer look at what seems to be the same for the offensive side: Left Guard (and/or Center). I’ll explain the parenthetical in a moment.

Tom Allen made some incredible hires during his tenure as head coach at Indiana – Kane Wommack, Kalen DeBoer, Mike Hart, Deland McCullough (again), and even Matt Guerreri (just a few years too early) – but the Bob Bostad hire before the 2023 season might have been the one most fated for long-term success at Indiana. This is ironic, given the amount of time it took to make a change at the position and how the lack of change seemed to plague some offenses during the Allen Era. But the hire had an immediate effect, as Bostad instantly began developing and building a competitive group and pulling Indiana out of the OL pit.

Now, the Hoosiers are investing more funding toward the position than ever, boosting Bostad’s salary from $700k to $900k in 2025 and shelling out for linemen like Notre Dame transfer interior OL Pat Coogan and Ohio State transfer tackle Zen Michalski. That’s in addition to keeping Carter Smith in town and wrangling former Wisconsin tackle Trey Wedig in his final year of collegiate ball before the 2024 season.

What makes Bostad’s early achievements at Indiana particularly spectacular is that he’s done most of his work with talent he inherited. For example, Mike Katic had played 2,598 snaps in his career before 2024, only 11% of them at center, and hadn’t been particularly impressive outside of pass blocking. But in 2024, Katic played all 830 of his snaps at center and graded as the second-best center in the Big Ten. Matthew Bedford also posted his career-best grade within Bostad’s OL, playing RG in 2023 before transferring to Oregon and playing 2 snaps in 2024. This also includes Carter Smith’s development into the 6th-best graded tackle in his draft class (2026) in 2024.

Now, Bostad and Company are loading up on raw offensive line talent for Bostad to mold into a unit that can take another step forward – by adding Coogan, Michalski, and Kahlil Benson.

But the biggest question within this unit is: Who steps up at LG?

Why is LG a position of attention?

Drew Evans was likely not expected to start at LG in 2024. Bray Lynch was the expected guy there, but Nick Kidwell’s season-ending injury seemingly required Lynch to move over and opened up the LG spot for Evans. Then when Evans went down with an Achilles injury late in the season, Indiana was down to its fourth guard in Tyler Stephens. And as the quality of defensive fronts spiked at the end of the season, it was fairly evident that if Indiana wanted to compete to its full potential, it needed to build up its weakest points on the line.

That’s not to say Lynch and Evans weren’t key cogs in the machine that was Indiana’s offense in 2024. Evans, a former walk-on at Wisconsin, posted the best PFF grade at LG for Indiana since Wes Martin in 2018, and Lynch posted the best RG grade since Dan Feeney in 2016. Further, they were both sophomores in 2024!

Mike Shanahan, as discussed in a recent BSB, runs an offense that naturally makes life a bit easier on his offensive lines, which helped for roughly 75% of Indiana’s season in 2024. Highly suggest reading the associated BSB to learn more about this, but if not, the graphic from Parker Fleming at College Football Insiders below helps convey this idea a bit. The closer a team is to the green cluster, the better life is for its offensive line.

But when competition ramped up – Michigan to Ohio State to *cough* Purdue to Notre Dame – Lynch graded in just the 7th percentile among FBS offensive guards. That objectively needs to improve for the better of the two starting guards.

And as it stands, Lynch will most likely be the guy at LG in 2025. I currently have the OL projected as the following:

• LT: Carter Smith

• LG: Bray Lynch

• C: Pat Coogan

• RG: Kahlil Benson

• RT: Zen Michalski

That’s not terrible news. This OL could be successful with Lynch at LG. It’s more about the ceiling of the unit.

Let’s explore some ideas.