Reasons for Concern & Optimism around Indiana's Starting OL

Curt Cignetti announced the starting OL unit on his first weekly radio show. It came with somewhat of a surprise and a new understanding.

On his first episode of his weekly in-season radio show Thursday night, Curt Cignetti announced that Kahlil Benson will start at right tackle on the offensive line. He also noted that the 2025 OL will begin with the following configuration:

• LT: Carter Smith

• LG: Drew Evans

• C: Pat Coogan

• RG: Bray Lynch

• RT: Kahlil Benson

Throughout the 2025 calendar year, since the OL personnel was locked in for the season, I’d been projecting the line to look like the following:

• LT: Carter Smith

• LG: Bray Lynch

• C: Pat Coogan

• RG: Kahlil Benson

• RT: Zen Michalski

The analysis didn’t need to run too deeply throughout the offseason to get a read on what the offensive line might look like. Carter Smith and Pat Coogan would hold down LT and C, and since Benson has always played on the right side, he would take RG (his natural position), leaving LG for Bray Lynch. That left Zen Michalski for RT. Any deviation from this configuration seemed to require a returning Drew Evans (or maybe a promising Adedamola Ajani) supplanting Benson at guard, freeing Benson to compete at RT, which was a concerning prospect for Michalski’s ability at RT. The exact root of Benson starting at RT seems unknown by anyone but the staff.

As I wrote in the recent Touts & Doubts, I was hoping to hear more about Michalski separating himself at RT, but much of the word coming out of camp was that Benson was getting reps at the position. With Michalski’s recent media availability, it seemed like Michalski would, in fact, be the guy, so the news of Benson’s start at RT was somewhat surprising.

Benson is Seemingly Out of Position

What has been fairly clear during Kahlil Benson’s career is that coaches like to play him on the interior. He was recruited as a guard out of Mississippi (top-800 recruit), developed as a guard at Indiana, where he played 649 snaps in 2022, and slotted at RG at Colorado in 2024. His time at RT for Indiana in 2023 was more of a reflection of that unit than it was of his optimal position.

Upon Bob Bostad’s arrival at Indiana before 2023, Indiana’s RT position was in shambles. Parker Hanna had just played the most snaps at RT in 2022 and played very poorly, and Josh Sales (a redshirt freshman at the time, now at Austin Peay) was expected to be the RT for Indiana in 2023. An out-of-position Benson was better than any option Bostad had for RT in 2023, and while he was okay in run-blocking scenarios (a huge emphasis for that 2023 offense), he really struggled in pass protection (more on this below). There was a glimpse of this same trend in Colorado, when Benson briefly played RT for a game against Baylor.

The alarm is not in response to decisions being made by the coaching staff; it’s in response to the options the staff has to choose from and the renewed understanding of the ceiling for this offensive line, if it needs to play Benson at RT.

Why the Concern?

The concern is not necessarily existential. Indiana will play most of its opponents fine if Benson remains at RT. We most likely wouldn’t see many concerns until Illinois or Iowa. I wrote this in a recent CrimsonCast x BSB crossover piece:

“Which teams on the schedule are prepared to take advantage of (Indiana’s pass protection)? It’s really just Penn State, Oregon, Illinois (maybe?), and Iowa. Those four teams finished in the top-46 in sack totals last season. The rest of Indiana’s conference opponents? Bottom-50. There isn’t a gauntlet of defensive lines awaiting Indiana, not even as much as last season.”

The concern is the team’s ceiling – games against Oregon, Penn State, postseason opponents, and perhaps Iowa in Iowa City. Those are the games that will decide where Indiana stands among the Big Ten contenders. Those are also the types of games that put the Indiana OL in a blender in 2024 – Michigan, Ohio State, and Notre Dame. Kurtis Rourke experienced 33% of his season-long pressure and 60% of his sacks in those three games alone.

This particular pass-protection-against-major-opponents concern isn’t limited to Benson either. From Week 11 on in 2024 (weeks where IU played Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, and eventually Notre Dame) Bray Lynch graded in the 30th percentile of Big Ten guards. Drew Evans – would be fair to say is a slight step down from Lynch – was hurt and didn’t play them at all. Slotting Benson at RG with Lynch at LG (as projected for most of the offseason) seemed to raise the ceiling for this OL in 2025, while maintaining its floor with Evans in depth. Needing to move Benson to RT runs back the 2024 guard play and exacerbates the drop-off from Trey Wedig.

Consider this from a recent BSB:

“None of this bodes well for the RT spot, particularly in pass protection. During his full season at RT for Indiana in 2023, Benson posted one of the worst pass-blocking grades among FBS tackles (42.4) and allowed 36 QB pressures – for reference, Trey Wedig led the team with 15 allowed QB pressures in 2024. Benson’s single-game experience at RT for Colorado in 2024 against Baylor was much of the same (41.0 grade, 7 QB pressures allowed). For Michalski, there is little sample size to assess. The meat of his experience is the 90 snaps he played at LT for Ohio State in 2024, against Oregon and Nebraska, and in both games, he failed to post a pass-blocking grade higher than 16.7 and allowed 7 QB pressures over both games.

“Whoever is playing RT for Indiana in 2025, it is going to be a journey. The right side of the line will be interesting.”

Adding to that excerpt: among 318 qualifying FBS tackles in 2023, Benson allowed the 12th-most QB pressures and graded 25th-worst on pass-blocking snaps.

Is There Reason for Optimism?

Of course there is.

1.) Bob Bostad is the offensive line coach. He is so valuable that Curt Cignetti gave him a $200k pay raise after 2024, raising his salary to $900k, which would’ve been 90th among FBS assistants last year. Bostad also has shown marked increase in the quality of the Indiana OL since arriving before the 2023 season.

In Benson’s particular case, he showed development from 2022 to 2023, when he spent the offseason with Bostad. See the jump in his PFF Grade between the 2022 and 2023 seasons in this graphic (made following the 2023 season).

2.) Mike Shanahan’s scheme also contributes to the optimism here. It naturally takes pressure off of the OL in pass protection, with its RPO concepts and quick pace. Brandon Thorn, who writes the Trench Warfare newsletter and is a thought leader around OL play, said a year ago that “balanced or run-heavy offenses with a lot of play action or RPOs, those are generally the schemes and systems that are more friendly and conducive for success for offensive line because it minimizes the most difficult part of playing the position." That is exactly what Shanahan runs – or at least what he ran in 2024.

The chart below, from Parker Fleming at FootballOutsiders.com, lays out offenses by action. Teams in the green cluster are types of offenses Thorn was noting. Indiana is ever so slightly beneath that cluster. Given how much RPO/play action Fernando Mendoza ran at Cal last year (see the chart) and the talent the Hoosiers added at RB, I’d expect Indiana to climb into that green cluster in 2025.

3.) In addition to the scheme, Indiana now has a QB with two working ACLs, and that QB faced his own pressure at Cal last season. Mendoza was the 4th-most sacked QB in the nation in 2024, yet (as shown in the chart below) he was able to find efficiency through the pressure. He most likely will not need to fight through that kind of pressure to find success at Indiana, regardless of who’s at tackle.

4.) Even with the current configuration, this unit should be an effective run-blocking line. Benson is particularly stronger in run-blocking than in pass-blocking, and that’s always been the case. Every other individual on the line is also very solid at run-blocking. Indiana ran the ball 38 times per game in 2024, good for 45th among FBS teams, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that number increased by opponent in 2025.

5.) Lastly, there is significant depth on this OL compared to others. Indiana now has Zen Michalski as a backup for the tackles and guards – presumably mostly for the left side but also now for the right – and it has a promising Adedamola Ajani on the interior. It also has positional flexibility for emergencies – an answer for every position, which not every team has – with Michalski able to step up at either tackle spot, Michalski and Ajani available for either guard spot, and Lynch available to drop down to center.

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