Mitchell Paige didn’t have any answers.
The question: what’s wrong with IU’s struggling offense?
What had been the identity of the Hoosiers’ program under IU Coach Kevin Wilson has become its biggest problem.
“We’re just a little off,” Paige said. “We are going to look at the film because there has to be something there that we’re not doing, just a little extra push somewhere. Wherever it is, we have to score a lot more points.”
It just might just be everything.
Against Nebraska, the offensive line gave up three sacks and failed to open up holes for the running game. Take away junior Devine Redding’s long run of 33 yards and the Hoosiers only had 55 yards rushing on 29 carries.
That’s abysmal.
Junior quarterback Richard Lagow was solid, but not spectacular. His pick-six was costly and outside of the few scoring drives, he never found a rhythm. He isn’t the problem, but he needs to be sharper for this offense to not go on such long scoring droughts.
“I need to improve on a whole lot of stuff,” Lagow said. “I’m not going to sit here and name every single one because we might be here the rest of the night.”
The Hoosiers turned to junior quarterback Zander Diamont to provide a needed spark for the offense. He went five of seven for 49 yards passing and had 31 yards on the ground.
But he’s a gadget quarterback and offers certain skills that could help in spots. He showed Saturday he isn’t the answer for the offensive problems.
Too many times, the offense grinds to a halt inside within the 40-yard line.
Saturday, IU moved within to Nebraska’s 40-yard line seven times and only scored 20 points. That’s just not good enough to win games against BigTen teams.
What’s worse was IU’s execution on third downs, on which it converted only five of 15 opportunities. The problem there was the poor running game.
“We’ve got to find some run game,” Wilson said. “We’ve got to get into some manageable third downs and when we do, we’ve got to execute the third down. We’ve got to execute the scores on them.”
The Hoosier offense has talent and plenty of it, but everyone needs to execute better. The play calling has become ultra-conservative, further hampering an offense that is struggling to score points.
There weren’t many vertical plays called Saturday, and that could have been due to Lagow constantly being pressured by the Cornhuskers.
The play calling worked when it got creative, like on Redding’s touchdown when IU faked a reverse, opening a hole for Redding to exploit. This offense has the parts to be a successful unit — the coaching staff just needs to get creative to find the answers.
In the first two wins, IU played four good quarters of offense out of eight. Against Wake Forest, the offense struggled, and against Michigan State, it took a while to get going. The past two games, it has ebbed and flowed but never fully ignited.
The defense has played well enough to reasonably win all six games so far this season.
It’s time for the offense to put a full game together and help out its defense. If it doesn’t, the fight for a second straight bowl game might come up short.
