The mind of Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines never stops thinking about football. Not when he’s walking around Bloomington, nor when he’s eating dinner with his girlfriend, and especially not when he’s in his Memorial Stadium office.
Football, Haines said Friday in the Hoosiers’ team room after practice, runs 24/7 in his brain. It’s an obsession — and for the Piqua, Ohio, native, that’s not a challenge.
“I’m okay with it. My girlfriend’s probably not,” Haines said. “She probably wants to talk about normal dinner conversation. But if there’s a good two-ledge pressure out there that I think up, then I’m going to want to talk about it. And she usually hears me out, so she’s a good sport about it.”
But for Haines, a four-year starter on Ball State University’s defensive line from 2005-08, such a mentality is all he’s ever known. The 38-year-old is reaping the rewards.
When Curt Cignetti arrived as Indiana’s new head coach Nov. 30, he not only brought Haines with him from James Madison University but made Haines the highest-paid assistant coach in IU football history at $1.1 million per year.
Cignetti and Haines are entering Year 10 together. Their journey started in 2014, when Haines joined Cignetti’s staff to coach the defensive line and strength and conditioning at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Apart from 2016, when Haines left to be linebackers coach at the University of California, Davis, the two have been together ever since — from Elon University to James Madison and, ultimately, Indiana.
Cignetti said Haines is always evolving, trying to learn and find the edge. Such an approach is innately familiar to Cignetti.
“He’s a little bit like I am offensively,” said Cignetti, who played quarterback collegiately and has coaching experience at tight end and receiver. “His brain never stops working or thinking about football. I’m sure he goes home and he’s trying to get to the quarterback just like I’m thinking about something.”
Cignetti’s assumption was correct — and Haines has, evidently, enjoyed many successful brain-racking sessions.
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In 2022, James Madison’s defense graded as the 18th-best pass rushing unit in the country, according to Pro Football Focus. It was the Dukes’ first year playing at the Football Bowl Subdivision level, the highest in college football. The year after, the Haines-led unit finished No. 14 across Division I.
James Madison tied for second nation-wide with 47 sacks last season, with each of the team’s four leaders — Jalen Green (18 sacks), Jamree Kromah (nine), Mikail Kamara (eight) and James Carpenter (three) — earning All-Sun Belt Conference honors. Green won the conference’s defensive player of the year award. Kamara and Carpenter followed their coaches to Bloomington.
Players aside, Haines’ defensive scheme caused headaches for opposing Sun Belt offenses. Cignetti said results have been similar for Indiana’s offense during fall camp.
Despite his extensive defensive line background as both a player and coach, Haines is mostly hands-off with technique. He said he allows defensive tackles coach Pat Kuntz and defensive ends coach Buddha Williams to handle most of those responsibilities.
Instead, Haines focuses on creating pre-snap looks centered around deception to cause post-snap confusion and, in an ideal world, pressure on the quarterback.
“We believe in manipulating angles,” Haines said. “We do certain stunts and things like that. But also, I’m a big fan right now of tying the back-end, too. If I can show a picture to the quarterback that’s not true, it adds to his clock in terms of identifying what we’re in.”
Indiana’s defense finished tied for 106th in sacks last season with 20. That unit’s sack leader, senior outside linebacker Lanell Carr Jr., is back on the team this fall.
Haines said when he looked at last year’s film, he wasn’t sure what type of player Carr would be. Through three weeks of fall camp, Haines has been “really pleased” with Carr, whose twitch and suddenness create problems for offensive tackles.
The Hoosiers also added redshirt senior nose tackle CJ West, who transferred from Kent State University after spring practice. The 6-foot-2, 315-pound West impressed Cignetti and staff with his size and athleticism.
Carr and West are two new faces for Haines, but Kamara and Carpenter are not. Together, the quartet creates Haines’ best hope of generating pressure without exotic blitz packages.
But for those four to do their job, Indiana’s secondary must keep its end of the bargain, and Haines frequently reminds his cornerbacks and safeties of that.
“I tell the guys all the time, ‘Each tenth of a second that we add to [the quarterback’s] plate is another tenth of a second for Lanell Carr, Mikail Kamara, James Carpenter to get home,’” Haines said.
While at James Madison, Haines brought pressure from all levels of the defense. Aiden Fisher and Jailin Walker, the Dukes’ starting linebackers who transferred to Indiana over the winter, blitzed at 16.2% and 15.1% rates last season. Three safeties — DJ Barksdale, Chris Chukwuneke and Jarius Reimonenq — each rushed at clips of 13% or better.
Haines wants his defense to be fully bought into rushing the passer, even those who aren’t tasked with attacking the line of scrimmage. Manipulation requires all 11 players, from the defensive line to the secondary, for it to look believable.
The result is a variety of unique, creative blitz packages that led to the Dukes being one of college football’s best pressure-generating teams under Haines.
“When we blitz, we blitz with a purpose, with authority,” Haines said. “There’s usually some design behind the blitz, like I believe in layers to blitzes. We don’t just run down Main Street saying, ‘Hope we get to the quarterback.’ Like, throw a layer on that thing — add a wrapper, add a looper. So, layers and angles.”
Indiana has spent the offseason trying to implement the intricacies of Haines’ scheme and helping the players find their niche roles within it. Thus far, the defensive line has meshed well, and the group has no ceiling in what Haines described as a defensive lineman’s dream scheme.
“To be a front guy in this defense, there’s no better place to be,” Haines said. “You want to be a front guy in a defense that philosophically believes in what we believe in. It’s really the second-level guys that have to make that picture whole. Those front-line guys have to go eat, and those guys are eating right now.”
Cignetti said Haines’ scheme, from pressure packages to manipulative looks, has evolved quite a bit from when they started working together.
Haines’ overarching intent is to free up the team’s premier pass rushers and provide them with opportunities to win one-on-one matchups. It’s a process he embraces throughout the week leading up to games, scanning film for the opposing offense’s weaknesses to put his players in the best positions for success.
“I want to weaponize my good players,” Haines said. “If they have a bad center, then James Carpenter is going to be a problem. How do I do that? How do I get that done?”
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While his defense is new to Indiana, Haines isn’t. Ball State played at Memorial Stadium twice during Haines’ playing career, traveling to Bloomington in 2007 and 2008. In the first trip, Haines made 13 tackles, three sacks and one tackle for loss in a Cardinals victory. The year after, he had eight stops in a losing effort.
Haines also has experience coaching at Indiana, as he was a graduate assistant under head coach Kevin Wilson in 2012, two years before joining Cignetti at IUP.
From a facility standout, Haines noted the Hoosiers’ locker room is a different spot and, like the weight room, is much improved. The food in the south endzone is also better.
But perhaps the most important change comes with the actual program — Haines said there’s buy-in from top to bottom, and in a clash between a team littered with losing traditions and a coaching staff that’s done nothing but win, the Hoosiers’ on-field results may soon change.
“The culture feels a little bit different this time than last time,” Haines said. “I think it was Year 3 for Coach Wilson when I got here, and not to say it had a losing feel to it, but I don’t know if the program was ready to take off. I don’t feel that way anymore. I feel like something special could happen.”
And for Haines, thoughts about what Indiana could be — and how it gets there — follow him around no matter where he goes.
Daniel Flick covers Indiana football and men’s basketball for the Indiana Daily Student. Follow him on X @ByDanielFlick, or reach him via email at DanFlick@iu.edu.
