IU defense shows signs of old form led by 'fourth quarter warriors'

The Indiana defense has been a major part of the success of the football program since Tom Allen joined back in 2016 as defensive coordinator. When he took over head coaching duties in 2017, he remained heavily involved in the defensive strategy and kept that unit playing at a high level.

In 2021, he gave up a lot of those duties and that resulted in a huge step back for the defense as well as Indiana's record. From 6-2 in 2020 to 2-10 and winless in Big Ten play in 2021, Allen knew what he had to do.

Allen resumed play calling duties this season and also added a new defensive coordinator in Chad Wilt from Minnesota and defensive line coach Paul Randolph from Texas Tech.

"I tell you what, it (calling plays) was a blast," Allen said during Wednesday's radio show appearance.

What happened was a terrific season-opening performance from the defense.

“Overall it was, I would say, a good start to getting us back to where I know we need to be, defensively,” Allen said earlier this week. “Because if you play great defense, you create takeaways, you give yourself a chance every week."

The Indiana defense did not give up more than one score in a quarter against Illinois in the opener. It also held Illinois' Tommy DeVito to 58 percent passing and 232 yards with one interception.

Going from 17 interceptions in eight games during 2020 to just five interceptions in 12 games in 2021, creating turnovers was a key message that Tom Allen had to his defense heading into this season.

"Four take-aways, you know, changed the game. And we had one at the end of the first half. I'm like, 'Guys, we've got to get another one'.," Allen said. "We got the second one, I said, 'Guys, to win this game, we've got to get three'..."

Indiana recovered three fumbles, including one on the final play of the game. The timeliness of the turnovers were key as well, due to the yardage that Indiana was giving up at times, especially on the ground. It's what made the outcome of the game different than all of last season.

"As I've always said, you know, it's really hard to limit yards in today's game," Allen said. "But it's the takeaway piece. It's key stops at critical times. It's the sacks. It's the pressures."

Indiana gave up 216 yards on the ground at 4.0 yards per carry. Standout running back Chase Brown averaged 5.5 yards per carry and totaled 199 yards on the ground. Not only was the IU defense struggling to contain the run, it was unable to convert key plays due to missed tackles -- something that plagued them throughout the game. It's also something that Tom Allen focused less on during fall camp than before.

"[Chase Brown] is a talented player, he's in the upper echelon of this league and he showed it. We need to do a better job tackling and how we tackle. We gave him some yards that he shouldn't have had but credit him," Chad Wilt said. "That's part of that too, but we need to do a better job in our approaches of tackling and our finishing of tackling. We were able to get him down when we needed to."

"I think it was who we were tackling, you know. Number 2 and Number 1 I think are really talented players, you know. And so not going to take anything away from them," Allen added. "We will not tackle more live in practice. That's not going to happen. But we will definitely do some additional drills per the issues... But I don't know if you can ever -- I don't know if I've ever had a game one where you say, man, we had awesome tackling in game one. I just think it's hard to do that. And, yes, it is true we did tackle less than we ever have live. But we also work on it a ton. And we had a lot of good tackles."

One of those 'good tackles' came on at key point in the game -- one that could have easily changed the outcome. Illinois took a long drive down to the Indiana two, already up 17-16, with less than 10 minutes left in the game. After Brown was stuffed on third down, the Illini went right back to Brown who was again stuffed on fourth down.

"But just being able to get off the field on third downs, the goal line stand, the score zone, which that's in between the 12 and the goal line basically. That's where we've got to be great. And if you're great there and you force field goals or you force them stops when they're critical for us, so that's what I want to get back to..."

Then, Indiana's defense made another terrific tackle as Beau Robbins sacked DeVito for a loss of eight yards after Illinois made it to nearly the 50-yard line. It forced the Illini to call their last timeout with just seven seconds left, putting the game out of reach.

“We knew the whole time we were gonna have to go back out there and get one more stop. So, the whole game I had been going power rushes, and then I got out there and it really just set up nicely," Robbins said. "We’ve got Dasan (McCullough), Lance (Bryant) and JH (Tevis) out there rushing really well and I ended up getting the one-on-one, so I was able to just get on the edge and go back there and make a play.”

“A sack in that situation is a game changer,” Allen added. “And as you mentioned, just after a good completion there that got them close to field goal range. So, he really changed everything for them, how they called the last couple plays. He, came up huge for us. Wasn't just that play. He was rock solid in the run game doing his job.”

"We talk a lot about being fourth quarter warriors and being our best at the end," Wilt said. "And those guys found a way to be their best at the end."

Indiana looks to continue its defensive pressure this weekend and build on what was already a very solid performance.

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