9/17/2019 football Edit

Young defensive backs will lean on older leaders in the IU secondary

Taylor Lehman • TheHoosier

Staff

After a 51-10 blowout loss to Ohio State, young Indiana defensive backs like Devon Matthews and Bryant Fitzgerald are leaning on experienced leaders like Marcelino Ball, Raheem Layne and Andre Brown to guide the mindset in the defensive backs room heading out of Week Three and into the rest of the season.

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Indiana sophomore safety Devon Matthews attempts a tackle on Ohio State running back J.K. Dobbins during IU's 51-10 loss to the Buckeyes on Saturday. Matthews and other young defensive backs will be leaning on older, more experienced teammates to guide them out of the blowout loss and into the rest of the season. (USA Today Images)

It’s clear that following the blowout loss to Ohio State has spawned self-reflection in the Indiana secondary and has forced leaders within the defensive backs rooms to step up.

Junior cornerback Raheem Layne emphasized that each defensive back needs to enter practice this week prepared to “do his job,” in whatever capacity that might be, and for some defensive backs, part of their job is to lead the young defenders out of a bad weekend and into a productive week.

“I know it’s a tough situation, but you can't have everybody hanging their heads down,” Layne said Monday. “You just need to build off of it. You need to make sure the young guys know that that’s not what we expect. We need to go out there and make sure we don’t do that anymore.”

Coming off of a 2018 matchup against Ohio State in which Indiana was able to remain competitive throughout the first three quarters, there was a sense that the Indiana secondary – perceived as the strength of the defense heading into 2019 – would be a force to overmatch the Ohio State receiving corps, which lost Parris Campbell, Terry McLaurin and Johnnie Dixon to the NFL in the offseason.

But the big plays that the Buckeyes converted in 2018, the five touchdowns to those three future NFL receivers alone, weren’t needed Saturday, as Ryan Day turned to his future NFL running back J.K. Dobbins to bulldoze his way downfield.

Then Ohio State incorporated play action passing, and sophomore safeties Bryant Fitzgerald and Devon Matthews bit to allow Chris Olave to get open for a 37-yard score, and Day called for a KJ Hill corner route, when Hill outran Matthews for a score.

“It’s pretty embarrassing,” Matthews said Tuesday. “We worked hard throughout the summer about what our goals are for the season. We can’t let those touchdowns happen again.”

Ultimately, it was just the big plays in the passing game that exposed the IU secondary, as Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields didn’t have the most productive day – 199 yards and three touchdowns on 14-of-24 passing. But it was, as Tom Allen noted in postgame and during his weekly press conference, the lack of pursuit and tackling on Dobbins and Master Teague in the running game once they reached the second and third levels that hurt the defense the most.

That’s not even simply tackling at the point of attack but having a second defender – typically a linebacker or a defensive back – prepared to make a play when a ball carrier inevitably breaks a tackle, since not all defenders can be in perfect position at the contact point. Those defenders would stop the 56-yard carry by Dobbins and the 40-yard carry by Teague short, but they either weren’t in position Saturday or were only in position to make flailing attempts with their arms.

Linebacker Reakwon Jones, who has taken on a macro-leadership approach to the defense this season, Matthews said, wasn’t happy with the effort, but he had a plan to respond following the loss.

“Just bring the guys in, you talk to them,” Jones said Saturday. “It’s probably a lot of guys’ first time experiencing something like that. We didn’t expect it. A lot of people are disappointed. Just make sure come back on Monday with the right attitude, the right mindset, ready to work.”

Matthews is one of the players who hadn’t experienced that kind of loss before, as well as players like Jaylin Williams, Reese Taylor, Tiawan Mullen and Fitzgerald.

And the mindset that older teammates like Layne, Andre Brown and – primarily – Marcelino Ball have worked to instill in their younger teammates is the desire to “beat up” Connecticut in Week Four in order to right the ship and move on to their second Big Ten matchup against Michigan State.

“Lino’s encouraging everybody to stay up, stay high,” Matthews said. “We have to get ready for next week, so we have to come in with a bigger mindset, just dominate our next opponent.”