‘The defense let this team down today. That’s the bottom line. Period.’: Indiana football wastes terrific offensive performance with defensive disaster

The Indiana football program had its best offensive performance against a power five team in nearly four years on Saturday against Illinois … but it was wasted in a 48-45 overtime loss because the defensive performance was as bad as its been in the Tom Allen era.

You have to go back to Indiana’s impressive performance against No. 3 Ohio State in 2020 in order to find an offensive outing like it had on Saturday.

Indiana football put up 451 yards of total offense, had 29 first downs, were 7-of-13 on third downs and were 5-of-5 in the red zone. It was a performance that had been building over the last few weeks since Rod Carey took over the offensive coordinator position.

Brendan Sorsby was 22-of-33 for 289 yards and had five total touchdowns (two rushing). He also had 56 yards on the ground.

“Proud of our offense. Did a lot of great things,” Allen said postgame. “Gotta protect the football. Can’t turn the ball over in the second half. That was hug for us. But just — Brendan Sorsby showed you the kinda special player he can be. Doing much better things offensively but so disappointed in our defense.”

What Indiana’s offense did, the defense allowed the Illinois offense to do … and then some … and more. Illinois finished with 662 total yards of offense. That yardage is tied for the most that an Indiana football defense had given up since Tom Allen took over the Indiana program in 2017.

“That’s just unacceptable,” Allen said. “We worked really hard to get our offense on track and made a lot of adjustments. Coach (Rod) Carey did a great job with that (offensive) unit to produce that amount of points … Call it what it is, the defense let this team down today. That’s the bottom line. Period.”

Indiana got off to a terrific start on both ends of the field. It was a 27-12 lead at the 5:44 mark of the second quarter. After Illinois threw an interception that led to an Indiana touchdown to take that lead, the Illinois offense was unstoppable the remainder of the game.

While Indiana’s 27 first half points were the most scored in a first half since 2018, the Hoosiers were unable to stop Illinois — or even put up sort of fight on the defensive side of the ball. The next seven possessions yielded five scores for Illinois.

Illinois would go on to score 21 unanswered points. 

In total, Illinois would score on 9-of-13 possessions. One that didn’t turn into points was right before the end of the game, with just 30 seconds left.

“We tried everything that we have in our arsenal right now in this game plan and it wasn’t good enough. Just really frustrating game defensively,” Allen said. ” … To me, to be able to make sure the things we’re trying to do, that our guys can do them. If there is a guy someone is struggling with, we gotta be able to have answers for that. But to me there were a lot of breakdowns with executions of our calls where it just didn’t happen … it just can not happen this time of year.”

Illinois backup quarterback John Paddock, and a sixth-year transfer from Ball State, threw for 507 yards with four touchdowns. He completed 67 percent of his passes on the afternoon. His 507 yards were the most in the Big Ten this season, second-most all-time in Illinois program history and most by an Illinois quarterback in Memorial Stadium.

Three Illinois wideouts had career days as well. Isaiah Williams had nine receptions for a career-high 200 yards and two touchdowns. Pat Bryant had five receptions for a career-high 131 yards and one touchdown and Casey Washington finished with five receptions for a career-high 99 yards and the first receiving touchdown in his career.

Paddock had a 21.1 yard-per-completion average on the afternoon.

“Shocked in the first half, especially a couple of blown coverages,” Tom Allen said about the big plays. “Just really, really shocked to be honest with you … Very, very, very, very, very frustrating. Just no excuse for it … Really, really disappointing.”

Indiana (3-7; 1-6) is now eliminated from bowl eligibility. All of the talk this week had been about ‘playoff mentality’ and focused on 1-0 every single week — with its sights still set on a potential bowl appearance. Now, that’s out of the bag.

Indiana has two games remaining — vs Michigan State and then at Purdue. Both games are trophy games.

But, with this deflating of a loss — which team will show up? And how will they stay together?

“Lean heavily on who we are and the character of our team and our leadership. Like we always do, rally together. No matter what happens, we stay together and fight together,” Allen said. “We’ll come back next week and compete our tails off. We will definitely continue to fight. That’s what this team’s all about. That’s what this team is built for but it’s a tough one to accept right now.”

Unfortunately, that ‘fight’ and ‘character’ is not what the last 2.5 years have shown.

Indiana football is now 2-23 in the last 25 Big Ten games. Indiana hasn’t won back-to-back games in league play since the last two regular season games in 2020. It had a chance to do that on Saturday and carry the momentum it gained last week into a potentially terrific end of the season run. But, more of the same happened and, again, the defense wasted a terrific offensive performance.

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