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Published Nov 19, 2020
Tale of the Tape: Indiana
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Kevin Noon  •  DottingTheEyes
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As those of you who follow recruiting know, I am on the road this week and spending one night in one state and on to the next one makes it difficult to find any sort of writing groove. It would be like having a game canceled on Wednesday, having to shift gears and then being antsy waiting for your next game.

That would never happen, right?

Well, I write this as I sit in Southern Virginia, watching the NBA Draft and there is a good chance that I will get off topic here, but we will get through this the best that we can.

This was never supposed to be "the game" in the Big Ten. But nobody expected Penn State to be 0-4 at this point of the season. And while Ohio State fans hoped that Michigan would be 1-3 or 0-4 at this point of the year, nobody really expected it.

So here we sit, with a top-10 Indiana team.

It is not like Indiana is blowing teams out this season, with an average margin of victory of just 14.5 points per game and truth is, that Michigan State game needs to be printed in a different color ink, because the Spartans have not been impressive outside of beating Michigan, a team that has been even less impressive on the year.

We have watched all four games of the Hoosiers, read everything that we can find on this team and while we are busy talking to four and five-stars for the class of 2022, we think we have enough of a handle on this game to go to the Tale of the Tape.

Ohio State Offense vs. Indiana Defense
Ohio StateStatRankIndianaStatRank

Rushing Offense

208.7 YPG

26th

Rushing Defense

111.0 YPG

18th

Passing Offense

302.7 YPG

20th

Pass Eff. Defense

117.46

24th

Scoring Offense

46.3 PPG

4th

Scoring Defense

19.3 PPG

17th

Ohio State QB/WR/TE vs. Indiana Defensive Backs

Look, with us being on the road this week, I am not going to reinvent the wheel here. Justin Fields is really good, Chris Olave is really good, Garrett Wilson is really good, and so on, wash, rinse, repeat. Fields did not exactly light this team up last year in throwing for just 199 yards and had 10 incompletions (he only has 11 through three games this season) but the Buckeyes also won that game 51-10 as the Buckeyes ran for more than 300 yards and really shut things down after three quarters. Ohio State has scored at least into the 30s in every game in this series since 2001 when Ohio State scored a pedestrian 27 points. Indiana has scored more than 27 points (Indiana has scored 27 twice during that run) exactly once, that crazy 52-49 game in Bloomington.

Of the four teams that Indiana has gone against this season, three of them have pulled their starting quarterback and Rutgers just seems to play two quarterbacks. That means that none of these teams are really getting great quarterback play to this point of the season. That does not mean that starters were always pulled against Indiana, and Joe Milton getting pulled against Wisconsin may not directly have an impact on Indiana, but we are not dealing with Peyton Manning, Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence on the schedule. So, does that mean I am saying the 10 interceptions by Indiana mean nothing? Not exactly, but I also am going to say that Justin Fields does not throw picks, like hardly ever. Indiana is not going to get near a lot of these passes as there is no need to throw a lot of 50-50 balls in this one. Back to Milton from Michigan for a minute, he did throw for three touchdowns and 344 yards in his game against IU. Yes, he threw two picks, but he threw two picks against Wisconsin before he was completely off the team bus. I just don't see Ohio State making bad plays that result in sudden changes and short fields for the Hoosiers. If Indiana is going to score points, Indiana is going to have to go 70-80 yards, not 30-40 yards.

Edge: Ohio State 3 stars

Ohio State Running Backs vs. Indiana Linebackers

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