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The Indiana Daily Student

sports football

Sudfeld stepping up as a leader in senior season

IU v. Navy

At the end of each season, the IU football team does an exercise with coaches to analyze what players are doing well and what they need to improve on. The quarterbacks did the exercise with IU Coach Kevin Wilson this past winter.

Nate Sudfeld’s plusses were what one would expect. He was throwing the ball well. He was a good leader on the field.

But his biggest negative was that he needed to be louder in the weight room. Wilson thought he needed to step up as an all-around leader for the Hoosiers.

Ask Wilson or any of Sudfeld’s teammates now, and they will likely tell you that Sudfeld has become that guy.

“I think he kinda learned how to lead,” Wilson said. “And now he is leading and not thinking about it. Where I used to think that was a labor.”

Before, it wasn’t a matter of not wanting to be the leader. Wilson viewed it as more that he was asking Sudfeld to call the plays, read the defense, throw the ball and also be doing extra stuff off the field. That seems to be coming easier to him now.

Sudfeld said it is a matter of still being the person people look to even when you aren’t in the most comfortable situation. He admitted he isn’t exactly the biggest weight room guy, but he knows to be more vocal in there. Wilson said he has become the player who can address things and pick up the intensity when a coach isn’t there to do it.

“He was a great leader before, and he’s an even better leader now," senior left tackle Jason Spriggs said.

It could trace back to what happened to Sudfeld in the aftermath of his season-ending shoulder injury suffered last October. He said that, as a quarterback, you don’t believe the team can play without you.

It was difficult for him to see the team still running with someone else under center as he watched from the sideline. Wilson didn’t allow him to feel sorry for himself.

“I put a lot on him when he got hurt,” Wilson said. “Cause he wanted to pout and I wasn’t about that, and I was like, ‘come on now.’”

This wasn’t the first time Wilson had seen a star quarterback go down. Heisman-winner Sam Bradford missed the majority of the 2009 season when Wilson was the offensive coordinator at Oklahoma. But Wilson saw that Bradford still was a leader in the locker room. He still had value.

And returning from this injury has lit a fire under Sudfeld. He has yet to play a full season as IU’s starting quarterback and all of a sudden he is in his final season. He said his sense of urgency has picked up now that it is his senior year.

He may be physically healthy now, but he still hasn’t dropped back in the pocket again during a live game as 250-pound pass rushers try to bring him down. But the training staff has been working on that.

After practices sometimes, Sudfeld puts on just shoulder pads and a helmet as trainers continuously hit him. He said it feels good being hit again, none of it bothers him. Other days he runs through the gauntlet and falls on his shoulder as he comes out, just to reacquaint himself with constant contact on it.

Talking about Sudfeld has become a matter of before and after when it comes to the injury-causing sack against Iowa. Before, he described himself as tentative, never wanting to make a mistake. Now, the narrative has become how much more involved of a leader has become. With none of his top four receivers returning and the departure of one of the best running backs in school history, Sudfeld may need to be that leader.

He has noticed the impact of that role.

“It’s easier to kind of tell guys what to do when they know I care about him and know I just want to win,” he said. 

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