No Hoosier was more elated to win the Old Brass Spittoon last season after IU’s victory against Michigan State than former defensive tackle Ralph Green.
The 300-pound lineman carried the trophy off the field and into the IU locker room, where he proceeded to collect his teammates’ spit, making sure every Hoosier added to the collection.
Green’s affinity for the trophy became a running joke within the program in 2016, and once IU won the Old Oaken Bucket against Purdue at the end of the year, it was the senior who was quick to hold up four fingers to signify how many consecutive seasons the Hoosiers defeated the Boilermakers.
That enthusiasm Green brought to the field is what defensive line coach Mark Hagen said was necessary to IU’s success on the defensive side of the ball. IU Coach Tom Allen — last season’s defensive coordinator — agreed.
“He cared a bunch,” Allen said. “To his credit, he bought in and believed what we were telling him, and it took a little bit but once he got it, it took off for him.”
As a fifth-year senior, Green recorded his most productive season in his first year with Allen and his final year as a Hoosier by racking up a career-high 31 tackles, a defensive line-best eight and a half tackles for loss and one sack.
Now, Green is opening eyes at camps and All-Star games across the nation as he prepares for the 2017 NFL Draft in April.
But for Allen, Hagen and IU, the focus is on finding someone along the line to replace the enthusiasm and experience Green once provided as one of the cornerstones of the most-improved defense in the nation last year.
“You miss a guy that’s played a lot of football,” Hagen said. “You can’t just replace that experience overnight.”
Green was in Bloomington so long that Hagen, the IU coach that recruited Green out of Texas in 2011, left IU for Texas A&M and returned to IU before the lineman graduated. Green was recruited during former IU head coach Kevin Wilson’s first season with IU and eventually saw the days when IU finished 4-8 twice in 2012 and 2014 and 5-7 in 2013, before finally reaching two bowl games in 2015 and 2016.
He also played with the best defensive linemen in recent Hoosier history, such as current Oakland Raiders defensive tackle Darius Latham and Denver Broncos defensive tackle Bobby Richardson.
Aside from the experience, Allen and Hagen both said the defensive line will miss his big body the most. With four defensive line positions in Allen’s 4-2-5 defense, the two interior linemen are hit more than anybody on the field, Hagen said. The nose tackle and defensive tackle both need to be aggressive and take up space with a physical mindset — a Ralph Green mindset.
“You certainly have to have the size and the strength,” Hagen said. “It’s a tough position to play, but our guys have embraced it. We’ve got a lunch pail mentality with our group.”
The 310-pound redshirt senior Nate Hoff will play nose tackle for the Hoosiers in 2017 once he recovers from a minor off-season injury, Hagen said, and the front-runner for the starting defensive tackle position is junior Jacob Robinson.
Hoff played much of the 2016 season at nose tackle, but was caught in the rotation of nearly a dozen capable defensive linemen. Robinson began his IU career at defensive end and only recently made the transition to the interior, which Hagen said will take some time. A concussion also kept Robinson out of two games last season.
Both linemen began to make their presence felt late in the season and eventually combined for 55 tackles, nine sacks and three and a half tackles for loss in 2016.
“One of the exciting parts about spring is that you lose some of those trustworthy, veteran guys like Ralph Green and (former IU defensive lineman) Pat Dougherty, and you start to patch up those holes and move forward to the next year,” Hagen said.
Hagen said with two tackles beginning to establish themselves as starters on the interior, he can focus on finding the backups for Robinson and Hoff. The defensive line coach named several possibilities, including freshmen Juan Harris and Jerome Johnson, Cincinnati junior transfer Ja’merez Bowen and sophomore Allen Stallings.
The younger players have shown flashes of promise in practice but minimal consistency, Allen said. Only once the linemen begin to show consistency can IU solidify any semblance of a rotation for the 2017 season.
“That’s what we focused on this week, and it applies to a whole bunch of folks,” Allen said about consistency. “To me, that’s what separates good and great — consistent execution, doing all the little things right all the time.”
