IU football hopes practice tweaks produce more rush yards

A flawless game through the air for the IU football team against Western Kentucky Saturday left senior quarterback Ben Chappell earning conference accolades and junior wideout Damarlo Belcher surpassing career-best numbers.

Indeed, the Hoosiers used a 366-yard aerial attack to outscore the Hilltoppers 38-21 on the road, securing their second win of the season.

Lost in the shuffle, though, was a running game that sputtered its way through most of the contest and served as a point of concern if the Hoosiers want to maintain their desired balanced attack for the rest of the season.

After a week of watching WKU game film and fine-tuning in practice, the Hoosiers (2-0) will play Akron (0-3) Saturday  at Memorial Stadium — with rushing results that IU coaches hope have improved.

“It’s a combination of things,” IU offensive line coach Mo Moriarity said this week. “We throw the ball well, and we know that’s what we’re good at. But we know that we’ve got to get the running game better, we’ve got to run the ball more efficient.”

At WKU, the Hoosiers counted exactly 100 yards from four running backs out of the backfield on 25 carries. Redshirt freshman Nick Turner netted the most yards of the four with 33 yards — 24 of which came on a single touchdown-scoring run in the fourth quarter.

Otherwise, sophomore and starter Darius Willis manufactured a total of 30 yards on 13 carries after the WKU defense stymied his rushing attacks.

Willis also had a fumble courtesy of a botched handoff on the second play of the Hoosiers’ first drive.

The result hasn’t been panic mode this week for IU, however, as they take on a team they beat 38-21 on the road last season. IU managed 180 yards on the ground that day.

“What people don’t realize in the run game is that you can have four guys do a great job and one guy not,” said Moriarity, referring to a player missing an assignment or a block. “It just looks like nobody’s blocking when that’s not the case. We’re close. There’s just some little things we’ve got to get cleaned up.”

Moriarity said the coaching staff hasn’t implemented wholesale changes on offensive blocking schemes.

“It’s just the ability to get to the right guy, that we all know what our assignments are and finishing our blocks,” Moriarity said. “I wouldn’t say it has a lot to do with the team we’re playing as much as it has to do with us right now.”

The Hoosiers this season are starting just two of the five starters from last year’s team on the offensive line in sophomore center Will Matte and senior right tackle James Brewer.

The new line personnel — junior left tackle Aaron McDonald, redshirt freshman left guard Aaron Price and sophomore right guard Marc Damisch are all new starters — hasn’t hampered pass protection, as Chappell has yet to be sacked
this season.

“When you have a quarterback like Ben, who’s a thrower, and then you have guys that can catch like we do, that’s what we’re gonna do,” Moriarity said. “We still have to make sure that we can be efficient running the ball. We weren’t efficient (at WKU).”

Discouragement certainly hasn’t set in on the line, and Brewer thinks the Hoosiers still have “the potential to be equally good at both with the guys we have.”

“Once we get running, for example against Towson, we ran the ball really good, and it opened up the passing game,” Brewer said.

“I think its one of those things where they kind of complement each other.”

Matte chalked up some of the running game issues at WKU to a bit of rust from the Hoosiers waiting 16 days between games, but he didn’t want to make excuses.

“I think it was just mainly execution,” Matte said. “We just started out slowly mentally not picking up stunts or blitzes.”

For Akron, through, Matte said the Zips provide several similarities in terms of players that will be lining opposite of the ball. It’s an advantage they’ll take, but not one to rest on.

“It’s great to have the passing game going with (Chappell) and all of our receivers,” Matte said. “But it’s the Big Ten. You can’t be one-dimensional. I think it’s our job to get the running game going. The backs are doing their job, and its just kind of up to us to buckle down.”

Moriarity said Matte’s attitude is what the coaching staff is trying to instill in the players this week. The Hoosiers, after all, have been 2-0 to start each of the last seven seasons and have just one postseason bid to their record.

“We’re not coming out here and celebrating that we’re off to a 2-0 start,” Moriarity said.
“The thing that we’re pounding with our players right now is that it’s not that you aren’t doing things well because obviously because we’ve thrown the ball. But, if we want to continue to be successful, we have to get better at running the football.”