Senior Chappell serves as Hoosiers' unquestioned leader

He may have only thrown one pass, but in 2007 Ben Chappell was a perfect passer.

As IU’s backup quarterback to  Kellen Lewis, the redshirt freshman Chappell was 1-for-1 for 14 yards after completing a pass in the blowout season opener against Indiana State.

Otherwise, he stood on the sideline calling plays in to Lewis, one of IU’s most dynamic athletes in program history.

Then, Lewis was hurt on a play that left the Hoosiers with a 3rd-and-6 halfway through the second quarter of a Big Ten tilt with Northwestern at Ryan Field.

The call for the backup  — Chappell — came immediately.

“I had to warm up real quick. I didn’t have much time,” Chappell said. “I ran out there and forgot my mouthpiece.”

Chappell knew Lewis wasn’t injured badly and that he’d probably only take one snap.
The play call — ‘50 Gator’ — featured IU receiver James Hardy running a short hitch route to Chappell’s right.

As Chappell settled in to the shotgun spread, he called the snap cadence with the Hoosiers leading 14-3. When the ball snapped, Chappell dropped back one step and made a quick turn to the right.

“The outside linebacker must have either read my eyes or known that I was going to throw to Hardy,” Chappell said.

With blitz pressure closing fast, Chappell delivered a pass toward Hardy. The ball never made it.

“Two guys got through. One guy hit me right under my jaw,” Chappell laughed. “Another guy undercut my legs. The next thing I know, the linebacker was running for a touchdown, and I’m laying on my back with my chin strap over my eyes and without mouthpiece in, walking off the field like ‘Wow!’”

Welcome to the Big Ten, Ben.

Chappell, of course, has come a long way from being buried in the Ryan Field turf and handing the defense six points on his second career pass attempt.

Saturday, the senior Chappell — a Bloomington native and Bloomington High School South graduate — figures to be the central cog of IU’s efforts to derail a Michigan team that hasn’t lost to the Hoosiers since Chappell was four months old, a 14-10 IU victory on Oct. 24, 1987.

On the visitor’s side, Michigan’s much buzzed about sophomore quarterback Denard Robinson figures he will continue a season which he’s already racked up 1,419 yards both on the ground and through the air.

But then there’s his antithesis in Chappell, a drop-and-throw quarterback standing as IU’s greatest defense to the Michigan offense, thanks to a talented receiving corps.

Through three games to start the season, Chappell has tossed for 890 yards and nine touchdowns — numbers that put him on pace to be the second-most prolific passer in school history and possibly higher.

But for Chappell, the receivers aren’t the sole reason he has an opportunity to go down as one of IU’s best. Ludwig van Beethoven, after all, didn’t become one of the world’s most important and influential composers because he had the nicest instruments to work with.

Instead, Beethoven mastered the craft of allowing those instruments to be played in some of the most beautiful and intrinsic ways possible.

Completing the gridiron orchestra has been much the same for Chappell — a process of using his oft-cited intelligence and perfectionist mentality to establish a Hoosier offensive that has Bloomington hoping for just its third trip to a postseason bowl since 1993.

Inside the film room

The visions of a quarterback with a big ego determined to win football games via the strength of his arm makes for plenty of Hollywood football movie plot lines.

Just not at IU.

For example, step inside the windowless quarterbacks room on the lower level of Memorial Stadium’s North End Zone complex during morning position meetings as a part of August’s preseason training camp.

Unless you know Chappell’s distinct red hair, 6-foot-3, 242-pound build and his past role as the starting Hoosier signal caller, there’s no way to know which of five quarterbacks led by the tutelage of IU co-offensive coordinator Matt Canada is the tried-and-true Big Ten starter.

Canada first guided the quarterbacks through some new formations being implemented as they scratched notes in their inches-thick playbook binders. Next, Canada grabbed a seat in the back of the triangle-shaped room as the players moved to the dry-erase board. Canada instructed each to draw a specific play as quickly as possible.

Chappell’s X’s-and-O’s illustration was completed first, each time.

As Canada reviewed each player’s diagram — Chappell’s were flawless — he noticed an issue on a drawing by a backup quarterback. Without missing a beat, Chappell chimed in to correct a misdirected receiver route.

“He’s one of those guys in the film room that, if you mess up, he’ll see it, and he’ll let you know before coach Canada does,” said Dusty Kiel, a redshirt freshman quarterback for IU.

Such is the advantage of having a quarterback who will make his 18th start as a Hoosier on Saturday, playing in his 29th game wearing the cream-and-crimson No. 4.

That level of awareness and intelligence is something the already-graduated Chappell has a long history of. Chappell graduated from the Kelley School of Business with an undergraduate accounting degree in June and is now a business systems and accounting graduate student.

The high school star

Chappell played football and basketball during his days at Bloomington South as a quarterback on the gridiron and a bit of an undersized center on the hardwood.
His position in basketball left him taking on responsibilities of guarding then- Lawrence North’s Greg Oden — the 7-footer taken as the No. 1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft.

When Chappell and Oden were both high school sophomores, South upset Lawrence North in a regular season game when Chappell was tasked with defending Oden. It’s a game he’ll list as one of the “bigger” ones that he’s played in, but the football team captain doesn’t dare take credit for.

“I basically just leaned on (Oden) as much as I could to push him away from the basket and make other people score,” Chappell said.

Ask J.R. Holmes, the basketball coach at Bloomington South, and he’ll say Chappell was more than just a body on the court.

“He knew the offense a lot quicker than most everybody else,” Holmes said. “It was almost to the point where he got bored when we would run through the dummy offense in practice. For him, it was one-time through, and he knew it.”

Basketball, Chappell said, had much more of a guiding force early in his life.

“I probably played basketball one hundred times more than I played football as a kid,” Chappell said. “There were times when we’d play like eight games a weekend.”

Chappell’s bread and butter, of course, ended up being on the South football field, where he played for coach Drew Wood. A different sport, sure, but the reviews of Chappell mirror one another. Wood said Chappell would often stay after practice to throw routes and narrow in on his targets.

“Obviously, you hear the same things over and over with him,” said Wood, now an administrator in the school corporation. “He was just a super smart kid. Ben had a lot of freedom in our offense.”

Chappell guided winning seasons for the Panthers in both his junior and senior seasons, but the winning regular seasons both came to an abrupt halt at the hands of the same team — Terre Haute North— in the state playoffs.

Expectedly, Chappell turned it into something to learn from.

“What I take from that is that football is a total team game. If you don’t come to play as a team, even if you’re better, you’re going to lose,” Chappell said.

Mr. Competitive

Chappell, courtesy of his ever-constant mellow demeanor, and from what those around said, appears to be the living, breathing embodiment of how coaches want the young players to react.

The cost of such an attitude can be misconstrued as being unaffected or uninterested.

Chappell, those around also said, is exactly the opposite.?Holmes recalled of once playing cards with Chappell. During Chappell’s game with his basketball coach, Holmes said he played dumb and unaggressive — and won.

It didn’t sit well with the quarterback.

Kiel also managed to get on the inside of Chappell’s internal competitive streak.

“We’d golf a lot this summer. He’s a pretty good golfer and would kick my butt up and down the course,” Kiel said. “But there was this one time this summer — and he won’t admit to it — but I beat him. He was pretty ticked off about it.”

“I wasn’t aware that it was a competitive match,” said Chappell, laughing. “But apparently to him it was. If I would’ve know that, I would’ve put it to him.”

Though the examples are not football related, the competitive instinct within Chappell are continuous, Kiel said.

“I remember last year, after the Purdue game,” Kiel said, referring to IU’s 38-21 loss to its in-state rival. “Just seeing the look in his eyes and how hard he worked this summer, motivating all of us to really rally around him. He’s really come into that leadership role.”

A good measure of how competitive Chappell is may come by his relative inability to answer one question: what’s the biggest game he’s ever personally competed in?

Answers, after some hemming and hawing, come out subtly. He gives the aforementioned high school sophomore basketball game against Greg Oden (his team won) and IU’s win against ranked Northwestern two years ago.

“They’re all big, pretty much. I guess looking back on it, it’s kinda hard to pick one big game,” Chappell said.

The apparent trend in what Chappell picks seems to be simple: winning. He even recollected winning when discussing his younger days of basketball.

“I think it was the success we had. We were really, really successful as kids growing up in elementary school,” Chappell said. “I had a lot success playing AAU basketball, so that was fun. Obviously, when you’re winning its fun.”

Staying in control, command

With winning carrying such a precedent in Chappell’s mind set, it’s no wonder he committed hour after hour, day after day this summer to perfecting receiving routes with his receivers, watching film or working out — all while working for a local accounting firm.

“I know when all of those guys are coming out of their breaks like the back of my hand,” Chappell said.

Other differences Chappell has in his favor now include a game that feels much slower-paced and less hectic. He’s also tried to study other quarterbacks — including the footwork employed by Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints.

The next step, Chappell said, is reigning in his excitement in big games. Remaining even-keel mentally is key, he said.

“Last year, I probably did get a little too hyped for some games and didn’t play as well as I could have,” Chappell said. “I don’t think I’m going to have any problem with that this year or this Saturday. I think that as a quarterback you can definitely get a little too outside yourself and not play as well.”

Once Chappell feels he gets grasp on that aspect, there’s no telling what his focus would be. But there will be something, he said.

Count on it.

“I’d probably say I’m a perfectionist. That’s what drives me,” Chappell said. “I’m usually not fully satisfied when we win, and when we lose, I want to go find out why we lost. I think that’s kind of how I get my motivation.”

A motivation that Saturday may just take his team somewhere they haven’t been since he was an infant.