He said he liked the pressure up front, and the strong start, but the defense isn’t where it needs to be yet.
“There’s enough talent that we ought to be playing better defense than we’re playing,” Wilson said.
The Hoosiers played three quarters of dominantly defensive football in the 31-24 win at Wake Forest Saturday. The Demon Deacon offense was held to 186 yards in those three quarters and opened the game by forcing three straight three-and-outs.
But Wake Forest put up 177 yards in the fourth quarter alone, scoring two touchdowns that put the team within seven points.
“The defense put our dukes down a little bit, but it’s something to learn from,” sophomore linebacker Tegray Scales said. “Just keep attacking the whole game.”
But six sacks is nothing to scoff at. The six came from five different players — three from inside linebackers, two from defensive linemen and one from the bandit, redshirt senior Zack Shaw.
Wilson said the pressure from the pass rush translating to sacks is great, but it doesn’t mean it’s a finished product.
“I still think, watching us, that we’re still too slow at the line of scrimmage and too slow in our blitzing,” he said. “It’s not as assertive or as aggressive as it needs to be.”
When talking about highly-touted defensive players, Wilson said they try to do too much sometimes. IU isn’t a team that has played statistically good defense in a while. Because of this, Wilson said, some of those good players try to be playmakers instead of just doing their job.
But he added that the errors nowadays are fixable.
The defensive numbers against Wake Forest were much better than the previous three games, but Wilson expected the Hoosiers to finish stronger. He brought up a moment when redshirt senior punter Erich Toth pinned Wake Forest near its own goal line with when IU had a 21-point lead.
“It’s 31-10, and we got them pinned inside the 10,” Wilson said. “The defense had a chance to close it out and didn’t. They need to step up there.”
But it was not all negatives from the head coach. He recognized Scales and freshman defensive back Andre Brown as IU’s defensive players of the week. He said sophomore linebacker Marcus Oliver and sophomore safety Chase Dutra also played well.
Then he circled back to the pressure up front. Wilson liked the performances by several players. But not enough to satisfy him.
“It’s better, but it’s a long way from what I think it ought to be,” he said.
