IU football and its new Coach Tom Allen introduced IU’s newest and 247Sports’ 12th-best recruiting class in the Big Ten on Feb. 1.
The low ranking of the recruiting class within the conference may have left some fans disappointed, but in the gray area of a fan base’s expectations comes one solid fact that transcends the potential of the class of 2017.
The Hoosiers recruited for the defensive line.
Five defensive linemen signed letters of intent to IU on National Signing Day. Six if potential defensive lineman Michael Ziemba — who was considered a tight end out of Florida — is counted.
Much of the credit for that bulk of the class goes to Mark Hagen, Allen said.
“He’s relentless,” Allen said about the second-year IU defensive line coach. “It’s the same thing that he does as a coach.”
For all six recruits that signed at his position, Hagen was on board. He traveled to Texas, Florida and Wisconsin and around Indiana. Of IU’s six Indiana signees, two are on the defensive line, and two of its nine Florida signees were recruited by Hagen.
All of the recruits are 3-star-caliber signees.
Even when Wisconsin defensive tackle Juan Harris decommited from the Hoosiers, Hagen still managed to help convince him to re-commit and sign early in December.
The numbers are there for the defensive line class of 2017, and the potential for another pass rushing juggernaut is high, but it’s not too surprising that Hagen is responsible for it.
Before earning the defensive line job at Texas A&M in 2013, he was at IU for two seasons as a recruiting coordinator, special teams coordinator and a defensive line coach.
For the classes of 2011 and 2012 — both classes branded with Hagen’s name at defensive line — the defensive line coach brought in Jake Reed, who converted to offensive line shortly after, and Adarius Rayner at defensive tackle and assisted in converting Ralph Green from offensive line to defensive tackle. Reed and Rayner were both consistent high-level players for IU, and Green is currently entering the NFL Draft at the defensive tackle position.
“He built a great pool of guys and went after them,” Allen said. “He built relationships with the players, with the families and all those that were going to be helping to make the decision and did a really good job of that.”
Allen said Hagen already has an impressive pool of recruits built for the class of 2018 that the Hoosiers are targeting, too.
He works not only relentlessly but quickly as well.
It wasn’t just Allen that made a difference in the IU defense as a first-year coach in 2016.
After losing pass rushers Rayner, Zach Shaw, Nick Mangieri and Darius Latham, it appeared the defensive line would be an alarming weakness in the IU defense.
However, IU still managed to record 15 sacks and 39 tackles for loss in 13 games from the defensive line position.
Those numbers were dramatically different in 2015 — 21 sacks and 46.5 tackles for loss — but they were spread out among nine players with less experience than the seven that recorded the 2015 statistics.
Players like junior Nate Hoff, junior Pat Dougherty, sophomore Nile Sykes and sophomore Jacob Robinson had career years in 2016 without the leadership that existed in 2015.
That was the challenge of last season, Hagen said — preparing nearly a dozen guys for every game. That doesn’t happen every season, yet somehow IU stayed competitive in the trenches.
The six defensive linemen added from the class of 2017 will be thrown into that mix as Hagen tries to get the defensive line back to the line IU had in 2015.
“He’s a hard, hard worker,” Allen said. “And he knows what we’re looking for.”
