The Indiana Hoosiers football team went on the road for the first time this season traveling to New Jersey to play the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and came away with a “W”. They are now 5-0 and headed for the meat of their schedule. More importantly, they played like the teams of 2024 and 2025 who we were privileged to watch go to the playoffs twice and win the national championship in January 2026.
Saturday’s performance was very reassuring to this fan who can’t get over being a skeptic. After sixty-plus years of disappointments, it’s great to see an Indiana football team dominate an opponent. Dominate offensively in the running game where Lee Bebe Jr.and Turbo Richard were both repeatedly able to find gaping holes in the defense and each easily gain over 100 yards. Dominate in the passing game that saw Charlie Becker and Nick Marsh each rack up 100 yards receiving, besides scoring 3 touchdowns. Never in B1G history had a team had 2 rushers and 2 receivers gain 100 yards each.
Josh Hoover played great, too, going 20 for 27, for 251 yards, and 4 TD’s. His favorite targets, the “two-headed monster,” Becker and Marsh, together had 227 yards and 3 TD’s. Becker, still my favorite IU player, had 8 catches for 107 yards and 2 TD’s, while Marsh had 7 catches for 127 yards and 1 TD.
IU’s running game was superb! Turbo Richard came back from a first quarter high ankle sprain last week to run the ball 13 times for 204 yards and 1TD, or an average of 15.7 yards per carry. Lee Beebe Jr. ran the ball 18 times adding 122 yards and 1TD, averaging 6.8 yds per carry. Rutgers had only 59 yards rushing.
The first 4 games IU had way too many penalties and missed a lot of tackles. Last night IU was not penalized at all, an amazing feat, and tackling was much better as Rutgers had only 59 yards rushing. But our Achilles heel remains the defensive secondary. The Hoosiers gave up two big pass plays in the second half that led to one rushing and one passing TD. Receivers are still left open. Against good teams that could spell disaster. We must hope, however, that that problem can be corrected before we play Ohio State, USC, Minnesota, and Michigan. Missed tackles were much less of a problem.
Overall, Indiana played better, played more physically, and played like the team we anticipated before this season. Either IU has gotten better (my choice) or Rutgers is really bad. When we go to Lincoln next Saturday, we’ll see how to answer that question. Nebraska played a weak Maryland team and won 48-23. Playing Nebraska at Nebraska will be a good test to see where we are.
