2010 Indiana Football

[GO BIG RED]

Okay, at the risk of sounding like an insane person I am going to make an optimistic Indiana football thread.   

Now don't get me wrong, I'm far from a Bill Lynch fan.  I think he is a nice guy miscast as a BCS conference football coach.  But no matter how much I question his coaching ability, he has been hitting the recruiting trail HARD and getting some nice commits.  Our recruiting classes are clearly getting stronger from year to year under Lynch.  Why, hell if I know.  The new facilities might have a lot to do with it.  But the current class he is working on, omg.  Without going into detail, he is doing an incredible job.

Now the catch is if we don't at least go bowling in 2010 I expect a lot of these verbals to not hold up.  That is the thing, we have been recruiting better but until we start winning consistently it will not be sustainable.  Last seasons' barf bag 11th place finish cost us at least one major recruit in Jibreel Black.  But nonetheless, Coach Lynch keeps hoodwinking kids into verballing to us.   

What does it all mean?  Well for 2010 I see this - our offense returns most of our key talent plus we get to finally unveil Edward Wright-Baker whom I think could be like Kellen Lewis only without the coke habit.  And defensively a lot of our "improved recruiting" will finally start to hit the field and get a chance to contribute.

Long story made short, 2010 is a huge season for us.  A winning season + bowl game will keep the positive momentum in recruiting in our favor.  A losing season, well if we lose this season then Lynch needs to go bye bye.  Our OOC schedule is about as weak as you can get it for 4 wins and then the early Big Ten schedule has winnable games such as Michigan, Illinois and Northwestern.  We really do need to start strong because the stretch run gets tougher.

So I can't say it will turn out well but I am actually excited to see the 2010 football Hoosiers take the field.  We just need to close on games, something which haunted the team last season. 

[GO BIG RED]

Our offense is as good as advertised but man our defense is shit.  Absolutely and total shit.  All this "improved" recruiting and we can't play defense better than this?  What a joke.  Lynch needs to be forced to hire a defensive coaching staff that has a clue.  And the D has been bad all season not just against Michigan.  It was just Michigan exposed it to the Nth degree.  I know Denard Robinson is special but please, Michigan had the ball 18 FREAKING MINUTES and that was long enough to score 42 points on 574 yards of total offense including a game winning drive that took all of 56 seconds or so when it looked like IU might have a chance to force OT. 

Whatever Lynch was trying to accomplish by switching from a 4-3 to a 3-4, consider that effort a total, embarrassing failure.  This team might still win 6 games because the offense is so explosive but if we had a REAL defense this team could compete for an upper division finish in the Big Ten.  It feels like the Randle-El years all over again, wasting incredible offense with putrid defense.  And the sad thing is 6-6 will probably get Lynch an extension.   

[GO BIG RED]

I'd say at this point 6-6 looks like a pipe dream.  Maybe 4-8 will be good enough to provoke Fred Glass to hit the eject button.