Two weeks ago, IU football got its first real look at what a mobile quarterback could do to its defense.
Aidan Chiles spent much of the first half bottled up. Then, as Northwestern began finding success after halftime, Chiles extended plays, escaped pressure and helped turn what had been a comfortable IU lead into a six-point game.
The Hoosiers ultimately survived, 29-23, but Chiles finished 22-for-29 for 293 yards, two passing touchdowns and another score on the ground. Indiana sacked him four times, yet the plays he created outside the pocket helped Northwestern score on each of its final four possessions.
Saturday in Lincoln, Indiana gets another test of the same problem and perhaps a more dangerous version of it.
Nebraska quarterback Anthony Colandrea has become one of the biggest reasons behind the Cornhuskers’ 5-0 start. Through five games, the senior has completed 65.7 percent of his passes for 1,142 yards and 13 touchdowns. Nebraska enters Saturday averaging 43.6 points and 475.6 yards per game, with four performances featuring at least 200 yards both rushing and passing.
Colandrea’s ability to create with his legs has only added another layer.
Against Maryland last weekend, he rushed 10 times for a career-high 108 yards while completing 26 of 39 passes for 238 yards and three touchdowns. His 346 yards of total offense helped Nebraska erase a nine-point first-half deficit and pull away for a 48-23 win.
For Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti, none of it is particularly surprising as Cignetti has seen Colandrea before.
In September 2023, when Cignetti was still at James Madison and Colandrea was a freshman at Virginia, the two met in Charlottesville. Colandrea, making his first career start, threw for 377 yards and two touchdowns on just 26 attempts, including a 75-yard completion. James Madison escaped with a 36-35 victory.
Three years later, Cignetti sees a quarterback who has benefited from everything that has happened since.
“He’s very talented,” Cignetti said Monday. “He’s savvy, first of all, and I think he sees the field really well, and he’s very mobile and elusive too. So if there’s nothing there, he has the ability to create plays with his arm and his legs.”
That last part is where Nebraska can become especially difficult.
Colandrea’s running ability isn’t simply an escape valve when a passing play breaks down. Nebraska has intentionally incorporated him into its rushing attack.
Head coach Matt Rhule said this week that the Cornhuskers will force defenses to account for Colandrea through quarterback draws, run-pass options and zone reads.
“We’re going to make people defend our quarterback and it opens up the passing game,” Rhule said. “We see him as part of the run game.”
That creates a different assignment for an Indiana defense that allows just 10.8 points and 237.8 total yards per game. Over five games, opponents have averaged only 2.1 yards per rushing attempt against the Hoosiers.
Containing Colandrea, however, requires more than stopping Nebraska’s conventional run game.
Indiana linebacker Rolijah Hardy described the objective as keeping Colandrea contained rather than allowing him to turn broken plays into explosives.
“It’s about caging him in that pocket, being able to take away his reads and being able to get him after his reads have been taken away,” Hardy said Tuesday.
Cignetti used nearly identical language a day earlier.
“A guy that can spin it pretty good and process and get it where it’s got to be accurately as quickly as possible, on time, on rhythm, that can also extend plays and make plays with his legs, that’s a real weapon for the offense,” Cignetti said. “So we’ll have to do a great job of caging this guy and putting pressure on him.”
The importance of doing so extends beyond Saturday.
Chiles already showed Indiana how quickly a mobile quarterback can change a game. More of them remain on the schedule.
Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood has continued to be a factor with his legs in his second season, averaging over 10 carries per game, including a season-high 87 yards against Oklahoma.
Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. presents an even more established rushing threat. He surpassed 1,000 career rushing yards earlier this season and opened the year with 61 rushing yards and a touchdown against Washington State. Williams threw for more than 3,000 yards last season and became the first Washington quarterback in program history to record a 400-yard passing, 100-yard rushing game.
And if Indiana’s season stretches into another postseason run, quarterbacks who can hurt defenses both through the air and on the ground are likely to become more common.
That makes Saturday more than just the challenge of stopping one quarterback. It’ll set the bar for the realistic expectations of what the makeup of this Indiana defense is.
The Hoosiers have already seen what can happen when a passer escapes the structure of its defense. Now it faces a Nebraska offense that intentionally asks its quarterback to do exactly that.
Colandrea has spent the first five games proving he can beat defenses in multiple ways.
Indiana’s defense has a tall task ahead when the two clash in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Saturday afternoon.
