BLOOMINGTON — Maybe injuries can derail the freight train Indiana football has become through the first eight games of this potentially historic season. On current evidence, nothing else will.
Aiden Fisher’s “precautionary” removal from a 56-6 demolition of UCLA will have been about the only thing that put anything resembling a scare into Curt Cignetti’s No. 2 Hoosiers on Saturday afternoon. The Bruins, who offered none of the resistance Cignetti promised when he cast them as the Jimmy Johnson Cowboys reincarnate last week, certainly couldn’t.
Other than injuries, complacency is Indiana’s greatest enemy between here and Dec. 6 in Indianapolis, and complacency — like every team on the schedule so far — is losing.
“It really comes down to coach Cignetti’s philosophy of keeping it one play, one game at a time,” quarterback Fernando Mendoza said. “Our team did great, especially because there’s a lot of outside noise.”
For housekeeping purposes: Cignetti did not offer much of an update on Fisher postgame. He suggested his All-American middle linebacker will go through “the X-rays, the MRIs, see what they say,” before IU knows more.
Life without Fisher, who is effectively Indiana’s defensive captain, for any extended period would not be welcomed in Bloomington. And yet, the Hoosiers hardly had to sweat his absence. His replacement, Isaiah Jones, finished with eight tackles, half a sack and a forced fumble.
And Jones, like his teammates and his coach, still wasn’t satisfied.
“Coach Cig doesn’t want to see smiles on the sideline at all,” Jones said. “For us, it’s 0-0 every time we step out on the field.”
This is Cignetti’s superpower, and therefore by extension Indiana’s as well. A team trained in his mantra that each play lasts six seconds and has a life of its own, and that no two plays are the same, and that nothing and no one will be affected by success or failure, simply does not lose focus on the task at hand.
If you beat Cignetti’s Indiana (8-0, 5-0 Big Ten) you do so on your merits. And if you lose to Cignetti’s Indiana, you can bet you’ll lose that way too.
Cignetti spent the week bigging up the Bruins (3-5, 3-2) as a team reborn, and for three weeks, UCLA looked like it. Changes at coach and coordinator positions reinvigorating their directionless program.
When Cignetti declared this week that the Hoosiers saw UCLA as a 3-0 team, he meant it as a compliment to the Bruins, and a warning to his own locker room.
That locker room listened.
IU’s defense set the tone from the first snap onward, and the Hoosiers never let up. A Tyrique Tucker sack of UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava on the first snap of the Bruins’ first drive was followed by a pick-six. Stephen Daley’s pressure forced Iamaleava into a panicked throw Fisher one-armed into his belly for a 25-yard return untouched into the end zone.
By the end of the first quarter, the score was 14-0. At halftime, the Hoosiers led 35-3. From there, they could have named their score, but as has been Cignetti’s preference this season, they throttled back as the game wore on.
Mendoza — who even on a less-than-his-best day threw for three touchdowns and ran for another — only attempted five passes after halftime. His brother, Alberto, eventually relieved him, Indiana handing its second-string signal caller a handful of dropbacks for experiential purposes alone.
But, as with Illinois, the other of the Hoosiers’ two 50-plus-point Big Ten wins this season, Cignetti was content to finish this game in first gear.
Last weekend, we wondered whether the Hoosiers were less than their best defensively, on a day when they allowed just 13 points and sacked Michigan State quarterback Aiden Chiles four times. This time, we wondered whether the Hoosiers were not quite themselves on offense, and yet, they finished with 475 yards, 56 points and an eye-popping 27 first downs.
On third and fourth downs combined, they were 14 of 18. What does it say about this team that, even when they look less than their best, they can still be this dominant?
Risking a certain measure of self-importance, the answer to that question is obvious. It says the Hoosiers are as dangerous and as capable as any team in college football.
More fundamentally — and crucially — they are a team that currently looks immune to satisfaction.
Before the Michigan State win, Cignetti invoked former Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski’s famous line about human nature being a coach’s greatest opponent. Yet at a certain point, it becomes hard to sell the threat of complacency, of a letdown or a trap game, when every time we wonder how the Hoosiers might handle all these expectations, they deliver emphatic win after emphatic win.
“We just have everybody on the same page,” Cignetti said. “I know what I want. I’ve got a lot of assistants that, we’ve been together a long time. We all kind of speak the same lingo. We’ve got good players with high character. They’re good leaders. Some of them have been with us a pretty long time. They listen to the message.
“We try to play every play like it’s nothing-nothing, game on the line, regardless of the competitive circumstances.”
Like one of his famous former mentors, Cignetti now faces the last and perhaps greatest test of a coach’s ability.
At the height of his success in Tuscaloosa, Nick Saban’s Alabama was a merciless winning machine. One that swallowed the occasional upset, but only if its opponent earned that success.
Indiana, now, looks like Alabama, then. Smothering on defense. Versatile on offense. Experienced everywhere. Confident in every phase. And virtually impossible to distract.
This season has come with some injury frustration, though not too much.
Byron Baldwin Jr. appears available for selection, finally, after battling an undisclosed injury through much of the first half of the season. Kellen Wyatt, Cignetti suggested this week, isn’t likely to play again in 2025. And Mikail Kamara, Wyatt’s opposite number at the edge, has looked banged up in the last few weeks, albeit without missing significant snaps.
If Fisher’s injury proves long-term, that would be a concern. Jones is an able deputy, but no Hoosier quite measures up to Fisher as a leader.
At the moment, these seem to be the only potential holes in Indiana’s rapidly climbing balloon. Better teams might poke more, but all available evidence says worse ones can’t.
Cignetti, who routinely expresses faith in his strength and training staffs for their collective ability to keep his roster healthy, will not want to see anymore key contributors land on the Hoosiers’ Big Ten-mandated weekly injury report.
No matter how “precautionary” Fisher’s removal Saturday, Cignetti will probably fret over those scans unless or until they deliver good news this coming week. At least we know that might slow the Hoosiers down.
Cignetti can declare complacency this team’s greatest enemy. But at this point, it might just be an X-ray machine.
Injuries can derail even the best-laid plans. Indiana is no exception to that truth.
If we’re asking the question of what can untrack this remarkable team, now ⅔ of the way to completing the first 12-0 regular season in program history, injuries are as good of an answer as any.
Because right now, it’s hard to see anything else slowing the Hoosiers down.
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