IU Reactionary: Spring IU Depth Chart and Roster – Offense
A glance at the Indiana roster, depth chart and a couple musings as we head into Spring Practice...
Predictably, the day classes started for the second semester at IU and I thought I was in the clear to actually put out what the spring roster and depth chart would look like…then HC Curt Cignetti and co. proceeded to add NC State standout S Devan Boykin and reserve TE Brody Foley announced that he was signed with Tulsa.
So I waited a couple more days to see if they would add anyone else before going back to re-putting out the current roster and 2-deep for the offense after jumping the gun a little bit for the defense and completely for the offense (I put out my “Way Too Early” depth chart piece for the offense on December 30th like a dummy).
If you’d like to check out my piece on the defense, that can be found on the main Substack page here or at the article link directly (below).
I updated that story and the screen shots of the depth charts, as well as adding Boykin where I think he fits in.
I’m going to do a deep dive by position as we move forward into the spring calendar at a later date because there is basically nothing else to write about until we get tidbits from how spring practices are actually going from reporters and press conferences.
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Last year people said IU had the G5 / FCS all star team. This year, they added a lot more guys with long histories of production, but from Power 4 schools on both sides of the ball. That means bigger athletes with better track records against better competition. There was nothing wrong with the guys they had last year but, if the end of the year was any indication, Cignetti probably felt like they got “out athleted” against the OSU’s and Notre Dame’s of the world.
Again, I’ll get into analysis as the off season moves along but I wanted to say that I think the defense looks like they’re absolutely loaded. Could they add a DE or a LB, sure, but, to me, as presently constructed, they look even better than one of the best defenses in college football last year.
Looking back at the incoming spring IU offense, IU currently stands at 40 scholarships. They also have 14 early enrollee freshman overall (6 on offense) out of 21 total who will be practicing with the team in the spring. 247 has the list of enrolled freshman neatly compiled here. They also add 10 offensive players via the transfer portal who will all be joining the team for the spring.
As I said for the defense, it’s very important to get freshman in early. Obviously, you need to have the space for them to enroll, which means graduating players, but this is the most IU has had since I’ve been following the team. It gives these guys a leg up against anyone in their class arriving later for fall camp and gets them in the S & C program, as well as getting them adapted to the rigors of being a college athlete and a student.
Most of the offensive players returning were pretty much guaranteed where as the verdict was still (sort of) out on some of the defensive guys like LB Aiden Fisher and DE Mikail Kamara to see if they wanted to test the draft waters. So IU will have all eligible guys that contributed back next year except RB Elijah Green (“The Closer”) who transferred to Sam Houston State.
Early Offensive Enrollees (6):
WR LeBron Bond (Fr) 5'9, 160
WR Myles Kendrick (Fr) 6'0, 165
OL Baylor Wilkin (Fr) 6'4, 275
OL Evan Parker (Fr) 6'4, 295
OL Matt Marek (Fr) 6'4, 285
TE Andrew Barker (Fr) 6'4, 230
Offensive Transfer Portal Additions (10):
TE Holden Staes (Sr) 6’4, 248
TE Riley Nowakowski (R-Sr+) 6’1, 243
OL Kahlil Benson (R-Sr+) 6'6, 305
OL Zen Michalski (R-Sr) 6'6, 314
WR Tyler Morris (Sr) 5'11, 185
WR Makai Jackson (Sr) 6'0, 200
RB Roman Hemby (R-Sr) 6'0, 208
RB Lee Beebe (Sr/Jr) 5’10, 220
QB Fernando Mendoza (Sr/Jr) 6'5, 222
QB Grant Wilson (R-Sr+) 6’3, 217
If you’d like to see the entire roster early, please feel free to check out the Google Sheets version here. This is a working document. I usually make a ton of notes about who and why I move players up and down (or off when they leave) but Google isn’t smart enough to let people who don’t have editing power actually see the notes…which is incredibly dumb and something that’s annoyed me for the 5 or so years I’ve been doing these on my own (rant over).
On the Google Sheets version above, there are links to each players IU profile here (I’ll add them once IU does) and that’s the reason for the red, unclickable link looking things in the screen shots below. If a player doesn’t have a link, that only means IU hasn’t made a profile for them. On the final page with the specialists you’ll see a current roster total for scholarships and walk ons.1
Obviously the crown jewel of the entire transfer portal class for IU is QB Fernando Mendoza. He’s a game changer at the most important position in the sport, has two years left and was ranked as the 15th overall player (4th best QB) in the entire tranfer portal. It’s fair to say that I will have a lot more on him as the spring moves along.
Lastly, I have WR Makai Jackson playing the slot in this exercise. The former teammate of WR Elijah Sarratt at St. Francis who then transferred to Appalachian State and now IU, played almost exclusively outside per PFF. I believe he’s going to be used both in the slot in 10 personnel (4 WR’s and 1 RB) and outside backing up Omar Cooper Jr. as a deep threat guy. I also didn’t feel right putting a true freshman on the depth chart before we hear any reports of how they’re practicing even though I think WR Lebron Bond could be a monster in time. Thanks to BTownBucketBoy for the question on Twitter…If you don’t follow him, please do and check out their All 4 You IU football podcast:
Full Team Depth Chart2:
Offensive 2-deep:
85 total scholarship players are allowed by the start of Fall Camp in order to not lose revenue sharing money. 105 is the total roster size allowed (including walk ons) by Fall Camp. IU is currently at 88 on the latter and 84 on the former.
For the Full Team Depth Chart, I place players by who I think would be higher based on what they did last year or, in the case of freshman, by rank, but also by age. Usually at the bottom it’s more a guess until we see or hear things.