Indiana Football: Stevie Scott quietly the motor for Hoosiers’ success

Indiana football continues to power on in the 2019 season and Stevie Scott is a big reason for the success and growth of the IU program.

After Saturday’s win against Northwestern to vault the Indiana football program to a 7-2 mark, somewhere it hasn’t been since 1993, the Hoosiers continue to pick up national recognition and raise up the polls. While not cracking the top-25, IU eared 44 votes, good enough for 27th in the coaches poll, and received 27 votes in the AP Poll, which has the Hoosiers ranked 28th.

With a 3-2 start to the year, and losing the first two games in the Big Ten, the Indiana season outlook looked much like the previous seasons. Then came a bye week and a week that will go down in IU history as a week that could change the outlook of the entire program for the coming years.

The offense, while still explosive, was lacking something and that something was a power running attack. Stevie Scott was sitting at 281 yards on the season, with just a 56.2 yard per game average. The offensive line was in flux and Kalen DeBoer was struggling at times to get all of his big play threats involved in the offense.

During that bye week however, DeBoer not only figured it out, but found out who the offense needed to run through, literally and figuratively, and that was Stevie Scott.

In Scott’s four games since the bye week, he has totaled 456 yards, with three games over 100 yards. Whether it be feeding Scott the ball early, like against Northwestern where Scott had 40 rushing yards on the first drive, or getting him involved in the passing game, with multiple four or more catch games since the bye, the Indiana offense now runs through Scott and has hit its stride.

For whoever is under center, Michael Penix or Peyton Ramsey, Scott is the guy who frees them up and makes the passing game that much easier and lethal. With weapons on the outside like Whop Philyor, Nick Westbrook, Donovan Hale and Ty Fryfogle, making the defense keep their linebackers packed in for the run, opens up so much more in the playbook for DeBoer and the benefits are endless for the high-powered offense.

At 7.1 yards per carry over the past four games, Scott has a lot to be thankful for with IU running backs coach Mike Hart. After the Northwestern win, coach Tom Allen touched on the relationship between the two. 

"“Coach Mike Hart did a great job of teaching him in how to handle this and to be more patient with his runs, and he started running harder, running with more confidence, and now our O-line just keeps getting better and better each and every week,” Allen said."

Coming full circle, patience has been Scott’s best tool, and it all payed off this week when the Big Ten announced that Scott received the Offense Player of the Week honor for his play against the Wildcats.

With two of Indiana football’s biggest games of the season in back-to-back weeks after the bye, let’s see if there is more magic to come from the week off and if Scott can continue to power the IU offense in more ways than one.