This week I spent some time studying Indiana quarterback Kurtis Rourke. He burst onto the scene this season with the Hoosiers starting 7-0 under intriguing Head Coach Curt Cignetti.
I’m not familiar with offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan (no relation to Kyle) but the first thing that stood out to me was how well the Indiana offense functions. Their pass protection is good, the receivers run crisp routes and everything is effective, on time and it works.
Rourke certainly plays his part in this — he gets the ball out quickly, he seems to have a strong grasp of the scheme and as the distributor of the football, he is the focal point. Yet it’s been quite a while since I watched an offense function at this level. Cignetti and his staff deserve a lot of credit.
From a draft perspective it’s actually helpful that Rourke isn’t playing against Washington this weekend due to a thumb injury. Now we get to see how the offense operates without him to compare. Hopefully he’ll be back for contests against Michigan’s NFL-heavy defense and Ohio State — two vital games that will help shape his stock (and Indiana’s season).
With all this in mind, how do you assess his play? The first thing I’d say is he’s always in attack mode and I like that. He’s willing to go after every area of the field. Often a highly functioning offense includes a lot of cheap short passes and run after the catch situations. That isn’t the case with Indiana. They go for chunks of yardage with their throws.
I think he scans the field very well. You can see him waiting for routes to develop. He does a good job with his ball placement and he’s mastered the back-shoulder throw. There are some impressive passes on tape that I would compare to Michael Penix last year where he throws from the far hash to the opposite sideline with timing, velocity and accuracy. He doesn’t have Penix’s arm talent but that’s not a knock, few do.
Indiana’s giving up just 2.5 sacks per game which is pretty good — it’s the 29th best rate in college football. In comparison, Garrett Nussmeier at LSU is being sacked four times a game — the second highest rate. Everyone talks up the two LSU tackles as NFL prospects but they haven’t played well this season.
Part of Indiana’s low sack rate, though, is the quickness with which Rourke distributes the ball. There’s never any messing about. Yet while watching tape, I didn’t see him under constant duress at any point.
PFF tracks pressures allowed/created by the quarterback and not the O-line. Here are the numbers for the season so far