Heading into this week’s game against the Illinois Fighting Illini, even the most optimistic of Indiana football fans seemed to recognize that expecting a win against the #19 team in the country might be unrealistic.

The Hoosiers would need to play great defense, force turnovers and get a little bit lucky. On a warm Saturday afternoon, Indiana did all three of those things.

They did for the first 10 minutes anyway, and it still didn’t make a bit of difference thanks to a crippling offensive performance.

Seriously, Shane Wynn ran back the opening kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown and the Hoosiers forced a punt and a turnover on their first two defensive possessions. This game looked for all the world like an upset special.

Indiana had a two score lead, had forced a turnover, was flying to the ball on defense and was catching breaks that it normally doesn’t catch. Even after a 77-yard touchdown pass to AJ Jenkins, the Hoosiers came out and caught another break as Dusty Kiel turned what looked to be a sack into a 48 yard pass play to Stephen Houston.

Five plays later, the Illinois defense got to Kiel and forced a fumble that was taken 66 yards in the other direction for an Illini score and a 14-10 lead.

In spite of the offensive miscue, the defense – to the surprise of everyone (myself included) – held strong and forced another Illinois turnover, as Adam Replogle sacked Nathan Scheelhaase deep in Illini territory and forced a fumble. Bobby Richardson recovered the football three yards from the end zone and gave the offense a golden chance to regain the lead.

Four plays later, IU had settled for a 22-yard field goal and was on its way to a 21-point loss.

Any coach or player will tell you that football is never just about any one play.

There can be an almost limitless number of plays that affect the outcome of a game, and literally any play can change the makeup of a contest. That being said, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Indiana offense failing to score from the Illinois three-yard line was an early death blow to the Hoosiers and turned the tide in this game.

More disturbing than the fact that IU failed to score a touchdown from three yards out is the fact that their failure was neither new nor surprising, as red zone offense is an area that the Hoosiers have struggled in for the first half of the season

The sustained impotence of the Indiana offense is a dangerous and tricky issue for a defense that, while it’s played hard all season, appears deficient in both talent and experience. The defense’s struggle from that point on (the Illini scored 21 unanswered points after IU settled for a field goal) can be reasoned out just by understanding basic human nature.

“If we make a great play against a great offense and you guys can’t even move the ball three measly yards, than what chance do we have?!”

That’s obviously an oversimplification of the problem, but is a rough approximation of what I saw in Saturday’s game. This was a Hoosier team that (with the exception of allowing one big play) was playing solid defense, had scored a special teams touchdown and had caught just about every possible break, but had still managed to lose control of the game by midway through the second quarter.

Kevin Wilson has beaten this statement into the ground over the past couple of weeks, but it remains just as true today as it was two weeks ago against North Texas: the offense needs to begin pulling its weight, and that begins with the quarterback position. Dusty Kiel started this week in place of the banged-up Ed Wright-Baker before being replaced by Tre Roberson. With Kiel at the helm, Indiana gained only 119 yards in the first half – 48 of those coming on a broken play – and played so poorly that it’s just about impossible for me to envision him leading this team to a B1G win (I think he just underthrew Damarlo Belcher again).

Halfway through the season, we’ve seen Wright-Baker, Kiel and Roberson in varying capacities and all three have struggled in certain areas. Wright-Baker lacks Kiel’s pocket discipline, Kiel lacks Wright-Baker’s arm strength and Roberson, despite being the most dynamic of the three, is also the least experienced.

Bottom line, the Hoosiers are still searching for a guy they can trust as a signal-caller, something that they had hoped not to still be doing at this point in the season and something that won’t get any easier next week against #4 Wisconsin. How long their search lasts is an open question.

For the team’s sake, I hope Saturday’s contest wasn’t an indicator.