Coach Q&A: Curt Cignetti provides insight into Indiana's preparation for Big Ten Championship Game

Indiana football head coach Curt Cignetti spoke with reporters Monday to preview this weekend’s upcoming Big Ten Championship clash with Ohio State.

Below is his full Q&A, along with a transcript of the conversation (to be added once it becomes available).

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CURT CIGNETTI: Okay. Turn the page from the last game to the upcoming opponent. Like I said yesterday, excited about this week. Need to have a great day of prep today and stack days, meetings, practices and give ourselves the best chance Saturday. So play 1 to 150, we can play our best.

Playing a great football team. A lot of great players across the board, dominant. Really haven’t been challenged this year. I guess you could say Texas, who scored a touchdown with three minutes to go to make it 14-7, and Michigan got off to a good start, but then Ohio State took control.

Other than the Texas game, they’ve got three 18-point wins their closest games, but in all those other games, they were in complete control.

Q. You mentioned Ohio State’s defense being a little different than it was last year. What did you see when you watched a little more film the last 24 hours? What are those differences, or what are the key differences you saw?

CURT CIGNETTI: And still kind of learning them as we speak. More looks in the secondary for sure, more coverages, a few more different kinds of pressures. It’s a different defense.

They’re good. That’s why they’re No. 1 in the country. Least amount of points, least amount of yards, red area defense, great on third down, fourth down, 30 sacks, give up 70 yards rushing a game, 130 passing.

And they’re dominant on offense obviously. The quarterback’s playing great. They’ve got big time weapons on the outside, and the tight end too, Klare, is a weapon. The running backs have gotten better every week and had big days last week against Michigan.

Special teams are really good. If you all remember, the special teams was a big part of our downfall last year in that game. So our special teams, aside from that game, were excellent last year, and they’ve been very good this year. So they’re going to need to be real good Saturday.

Q. You’ve talked about just over the last two years the extent to which you bet on yourself, you worked your way up through coaching. On Friday night, Fernando, I think he said it was Pat Coogan who kind of delivered this message post-game — maybe it was pregame. That your team is made up of guys that you called misfits, guys that maybe had been rejected somewhere else, had had to kind of fight for this opportunity. Do you think there is a kinship between sort of your experience and the experience of some of your guys on your roster in terms of what motivates these players, both individually and collectively, especially in a game like this where you’re playing a program that has got all of the sort of — I don’t know whatever words you want to use, a program like Ohio State’s going to have?

CURT CIGNETTI: I think maybe to some degree that was the case last year, where you had a number of guys that followed me that had something to prove and a number of other transfers that had joined someone from the G-5 level. That was, I think, Pat Coogan’s angle to kind of get everybody fired up.

I don’t view our team as a bunch of misfits at all. We’ve got a lot of good football players that have proven themselves collegiately. They have high character, high intelligence, work hard, and there’s a lot of people in the country that would love to have a lot of our guys, I promise you that.

But I do give Pat credit for finding an angle to kind of get everybody juiced. Pat’s probably got a little Notre Dame in him still, so maybe from his perspective, we are misfits. That’s a joke.

(Laughter).

No, Pat Coogan has been a key addition to the team. He’s one of our great leaders.

We recognize the challenge. We respect Ohio State. Not pleased with really the way we played last year. We went there, our first real big test on a national level. We’ve talked through that yesterday, the things that happened in that game. But this is a different team.

Q. Your defense throughout the whole season has been pretty dominant, top five in pretty much whatever category you want to look at. I’m just curious your thoughts on why it’s played at that level, pretty much sustained it through 13 regular season games?

CURT CIGNETTI: The only way I can really answer that question, to be quite honest with you, is since our first year at JMU in ’19, where philosophically we want to create TFL sacks and be great against the run and create havoc, that we have played great defense every year since ’19, and there’s a pride and tradition about playing defense here that we carried over to Indiana.

It’s all about people. It’s the program philosophy, but then you got to look at the leader of the defense, Bryant Haines, who I think is an excellent football coach, tactician, linebacker coach, game day coach. Then you’ve got to look at the guys playing defense for us, the Fishers, the Ponds, Bones/Jones, Hardy, Tucker, Daley, guys that are playing really, really well. Our safeties are playing well.

There’s room for improvement, trust me, but there’s a pride about playing defense, and those guys carry it onto the field.

Q. You mentioned yesterday about maybe Ohio State holding back a little bit offensively, which Ryan Day sort of confirmed a little bit, but I’m sure all teams do it. How do you prepare for the unknown? And if you could talk a little bit about how you and your staff make in-game adjustments.

CURT CIGNETTI: Well, I think at this point of the year you’ve seen almost everything. There’s a lot of plays out there that we could run that we haven’t run and I’m sure they could run that they haven’t run, but we’ve got 12 games on them, they’ve got 12 games on us.

We know their personnel pretty well, and they know our personnel pretty well. So we’ve got an idea how we think they’ll attack us. I’m sure they have an idea how they think we’ll attack them. You put your best plan together to put your guys in position to make plays, and then got to execute it.

The thing about college football today with the pads on the sideline, you can see exactly what went on the series before. There’s no gray area. In the old days you used to get communication from guys on the bench and then come in Sunday and half of it was wrong. There is no gray area anymore. So you can make quicker adjustments now than you could in the past, and it’s made the game better.

Q. What stands out about Julian Sayin this season and how your defense can kind of fluster him considering he’s only started a dozen games for Ohio State?

CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, he plays with a lot of poise. He doesn’t look like a guy that’s in his first year as a starter. He looks like he sees the field very well, throws the ball on rhythm. He can really rip it. He’s got a tight release, a lot of velocity on the ball, very accurate. They’ve done a nice job protecting him, and obviously he’s got great weapons to throw to.

I think a little bit like us they don’t put the ball in his hands and say, win the game. They’re balanced. They want to run the football and throw the football both, as do we, and that takes some pressure off the quarterback. Whereas some teams are a little bit more into points, stats, whatever, want to throw the ball more. Neither of these two teams do that.

Q. On that Zoom, I think you said that last year’s team playing Ohio State just wasn’t ready. Like in that moment on that stage, why have you guys just kind of met the moment each time it’s arrived throughout the fall, and why are you confident you guys can meet that moment, that stage on Saturday night?

CURT CIGNETTI: Well, my comment was looking back a year ago, objectively speaking, you would have to say that it became too big for us at some point in the second quarter and into the third. And we’re going to find out Saturday how ready we are.

What I can tell you about this football team is we’ve met every challenge up to this point because we prepare consistently the way you need to prepare and put it on the field, and all three phases have been very consistent. That’s what it’s going to take this week, detailed preparation, commit to the preparation, eliminate the noise and the clutter, put yourself in the best position to play your best on Saturday individually and collectively.

It’s my job to make sure that happens and the assistant coaches. With that done five days from now, our guys will walk on the field with confidence that they will get the job done.

Q. Last year you said depth in the trenches was the biggest difference between your team and teams like Ohio State. How far along do you think you guys have come specifically in those two areas, as far as depth and in the trenches is concerned to battle and match up with Ohio State?

CURT CIGNETTI: And some of the issues with front line players too, not just depth, but depth helps because now you can rest your front line players. We’re probably a little deeper on the offensive line than we were last year. I can’t say the same thing about our defensive line in terms of our depth. We had pretty good depth last year on our defensive line, but we’re getting good production from the guys that are playing.

I think, when we went to Oregon, what we were able to do up front defensively was vital to us being successful in winning that football game, especially in the second. We dominated up front on defense. We’re going to need an outstanding game from our guys this Saturday.

Q. Coach, Saturday, and all week really, is going to be a big showcase for your program. In the state, Ohio State and you guys go for a lot of the same prospects, both in the portal and in high school. What kind of messaging do you want to send out to these prospects who might be choosing between the two schools to say what you’re about?

CURT CIGNETTI: From our perspective, we’re just getting ready to play a football game. So I don’t think about it like that, but I will answer your question. I’d like to think we’re at the level of Ohio State in terms of recruiting, but we’re not right now. Ohio State’s in a league of their own for a lot of different reasons. And a big part of it is their tradition, their winning history, and all the National Championships that they’ve won, and the money that they’ve put into the program over a long, extended period of time.

Are we closing that gap? Yeah, I think we’re closing that gap. What would a successful performance do on Saturday? Well, it would do a lot, a whole lot. There’s a lot of talk about the college football calendar right now.

Well, we’re getting ready to play the Big Ten Championship game. Wednesday is the early signing period for the high school guys. Fortunately, they’re all committed, and our recruiting department can handle most of that. Coaches can focus on their preparation. I won’t even get into the portal part of it.

But there’s no question there will be a lot of eyes on this game. It’s a great matchup. I’m confident that we’ll respond the right way.

Q. One of the things that comes up when you’re dealing with games, game after game and such, but how much is it overlooked, maybe under appreciated, just the individual player development that goes on here with guys getting better and better every week and how much your coaching staff, really from top to bottom, has been a big part of that really in these last two years?

CURT CIGNETTI: Yeah, it’s huge. Building a program and being successful used to be all about recruiting and development. Now you add retention to the mix, but development is what it’s all about because there’s a lot of good football players out there. There aren’t many great unusual players out there. Ohio State’s got a few of those, and we’ve got some really good players.

But the development piece, and what you do with them in the weight room in the off-season program, both in the winter and the summer, your philosophy — offense, defense, special teams — the intangibles you create on your football team, the things you put in their head, the messaging, how you practice? Can you keep them healthy? Do you have a good culture? I mean, do they like it here? Do they like each other? Do you have good leadership?

That’s all part of development, and I think we’ve excelled in those areas. When I first took over as a head coach, I was fortunate that — I mean, we turned the program around right away, but I was able to make some mistakes at that level — year 1, year 2, year 3 — and learn from them so that by year 6, year 5, it was kind of like I’d hit my stride.

We’re always looking to improve what we do organizationally, and I think the organizational discipline that we have is really important here. Everybody’s on the same page. Everybody’s thinking alike. That’s what it takes when you’re the CEO of a program, a football program, P-4.

The bottom line is you’ve got to change the way people think. As the leader, you’ve got to get everybody to think alike and buy into the team vision and sacrifice personal goals sort of aside for the betterment of the team because, when the team’s successful, everybody benefits — more All-Conference, more All-American, more NFL draft choices, et cetera.

So development is huge, and I give our assistant coaches a ton of credit for that. Coach Haines, Coach Shanahan, Grant Cain, Coach Bostad, Derek Owings, every single position coach. We’ve got great people upstairs, and we have great people in that locker room.

Q. You touched upon it a bit in your opening statement. Ohio State hasn’t really been challenged much this season. You guys have had those moments where you’ve been battle tested. How can that be an asset going into Saturday?

CURT CIGNETTI: We’ve been in some close games and down to the wire games. When you’re successful in those kind of situations, it can only add to your confidence and belief that the next time you’re in one, you’re going to make it happen because you have in the past.

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