New OC Carey insists, ‘We can make a difference’
BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football’s new offensive coordinator Rod Carey still doesn’t have a magic wand.
Carey used the phrase just shy of a year ago when he took over as IU’s interim offensive line coach and told reporters there was no way to “suddenly make everything better.”
He had a similar message on Wednesday during his introductory press conference in his new role, but was a bit more careful with his wording.
“I caught a lot of crap from my brother-in-law,” Carey said, with a laugh.
Rod Carey was the right man for the job
Indiana coach Tom Allen fired offensive coordinator Walt Bell on Sunday coming off a 44-17 loss to Maryland that left the offense ranked near the bottom in the FBS in scoring (t-No. 113 out of 133 teams), total yards (No. 109) and rushing (No. 114).
The most distressing stat for Allen — one he mentioned on Wednesday while introducing Carey — was the Hoosiers having scored only three touchdowns during meaningful minutes against FBS competition this season.
Allen turned to Carey again for help. “Those are hard choices,” Carey said. “I have a lot of sympathy for the choice he had to make . ... The personnel side of this is hard. The business side is real. I think we all get it. Just ain’t been good enough guys on offense. It’s my charge to get us better. I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t think I could.”
It was a no-brainer for Allen considering Carey’s head coaching experience at Northern Illinois and Temple and his success as an assistant on the offensive of the ball. Carey was NIU’s offensive coordinator in 2012 when the team went 12-2 (8-0 MAC) and made the Orange Bowl with an offensive that averaged 38.6 points per game (No. 13 in FBS) and 469.6 yards per game (No. 20).
Carey, who will call plays and coach the quarterbacks, is also an Indiana alum who started at center for the last Hoosiers team to win a bowl game, the 1991 Cooper Bowl.
“He loves Indiana,” Allen said. “He’s passionate about Indiana football.”
‘There’s no time to make drastic changes’
Carey’s goal now is try to turn the flashes of potential he’s seen from IU’s offense into something more permanent.
He wasn’t ready to have any personnel discussions on Wednesday and declined to discuss the starting quarterback situation, but is confident in the approach he’s going to take with the group.
“There are probably things we have done that we need to do more,” Carey said. “This is the cheap seats version, you see something we’ve done good, we just need to do more of it. You see something that hasn’t been productive, you just don’t do that anymore. That’s the cheap seats version. That’s what we have spent time identifying as a staff.”
Much of what Carey is hoping to do is simplify things for the offense and shore up the execution errors that have popped up on a more frequent basis in recent weeks. He acknowledged it might sound overly simplistic, but taking over at midseason doesn’t allow a coaching staff to make any wholesale changes to the structure of the offense.
“It’s going to be the small details that we have to do that are going to add up to a difference,” Carey said. “If I didn’t believe I would not be standing in front of you. I told coach Allen that too. Not just me, but us, as we go forward we can make a difference.”