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Coming off a surprisingly excellent 2020, Indiana Football found itself with a couple of holes on the coaching staff. Three solid years as the Hoosiers’ defensive coordinator earned Kane Wommack a chance to be the head coach at South Alabama, and the siren song of alma mater finally convinced Mike Hart to return to Michigan after four years as Indiana’s running backs coach. In finding replacements for them, IU found one coach with plenty of prior Indiana experience, and another coach with a little bit of Big Ten experience but a whole lot of SEC defensive knowledge.
Defensive Coordinator
First off, the new man on campus, Charlton Warren. Warren comes to the Hoosiers after spending the last two years as defensive backs coach at Georgia. Before that, he spent a year each at Florida and Tennessee, two years at UNC, eight years at his alma mater Air Force, and was Nebraska’s defensive backs coach in 2014. He was recognized by 247Sports as one of the top recruiters in the country, and his teams have a history of forcing turnovers and playing efficient defense, which should fit right into the schemes Indiana has been running recently. He assumes Wommack’s duties as both defensive coordinator and linebackers coach.
Running Backs
And replacing Mike Hart as associate head coach and running backs coach, the man Hart himself replaced, Deland McCullough. McCullough originally coached running backs at Indiana from 2011-2016, sharing the last year with Tom Allen’s first year as defensive coordinator for the Hoosiers. In 2017, McCullough moved on to USC (the California one, not the Gamecocks), and coached two separate backs to all-Pac 12 honors. One of those backs is Stephen Carr, who transferred to Bloomington for the upcoming season. The last three years saw McCullough coaching in the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs, and at the 2020 Combine was named the NFL’s Running Backs Coach of the Year. His son Deland II transferred from Miami (OH) to the Hoosiers, and should add defensive back depth.
Beyond those two, much of Indiana’s coaching staff remained the same from prior years, and that consistency should help keep the Hoosiers well-coached and prepared to run (and pass, and defend, etc, etc) all over the Big Ten.