Indiana has another freshman defensive tackle forcing his way into the conversation.
Blake Smythe, a native Hoosier from Trafalgar, Ind., has spent camp turning heads inside a deep Indiana defensive line room, and the buzz around him has only grown as the opener against North Texas on Sep. 5 gets closer. Tyrique Tucker, the All-American tackle who first singled Smythe out in spring camp, backed that up again late in fall camp.
"Blake is a fast learner. He kind of gets it right off the rip," Tucker said Aug.
- "He is a great addition and is making a case to get some playing time.
That is for sure. He just does things so well, gets things so fast.
It doesn't take him too long to understand things fully and what people are doing around him."
That kind of praise matters in Curt Cignetti’s program. He’s not usually eager to throw freshmen onto the field before they’ve earned it, especially on the defensive front. But every year, a small group of newcomers changes the equation by showing enough in practice to demand a look.
Indiana has already seen that happen with players such as Charlie Becker, Daniel Ndukwe and Mario Landino in 2024, then Byron Baldwin Jr., Davion Chandler and others the following season. Smythe is trying to be the next freshman who breaks through.
He arrived at IU in January as a three-star recruit ranked No. 123 among defensive line prospects in the 2026 class. Among Indiana’s 22 freshman signees, he checked in as the 16th-highest rated player by 247Sports. The offers were there - Illinois, Michigan State, Louisville and others from around the Midwest - but he wasn’t the headliner in the class.
What pushed him onto Indiana’s radar was production. At Franklin Community, Smythe put together a senior season with 59 total tackles, 22.0 tackles for loss and 4.0 sacks. Over his high school career, he piled up 261 tackles, 52.0 tackles for loss, 20.0 sacks, three forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries and two interceptions.
That’s the kind of résumé that gets noticed by Cignetti and defensive tackles coach Pat Kuntz.
At 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds, Smythe already had the frame to hold up in the trenches. What has really separated him, though, is how quickly he’s absorbed Bryant Haines’ defensive system. Mario Landino said Smythe has shown that kind of quick processing that jumps out in camp, even if he’s still working through the normal growing pains of a first-year player.
"He's flashed in ways where he showed twitch intelligence," Landino said Aug. 28.
"But there's also little freshman things and mistakes that always come up and things that we need to work on. He's not a complete player yet, I'm not a complete player yet, but that's what we strive to be is complete players.
He's done a good job."
The expectation is that Tucker and Landino will handle most of the snaps at defensive tackle this season, but Smythe appears to be next in line when Indiana rotates bodies into games. For a freshman, that’s a strong place to be before the first kickoff has even arrived.
Landino sees the path clearly, and he sees pieces of his own journey in Smythe’s.
"He's younger, and when I was younger I had a guy like James (Carpenter) that showed me the pathway and I'm trying to be that guy towards Blake," Landino said. "I think he's made great strides as a freshman and better than I was as a freshman."
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