Indiana opens its 2026 season with a familiar face on the other sideline, and the setup points straight toward the trenches. Former IU quarterback Tayven Jackson is back in Bloomington leading a reworked North Texas team, but the Mean Green arrive with far more questions than answers.
That starts with the roster itself. North Texas is coming off a surprise 12-win season in 2025 under Eric Morris, but that group is gone.
Morris left for Oklahoma State, Drew Mestemaker followed him, and Neal Brown inherited a rebuild that required 47 transfers to patch things together. ESPN’s metric has the Mean Green down at No. 123, and the bigger issue for Brown is obvious: there isn’t much continuity here.
The defense may be the shakier side of the equation. According to Ourlads, North Texas could have as many as nine transfers starting on that side of the ball, though the team did not release a depth chart in its game notes and that number could end up being 10.
Either way, the production loss is massive. The Mean Green are No. 124 in percentage of returning defensive production, and that group is now being run by Matt Powledge, who was most recently Baylor’s defensive coordinator.
Baylor finished in the bottom 15 of FBS in scoring defense, and during Powledge’s three seasons under Dave Aranda, the Bears never finished higher than 80th in scoring.
Brown’s own track record on that side of the ball doesn’t offer much comfort, either. The last time he was a head coach, his defense ranked No. 110 in scoring.
North Texas does have pieces that can matter on offense, though, especially in the backfield. Seth McGowan is back after his season ended with a knee injury in his second game last year, following Rich Rodriguez’s arrival.
Brown also has history with him from West Virginia, where McGowan played in Brown’s offense for two seasons. He has seven career 100-yard games, earned Freshman All-American honors, and was viewed as one of the sport’s top returning backs.
At 5-7, he still averaged 6.5 yards per carry and 4 yards after first contact across those two-plus seasons. Brown said he’s “got a chip on his shoulder” after reuniting with his former coach, and that kind of edge figures to show up in his first game back in nearly a year.
Jackson is the other name Indiana has to account for, but the matchup is tailor-made for Bryant Haines’ defense. Jackson was the starter at UCF last year after losing the job there, and pressure is where the numbers get ugly.
On 98 pressured dropbacks, he completed 50.9% of his passes, averaged 4.9 yards per attempt, posted an NFL QB rating of 41.3, and took 15 sacks with 8 turnover-worthy plays, according to PFF. That’s a useful reminder for Indiana: the quickest route to controlling this game is making Jackson uncomfortable.
And if that sounds familiar, it should. Jackson showed similar issues as IU’s part-time starter in 2023 before Curt Cignetti arrived.
He’s talented enough to win a starting job at a third FBS program, so there will be flashes. But with Indiana’s defense, and especially its front, the more likely script is a rough return to Bloomington.
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