Indiana’s secondary is staring at a very specific kind of problem Saturday night against Rutgers: a receiver who is hard to miss and even harder to handle.
KJ Duff checks in at 6-foot-6, and that size is only part of the issue. Through four games, he has already hauled in 29 passes for 550 yards and seven touchdowns.
His catches nearly double Rutgers’ next-most-productive receiver, and his touchdown total matches his overall output in 2025. He has led the Scarlet Knights in receiving in every game this season, with USC the only opponent to keep him under 100 yards.
That combination of production and body type makes Duff a brutal matchup on the outside. At 225 pounds, he brings a kind of frame most defensive backs simply cannot match, and even the safeties who can stand up to the size are few and far between.
Rutgers knows exactly how to use him once the field shrinks. In the red zone, he becomes the obvious target, the kind of player you can just throw the ball up to and let sort it out. That approach worked against USC.
Indiana’s defense has already seen what a bigger pass-catcher can do when it loses leverage. Northwestern tight end Luke Dehnicke, a similarly built target, went off for 140 yards on seven catches against the Hoosiers last week.
The matchup is also a different one for Indiana than some of its better outings against elite receivers in the past. Those defenses had D’Angelo Ponds. This group is still learning each other, at least as a unit, and Duff looks like the kind of receiver who can expose that.
The likely first answer for Indiana is 6-foot-1 Jamari Sharpe, with help expected behind him. The linebackers could get involved on shorter routes, while safeties Byron Baldwin, Amare Ferrell and Preston Zachman may be asked to patrol over the top.
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