Indiana’s roster looks loaded in EA Sports College Football 27, but one spot stands out for all the wrong reasons.
The Hoosiers check in with a 90 overall rating, the second-best mark in the game, and that lines up with the way they’ve been showcased ahead of the July 9 public release. Curt Cignetti is front and center on the Deluxe Edition cover with Memorial Stadium behind him, and he also narrates the official trailer, which leans heavily on Indiana players.
But while the game gives Indiana plenty of respect across the board, the tight end room is the one group that doesn’t get much love.
At quarterback, Indiana lands at 88. The running backs are rated 86, and the wide receivers also sit at 88.
On the other side of the ball, the defensive line comes in at 88, the linebackers at 82, and the secondary at 86. Those numbers fit a roster with experience and proven production.
Tight end is the outlier. Indiana’s lowest-rated position group comes in at 76, and that’s where the questions start.
Redshirt freshman Brock Schott is the highest-rated tight end on the roster at 76. Redshirt freshman Andrew Barker follows at 72, while freshmen Park Elmore and Trevor Gibbs are both rated 68. It’s a young room across the board, with all four players carrying little to no collegiate experience.
That makes the position group Indiana’s biggest question mark right now.
The challenge is obvious when you look at what the Hoosiers lost. Last season, Riley Nowakowski led the tight ends with 32 catches for 387 yards and two touchdowns.
He’s now in the NFL after being selected in the fifth round with the 169th overall pick by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Senior Holden Staes also chipped in with seven catches for 62 yards and two touchdowns.
With both Nowakowski and Staes gone, the door is open for someone new to step forward. Schott appears to be the first name in line, but nothing is locked in yet.
Indiana’s offense under coordinator Mike Shanahan is built around RPOs and a steady balance between the run and the pass. Tight ends aren’t the centerpiece of that system in the passing game, either. The 39 combined catches from Nowakowski and Staes last season made up just 13.4% of Indiana’s total receptions.
So the tight end spot is a real unknown, but not a glaring weakness. If that young group can hold up as blockers and add a few catches here and there, it would give Indiana’s offense another layer of balance.
In Other News...
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Indiana had been in the mix for one of the more sought-after running backs in the 2027 class, but the latest turn on the trail leaves the Hoosiers still searching for a boost at the position. Elijah Kimble, a four-star back from New York who entered the cycle as the states top player and one of the nations top-ranked runners, had drawn serious attention from a finalist group that also included Ohio State and North Carolina.
For Indiana, the miss matters because the 2027 class still includes only one running back, 3-star Da'Jon Talley-Rhodes, and the Hoosiers remain at No. 29 in the Rivals Recruiting Rankings. Kimbles decision also comes after he spent a weekend in Bloomington in April, a sign Indiana was at least firmly in the conversation before the race narrowed and the Hoosiers were left looking to the next target. [Read more 🡒]
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Indianas football rise under Curt Cignetti has started to show up in places the program has rarely been able to reach, and the pursuit of Monshun Sales is the latest sign. The 5-star wide receiver from the 2027 class is one of the sports premier young prospects, ranked by Rivals as the No. 1 receiver and No. 8 player overall, and Indiana has put itself in the conversation alongside the usual heavyweight suspects.
Sales has already worked through official visits to Indiana, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State and LSU, and his list of finalists says plenty about how far the Hoosiers have come in a short time. With Cignettis program fresh off a national championship run, Indiana is no longer just trying to get in the room with blue-chip recruits, it is trying to close on one of them, and Sales could become the kind of pickup that changes how the rest of the country views the Hoosiers on the trail. [Read more 🡒]
Indiana Needs Tobi Osunsanmi To Be A True Difference Maker
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What makes Osunsanmi so important is the ceiling that comes with that skill set. A Kansas State beat writer who studied him up close saw a player with Sunday-level potential, but also one who still has work to do when offenses come right at him, especially against the run and through heavy blocking looks. Indiana does not need him to be perfect, but it does need him to keep turning pressure into disruption if the defense is going to stay at a championship level. [Read more 🡒]