Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines took home one of the most prestigious honors in college football on Thursday night, receiving the Broyles Award.
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The Broyles Award honors college football’s top assistant coach on either side of the ball.
“It’s an honor. I’m humbled by it.It’s the pinnacle of the profession,” Haines said ahead of the announcement. “I mean, it truly is the pinnacle of the profession. If you’re an assistant football coach, it means you’re the best at what you do.So I’m humbled by it.
Other assistants that were finalists were Miami defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman, Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, Texas Tech defensive coordinator Shiel Wood and Georgia offensive coordinator Mike Bobo.
“He’s a football guy,” Indiana head coach Curt Cignetti said last year of Haines. “His philosophy is to attack. He wants to attack offenses. So, the X and O part of it is his strength, but he’s a great teacher … And I can’t say enough good things about Bryant Haines.”
Haines led Indiana to one of the top defensive performances around the nation in recent years. Indiana’s defense ranked 4th nationally in total defense which included 2nd in tackles for loss, 2nd in rushing defense, 2nd in scoring defense, 2nd in opposing completion percentage, 3rd in turnovers forced, 6th in sacks and 8th in red zone defense.
Indiana allowed just three opponents to score over 20 points this season, leading to an average of just 11.1 points per game allowed. It held Ohio State to 10 points, Illinois to 10 points, Oregon to just one offensive touchdown in the first matchup during the regular season and Alabama to three points in the Rose Bowl.
In seven of Indiana’s 16 games, opponents were held to 10 points or less.
“I start with what they do best. It’s like if you play one-on-one basketball against somebody, is this person right-handed? Well, I’m definitely going to force them to their left, then. Let’s take them out of their original game plan,” Haines said of his game plan. “So I always want to identify, what does an offense do best? What’s going to allow them to win the game most easily? If you can identify that, take that away, priority one.
“Priority two is, what do we do well? What are their vulnerabilities versus what we can do? So how do we attack them? So I want to make them play left-handed, and then I want to find a weakness that we can exploit. So it starts from there. And then we have such a large playbook, amount of content, we just start picking and pulling the things that allow us to attack those weaknesses most effectively.”
Indiana went 16-0 this season, winning the Big Ten Championship and the National Championship — the first in program history.
Haines will enter his third season at Indiana this upcoming year.
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