Five Indiana football burning questions: Let's start with 'Who is your QB?'

BLOOMINGTON – Tom Allen faces the media first and last Thursday, at the second of two Big Ten media days.
He’ll be the first coach on the podium, and the last to sit for his breakout session, as the conference begins to try and unwrap the mystery that is IU football in 2023.
The questions awaiting Allen are many, but we’ve winnowed down to five he might get first or most, plus some stabs at his answers.
Who is your quarterback?
Allen wouldn’t name a frontrunner, much less a starter, coming out of spring, and he’s unlikely to go any further this week.
Indiana’s coach has been adamant since the start of the spring season he saw summer — when players organize more of their own activities and natural leadership tends to surface — as crucial to this position battle. There’s every chance he has a better idea in his own mind who of Tayven Jackson or Brendan Sorsby is best positioned for the job heading into the preseason. But he still isn’t going to divulge it this week.
There are precious few tea leaves to read. Jackson and Sorsby, the likely frontrunners, split snaps virtually down the middle in spring. Each had good moments, each had bad. Jackson was an attendee at a private NIL fundraiser featuring several IU athletes earlier this month in Zionsville, while Sorsby was not, but that enters grasping-at-straws territory.
Allen will get many of the inevitable quarterback questions Thursday. He will answer few of them.
How comfortable is Matt Guerrieri calling your defense?
Allen has turned defensive play calling over twice in his IU tenure. It worked well enough the first time to get Kane Wommack a head job. It went badly enough the second time to prompt Allen to take the defense back, after Charlton Warren returned to North Carolina following his only season in Bloomington.
Now Allen gives it up again, this time to Guerrieri. An offseason hire who amusingly spent a fleeting moment on Kevin Wilson’s staff at Tulsa before coming to Bloomington, Guerrieri is well-respected and comes recommended from his time on staff at Ohio State. He seemed to build a good rapport in spring practices, but those observations can be dangerously surface level at times.
Indiana hands him a defense jam-packed with transfers and unproven but promising young players. Can he coalesce that unit into something effective, blending Allen’s principles with his own? Especially given Guerrieri’s Ohio State ties, it’s going to come up this week.
Where will Jaylin Lucas play?
This is one question Allen won’t have any trouble answering — anywhere he can.
Indiana’s staff has been intentional about getting Lucas on the field every way conceivable this fall. The Hoosiers know they need to be smart about his usage, to retain Lucas’ explosive speed. But Allen will find any spot conceivable on the field for his All-American.
That will mean more touches in the screen game. Possibly returning punts as well as kicks. Two-back sets. Even perhaps some option looks, like what we saw IU roll out against Purdue last November.
Allen might be cagey about some topics at media days, but putting the ball in his best playmaker’s hands isn’t likely to be among them.
How confident are you in Indiana’s net addition in the transfer portal?
The Hoosiers endured a handful of tough departures in the portal this offseason, including Dasan McCullough (Oklahoma) and A.J. Barner (Michigan). Allen and his staff were even more active on incomings, adding well over a dozen new faces across nearly every position group on roster.
There’s the physical question of who Allen sees on the field soonest and where. And there’s the larger philosophical question so many coaches are grappling with now, of how you foster chemistry and cohesiveness when the team unit is disrupted more often.
Programs like IU will always probably need to spend some quality time in the portal. They can’t afford to be too inexperienced or untested. And the nature of the portal means ins will sometimes have to be matched to outs.
But this was an unusually busy offseason for Allen in that regard, and it’s probably going to come up in some way during his turn through Lucas Oil Stadium.
Are you tired of opening with conference opponents?
Allen will probably play good soldier as and when someone brings up a fourth Big Ten opponent-as-season opener in his seven seasons in charge in Bloomington. It’s a lot more likely than getting him to change his mind on Friday night games, of which his team has one (Indiana State) this year.
Still, Allen could be forgiven for some frustration directed toward the schedule maker. This will be the second time to open against Ohio State.
There are benefits to opening with a Big Ten opponent.
Particularly this season, when so much about Indiana remains unknown, Allen can leverage that mystery to his advantage. It sharpens players to know there’s no easing into the campaign. And if the absolute worst comes to pass, it gets one of the Hoosiers’ toughest games out of the way early.
Most coaches would still prefer a softer start, Allen probably among them. It might be interesting to see if the coach who broke ranks on Friday games at his first Big Ten media days would be critical of getting saddled with so many Week 1 Big Ten games.