FootballScoop is proud to announce that Bryant Haines (Indiana) is the recipient of the 2025 FootballScoop Defensive Coordinator of the Year presented by Teamworks, as selected by prior winners.
Let's start at the end. Indiana's Big Ten Championship victory is, without argument, the biggest win in the history of its 138-year-old football program. The Hoosiers won the game despite scoring the fewest amount of points in the short-but-successful Curt Cignetti era, and the fewest amount of points in a win by an IU team since 2001. They won that game because the best-coached defense in college football put on a performance for the ages.
In IU's 13-10 win over No. 1-ranked and defending national champion Ohio State, the Hoosiers limited the Buckeyes to their fewest points since their last defeat, a string of 16 games. Ohio State rushed for just 58 yards on 26 carries, their lowest output in at least a decade, while limiting Heisman Trophy-candidate Julian Sayin to a 60.7 QBR, his lowest number of the season. Ohio State was 4-of-12 on third down (the Buckeyes were the best third-down offense in the country coming into the game), and scored one touchdown in four red zone trips.
As a result of that legendary performance, Indiana is the outright Big Ten champion for the first time since 1945, will play in the Rose Bowl for the first time since the 1967 season, and enters the College Football Playoff as the No. 1 overall seed.
Of course, there was more to IU's season than one epic night in Indianapolis.
As a unit, Indiana allows 257.2 yards per game (sixth nationally), 4.57 yards per play (12th), and 10.8 points per game (second).
Indiana's defense was led by one of the stingiest fronts in college football. The Hoosiers surrendered only 1,009 yards on 349 carries through the regular season and Big Ten Championship, a 2.89 per carry average and a 77.62 per game average -- both of which ranked among the top 10 nationally. Five rushes found the end zone, tied for the second fewest in college football. Eleven of their 13 opponents were held to below 100 yards, and five teams failed to top 2.5 per carry. In addition to Ohio State's middling 58 yards, Indiana limited Conference USA champion Kennesaw State to 89 yards, CFP No. 5 seed Oregon to 81, Iowa to 92, and Illinois to two. Yes, two.
Indiana's rushing totals were buoyed by a ferocious pass rush that tallied 39 sacks, tied for the fourth most in college football. Most crucially, Indiana's pass rush was at its best against IU's best opponents. The Hoosiers sacked Sayin five times and Oregon's Dante Moore six. IU got to Illinois's Luke Altmyer seven times.
That pass rush informed the Hoosiers' pass defense, which snagged 17 interceptions while allowing only seven touchdowns. Opposing passers hit 61.5 percent of their 382 passes for 2,334 yards (6.1 per attempt) for 179.5 yards per game -- placing IU in the top 20 across the board. Most importantly, only a single opponent finished a game versus Indiana with more passing touchdowns than interceptions -- and the Hoosiers still won the game, 38-13. Not a single opponent threw for multiple touchdowns in a game. In non-conference play, Indiana surrendered 316 yards and no touchdowns on 63 attempts.
Indiana finished sixth in FBS with 25 takeaways, tied for second with 112 tackles for loss, finished second on third down with a sparkling 28.1 percent conversion percentage, and allowed touchdowns on six of 22 red zone trips, the best percentage (27.3%) since LSU in 2016.
Haines's unit placed four players on the All-Big Ten First Team: defensive tackle Tyrique Tucker, linebacker Aiden Fisher, and defensive backs Louis Moore and D'Angelo Ponds. Linebacker Rolijah Hardy was a Second Team All-Big Ten honoree.
Haines is also a finalist for the Broyles Award, given to the top assistant coach in college football.
A 4-year starter and an All-MAC linebacker at Ball State, Haines entered coaching in 2009 at Manchester College. Further stops included Adrian College, Ohio State, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and UC Davis before taking the linebackers job under Curt Cignetti at Elon in 2017. He followed Cignetti to James Madison in 2019 and was promoted to defensive coordinator in 2022. He has been Indiana's defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the past two seasons.
The FootballScoop Coaches of the Year awards presented by Teamworks are the only set of awards that recognize the most outstanding position coaches in college football. The finalists (Rob Aurich [San Diego State], Skyler Cassity [North Texas], Tosh Lupoi [Oregon], Matt Patricia [Ohio State], Shiel Wood [Texas Tech] and Haines) were selected based off of nominations by coaches, athletic directors, and athletic department personnel. The prior winners selected this year's winner.
Previous winners of the Defensive Coordinator of the Year award are Nick Holt (USC, 2008), Kirby Smart (Alabama, 2009), Vic Fangio (Stanford, 2010), John Chavis (LSU, 2011), Bob Diaco (Notre Dame, 2012), Pat Narduzzi (Michigan State, 2013), Brent Venables (Clemson, 2014), Don Brown (Boston College, 2015), Jim Leavitt (Colorado, 2016), Kevin Steele (Auburn, 2017), Bob Shoop (Mississippi State, 2018), Phil Snow (Baylor, 2019), Mike Hankwitz (Northwestern, 2020), Jim Knowles (Oklahoma State, 2021), Jesse Minter (Michigan, 2022), Phil Parker (Iowa, 2023), and Pete Kwiatkowski (Texas, 2024).
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