Insider: 'This wasn't the plan.' How Rod Carey became Indiana's offensive line coach

BLOOMINGTON – When Tom Allen and Rod Carey connected this offseason to discuss the possibility of Carey returning to IU in a quality control role, Carey asked Allen a simple question with a complicated answer.

What, Carey wanted to know, was Allen’s vision for the role he was asking Carey to fill.

“‘I don’t really know,’” Carey said Allen told him. “We just kind of worked through it together.”

Even then, neither man would have envisioned this.

Now Indiana’s offensive line coach after a midseason staff change, Carey followed Allen on Monday during IU’s customary start-of-the-week press conferences. The Minnesota native, who played for Bill Mallory from 1990-93, stood at the podium inside Memorial Stadium’s Henke Hall of Champions and reflected on his two visits to the sweeping, multi-floor event room, both of them heavy-hearted.

The first was for Mallory’s funeral in 2018. The second came Monday, when Carey stood in front of reporters and talked about replacing his recently fired predecessor, Darren Hiller.

“There isn’t anything easy about what happened,” Carey said. “We know it’s the profession, we understand the profession, but those are real relationships and those are real people. …

“I think the world of coach Hiller.”

Carey will now fill his shoes for at least the rest of the 2022 season, having been elevated to replace Hiller after Allen’s decision to dismiss his longtime offensive line coach Sunday afternoon.

Following six weeks of stunted, sputtering offensive performance that left Indiana at or near the bottom of the Big Ten in numerous key statistical categories, Allen said over the weekend the Hoosiers were falling well short of his expectations.

The last three weeks in particular might have represented a red line for Allen, as he watched his team drop consecutive games to Cincinnati, Nebraska and Michigan by a combined 56 points. In that stretch, the Hoosiers have allowed 18 sacks and 22 quarterback hurries.

Seven of those sacks came in Saturday’s homecoming loss to Michigan, a game during which Indiana averaged three yards per play.

The Hoosiers have been shut out in the second half of each of their last two games, and they’ve scored just seven points across their last three fourth quarters. Saturday represented a low point in that regard: Not only were the Hoosiers held scoreless, but across three fourth-quarter drives, they lost 12 yards. Indiana’s total offensive yardage in its last two fourth quarters remains in the red, -7 yards.

Allen backed Hiller through last offseason but admitted following the Michigan game and again Monday that his offense simply wasn’t producing as he needed it to.

“There’s a standard we play with and want to play with, and I didn’t think we were playing with that standard on the offensive line,” Allen said Monday. “We wanted to see improvement and I didn’t feel like we were improving.”

Per the terms of his contract, Hiller will be owed a little more than $330,000, which represents the remainder of a contract scheduled to expire next June.

Carey will inherit both of Hiller’s titles, offensive line coach and run game coordinator. He is allowed all the same rights and responsibilities as any normal position coach, including on-field coaching and off-campus recruiting.

It will mark a shift in emphasis for Carey, whose quality control responsibilities had bent largely toward bringing an offensive mind to defensive meetings. But the move means he’ll return to the position he played in college, and the one he coached at virtually all his non-head coaching stops before returning to Bloomington this offseason.

“He’s really an offensive line guy. That’s where his eyes go,” Allen said. “To be able to utilize that was a very positive thing. He loves Indiana, believes in what we’re doing.”

Carey’s resume makes his elevation more than just sentimental.

After his playing career ended, he coached for a year at Wayzata High School, his alma mater, before returning to college. Starting as a graduate assistant at Minnesota, Carey worked his way up through Division III Wisconsin-Stout to Illinois State, then North Dakota, before arriving at Northern Illinois in 2011. At each stop, Carey coached offensive line, before adding offensive coordinator duties after one year in DeKalb.

Another year after that, he was picked to succeed Dave Doeren as head coach at Northern Illinois, where across eight seasons he gathered 52 wins and five bowl berths. Carey then moved to Temple, where he spent three years before being fired last November.

Carey’s best work statistically came during the meat of his tenure at Northern Illinois. From 2011 when he became the Huskies’ offensive coordinator through 2016, his offense finished a season outside the top 40 nationally just once in total yards per game and outside the top 20 nationally just once in rushing yards per game.

Across that same span, the Huskies were consistently in the top half of the Mid-American Conference in statistics like sacks allowed and tackles for loss allowed, and only once in his six full seasons as head coach in DeKalb did Carey’s team miss the bowl field.

Carey gives Indiana a third offensive assistant with head-coaching experience, and a second at the college level. This wasn’t intended when program alumni encouraged Allen to contact Carey about the quality control roll last offseason, but some coincidences by nature are happy ones.

“That wasn't the plan when he came here, for this to happen,” Allen said. “He's been offensive coordinator, (and) obviously as I mentioned, head coach. The chance to have someone right here with us on a consistent basis in our staff meetings, around our players, to be able to utilize that was a very positive thing, without question.”

None of that made Sunday easier for Carey, who did his best to stay out of the way of an offensive line room raw from the dismissal of the man who had recruited and developed virtually every player in that group.

Allen delivered news of Hiller’s firing to his players Sunday lunchtime.

“There were a lot of emotions,” Allen said. “They love coach Hiller. I love coach Hiller.”

Carey called Sunday “extremely hard,” but he praised his players for their focus in Monday’s practice, his first in his new role.

Still, Carey warned that there would be no silver-bullet solutions to Indiana’s blocking issues. His resume is impressive, but so too was Hiller’s when Indiana hired him. And Carey will have far less time to stamp his mark on this roster.

“We're in the middle of a season,” he said. “I certainly am not a miracle worker as far as trying to get production out. There isn't time. We’ve got to play Maryland in five (days). But I know this: I'm going to try because Coach Allen asked me to try.”

Carey’s candidness underscores the hard work it will take to turn around IU’s struggling offensive line, especially midseason.

“Some of the execution hasn't been at the highest level that we all want it at,” he said. “But that's part of teaching, too. How do you teach execution? That's repetition. That's where it crosses over into coaching.”

But he also spoke passionately about the chance to work for Allen, at his alma mater.

It wasn’t what either man intended when they first spoke. But they need each other now, in ways once unexpected. All Carey can offer his alma mater is his best.

“When you come back to a place where it started, it means something,” Carey said. “This is a special place. (They) do things a little different around here, and that's all right. Different ain’t bad. Different’s just different.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: How Rod Carey replaced Darren Hiller as IU football offensive line coach