Indiana football names Tayven Jackson starting quarterback with Louisville on deck

BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football coach Tom Allen named Tayven Jackson the starting quarterback over Brendan Sorsby on Monday. The Hoosiers (1-1, 0-1 Big Ten) play Louisville (2-0, 1-0 ACC) at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Saturday. Allen extended the quarterback competition into the season to give the coaching staff a chance to evaluate the two playing what he described as “full-bore live football.

” The quarterbacks each got a start and rotated through the first two weeks of the season. Jackson was the more effective of the two with 260 passing yards (73. 1% passing).

The offense scored points on six (five touchdowns) of the 12 drives he played and had 480 yards of total offense. It seemed like Indiana might be leaning in that direction when Jackson got a more extended audition in the 41-7 win over Indiana State. The coaching staff kept Jackson game deep into the second half despite having the game well in hand.

He put together a pair of scoring drives during the stretch including a well-executed 13-play, 93-yard drive. It’s a full-circle moment of sorts for Jackson. His older brother Trayce Jackson-Davis was an All-American for Indiana and Allen’s staff heavily recruited Tayven when he was a highly decorated four-star prospect coming out of Center Grove High School.

The four-star prospect landed at Tennessee — he was the state’s No. 6 ranked prospect in the 2022 signing class and No. 237 ranked player overall — but entered the transfer portal after redshirting as a true freshman.

He only spent two days in the portal. Indiana rebuilt its quarterback room after Connor Bazelak (Bowling Green) and Jack Tuttle (Michigan) left the program and returning quarterback Dexter Williams was sidelined with a torn ACL he suffered late in the season. .