INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (WDRB) — He stayed down. For a moment, that’s all anyone could see. Indiana’s quarterback. Face down on the turf at Lucas Oil Stadium, unmoving.
So much for Cinderella. Midnight had arrived on the very first play. A wince-inducing shot from Ohio State defensive end Cayden Curry. It would’ve knocked the wind out of a hurricane.
But Fernando Mendoza didn’t stay down. .
He got up, shook it off, and led the Hoosiers all the way to a Big Ten championship, and much more. A No. 1 ranking. Top seed in the College Football Playoff. The Rose Bowl.
Indiana 13, Ohio State 10.
No misprint. No mirage.
Just the most improbable win in program history, dressed in crimson and disbelief.
“Although I got hit, I was never going to stay down,” Mendoza said. “And that's one thing I know -- one thing, I say it and I know it could be a little interpreted as a little criticism sometimes -- but I will die for my brothers on that field. So, no matter whether it's a gut punch, whether it's a head punch, whatever it is I'm always going to get back up.”
Cignetti, later, said he missed the whole thing. He was looking at the coverage. Then he heard the chatter.
"Somebody on the headset said Fernando's down, and I saw him rolling around on the ground. And I was, like, oh boy,“ Cignetti said. “And then when I saw the replay before I got out to him, it looked to me like he had got hit not in the head but maybe had the wind knocked out of him. And that's what he confirmed. You know, he's a tough guy. He takes some shots and he extends plays. And I can't say enough about the way he competes. You got the heart of a champion.”
Fernando Mendoza lays on the turf after taking a first quarter hit in Indiana's Big Ten Championship win over Ohio State.
Now, he has the resume line to match.
“I knew there was 100 percent confidence that I was going to play that game, play the rest of the game as we've worked so hard to get to this point that no hit, no knockout hit, knockout punch could take me out of that game. One thing about the Indiana Hoosiers football team is whenever they hit, we hit back harder.”
This wasn’t poetry. It was policy. And Indiana played like it.
They played like a team that didn’t just believe in itself. They played like a team that had rehearsed this exact act of disbelief.
Fourth quarter. Big Ten title on the line. Two minutes left. Ohio State driving. Indiana’s defense, the unit that didn’t blink in Eugene, that didn’t flinch in Iowa City, didn’t budge in Indy.
They bent. Never broke. And when the Buckeyes missed a field goal wide, Indiana didn’t just exhale, it exhaled a century of empty November nights.
Down 10-6 in the third quarter, Indiana took over at its own 12-yard line. That’s 88 yards of bad odds and worse intentions.
Seven plays later, the ball was in the end zone, Elijah Sarratt was flexing, and the Hoosiers had taken the lead they would never give back.
“Great win; gutty game; hard-fought, physical football game,” Cignetti said. “Wasn't perfect by either team. We found a way to survive it, made the plays when we had to. And I thought, once again, when the game was on the line, Fernando was throwing dimes and Charlie Becker was showing up making big plays and Sarratt with a big touchdown, our defense created a lot of issues.”
“Issues” might be an understatement. The Hoosiers’ defense held Ohio State’s high-octane offense to 10 points. Sacked Julian Sayin five times. Ohio State had allowed only six sacks the entire regular season.
Indiana defenders converge on a last-ditch pass by Ohio State in Saturdays Big Ten Championship game.
The offense also did its part to seal it. After the field goal miss, with Ohio State exhausting its timeouts, Cignetti dialed up a pass on third-and-six with 2:41 left. Mendoza threw a 33-yard strike to Charlie Becker, and at that point, Hoosier fans began to feel it.
Most coaches on the hemisphere might’ve run the ball, then punted and prayed. Cignetti doesn’t coach that way. Never has.
“I wasn’t going to play not to lose,” he said. “We were playing to win. And the one thing, we do spend a lot of time on the clock, how many plays are left in the game, things of that nature. We kind of figured we had to get about three first downs. That's what I told the team. You've got to get a first down. I wasn't going to punt the ball back to them with two minutes to go and no timeouts. We had to give our guys an opportunity to make plays.”
And they did. Every player in the postgame presser might as well have been wearing a hardhat and carrying a lunch pail. Aiden Fisher. Rolijah Hardy. Charlie Becker. Isaiah Jones. Grit with a gameplan.
“We’ve been in these situations before,” Mendoza said. “And we always get up.”
And now a team that nobody was sure could follow up last season’s stunning playoff success is doing more than that. It is 13-0. And building on it.
“This was the last thing that needed to be proved,” Isaiah Jones said. “And I think we did it.”
As the confetti fell and the trophy got passed around like a long-lost heirloom, Cignetti didn’t linger.
“I’m a ‘what’s next’ kind of guy,” he said. “It's a great win for us, obviously. Our first Big Ten title. Now I've got three and a half weeks to kind of humble this team again and get them ready for the playoffs.”
Fair. But first, what now?
Now, Indiana heads to the playoffs. Now, Mendoza makes a Heisman case in cleats and courage. Now, every recruit in America knows there’s a powerhouse in Bloomington, and its power is belief.
The Hoosiers didn’t just win a game Saturday. They won the benefit of the doubt. And maybe that’s the biggest win of all. They walked into the Big Ten title game as underdogs. They left with a crown.
And Fernando Mendoza?
He walked out the same way he walked in. Head held high. Heart on his sleeve.
And somehow, still standing.
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