‘Faster and Freer’ – Daley Thrives as a Hoosier
Pete DiPrimio | IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - This can’t be right. Seriously, it can’t.
Stephen Daley as sprinter?
Are you kidding?
Daley is talking in the Don Croftcheck Team Room at Merchants Bank Field at Memorial Stadium. A very big, very strong Stephen Daley, a 6-foot-1, 273-pound senior who looks, in a tight-fitting gray Indiana football sweatshirt, like he could lift mountains for a living if he wasn’t thriving as a Hoosier defensive lineman entering Saturday’s home game between No. 2/2 IU (7-0, 4-0 Big Ten) and UCLA (3-4, 3-1).
And yet …
Daley once ran a 10.85-second 100-meter dash to place seventh at the same Virginia high school track meet he took fourth in the discus. That came a couple of years after helping John Handley High School place second in the 400-meter relay. It also came after lettering in basketball and baseball in addition to football; it came after playing running back, tight end, defensive end and wide receiver, doing well enough as a senior to total 1,785 rushing yards (including a school-single-game-record 334 yards) and 25 touchdowns, plus 84 tackles, 27 tackles for loss, and 14.0 sacks.
Daley was so fast and punishing, high school teammates compared him to Derrick Henry, the Baltimore Ravens standout running back known for running over defenses.
“In all four years in high school,” he says, “I played kind of something different on offense. My freshman year, I played tight end. In my sophomore year, we switched to where I was more of a wide receiver. In my third year, I was the fullback. My senior year, I was straight up just a running back, like feature tailback. So, I did everything for my high school on offense.”
Flash back to that state track moment. Daley calls making it to state in the 100 and 400 relay as well as the discus his most impressive athletic feat because no one else could do it.
He was participating in the discus when track officials told the 100-meter dash participants to start warming up.
“Everyone else around me looks like offensive linemen,” Daley says with a smile, “and I’m saying, ‘Oh, I gotta leave to run 100 meters,’ where everyone looks like wide receivers.’”
While Daley never won that sprint, he did place fourth and seventh.
“I was able to hold my own.”
Track, basketball and baseball ended upon entering college -- Daley played three years of football at Kent State (totaling 103 tackles, six sacks and one interception in 34 games) -- but that unique combination of speed and size didn’t.
And now, for one year only, it’s helping IU. After seven games, Daley has 16 tackles, 7.5 for loss with 3.5 sacks. With linebacker Kellan Wyatt’s potential season-ending knee injury against Michigan State, costing IU 27 tackles, eight for loss, and 2.5 sacks, Daley’s role will expand.
“He's a guy I really wish we had a couple years,” head coach Curt Cignetti says, “because he's a tremendous athlete. Once he's learned the defense, he's really making fast progress. He has size, strength, speed, suddenness. He plays hard. He was our player of the game on defense (against Michigan State). He'll take on even more of a role now.”
Daley was in a rotation with Wyatt and Mikail Kamara. With Wyatt out, Daley says, “It’s next-man up. We’ll see who will step up and help me and Mikail, or if me and Mikail will do it.”
Daley prefers defense to offense, he says, because, on offense, “only one person has a chance to really make a play -- the person getting the ball, like the quarterback or running back.”
On defense, he says, “Everyone gets a shot. Anybody can make a play. I feel like it's more like a group. We're all working together. We all have a chance to equally impact the game on defense.”
Beyond that, Daley says, on defense, “I feel more comfortable. I can react faster. I’m not thinking as much. I know what the expectations are of the defense. I know what I can and can’t do. I play faster and freer.”
That’s especially true with defensive coordinator Bryant Haines’ attacking style.
“I’ve enjoyed it,” Daley says. “We’re not sitting back and letting the offense dictate. We’re getting after the offense. We’re controlling the terms. It’s fun to play in this defense.”
Coming out of high school, Daley had a chance to play for Cignetti at James Madison, but he chose Kent State. Still, that relationship mattered when he entered the transfer portal last winter.
“I got to know Coach Cignetti. He has a winning culture no matter where he is. When I entered the portal, finding a winning culture was important.”
Daley found it. Now it means stopping a UCLA offense that has averaged 33.3 points in its last three games under new offensive coordinator Jerry Neuheisel after averaging 14.3 points in its first four games under the previous coaching staff; it means handling a surging team determined to rewrite the season’s narrative.
As wide receiver Omar Cooper Jr. says, “You see how they turned everything around with the new staff. They’ve got a lot of tempo. It looks like they’re having fun, that they’re enjoying it now. They’ve changed the trajectory of their season.”