As Fernando Mendoza bade goodbye to the Indiana Hoosiers after winning the national championship and the Heisman Trophy, head coach Curt Cignetti was tasked with the huge responsibility of replacing the high-performing quarterback. Although he now has Josh Hoover, there is no denying that Mendoza left a big shoe to fill, and Hoover falls short in one major aspect. Highlighting Hoover’s weakness, Cignetti is ready to play to the new quarterback’s strengths, while shielding this weakness.

“And we’re going to run the ball,” Cignetti said in an August 10 video on ESPN College Football, while hosting Rece Davis at his office. “Even with Mendoza, we were 60% run. Although in competitive situations we were 50-50. We’re probably going to run the ball a little bit more than Josh has in the past. Now, he did a lot of RPOS, which we do a lot of RPOS and that was great. I was really happy to see that when I watched him. So we’re going to take some pressure off of him because he did turn the ball over a little too much at TCU, and he’ll be the first to admit that. So, he won’t be in quite as many of those situations here.

“Although I think part of playing quarterback, you know, before you can win a game, you’ve got to make sure you don’t lose a game. How do you lose a football game? And I’m not talking about the quarterback. I’m talking about in general: turn the ball over, egregious missed assignments, undisciplined penalties, and special teams gaffes, okay? You can’t have those things. Um, and we’ve always been very high in the turnover ratio, etc., and a lowly penalized football team.”

Hoover’s weakness as a quarterback is as obvious as a random search of his 2025 statistics. However, his former coach at TCU Horned Frogs, Sonny Dykes made his weakness even more public in an interview some months ago. “I think Josh started 31 games here at quarterback and he turned the ball over 42 times,” Dykes said.

Regardless, Cignetti knew all of these before bringing him in via the transfer portal. And rather than amplify his weakness, Cignetti has chosen a cause-and-effect, all-around approach in dealing with it. His stance was clear in his response to Dykes: “when Josh got here, he met his two new best friends: great defense and a really good run game, and he was never the same after that.” By eliminating turnover situations, Hoover will make fewer mistakes. Indiana is definitely the best place for Hoover, as the team’s careful approach in handling the ball is the best antidote to his weakness.

The main quality that attracted the Hoosiers to Hoover was his run-pass option passes. In 2025, Mendoza had the most RPO passes, and the next after him was Hoover. Having the same quality as Mendoza puts the team in a good position to carry on most of the playing philosophies that led them to a national championship victory.

While Cignetti has shown so much belief in Hoover, he has also been tipped to be one of college football’s best quarterbacks in 2026 by Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt, who has him at No. 9 on his list of top-10 college football QBs in 2026.