IU QB Nate Sudfeld feels urgency heading into senior year

• Southern Illinois at Indiana, 4 p.m. Saturday, ESPNews

BLOOMINGTON -- Trying to wrap your mind around the achievements of Nate Sudfeld's career, but also the distinct feeling that career remains unfulfilled, is tricky.

Indiana's senior quarterback has shone at the prestigious Manning Passing Academy and spoken on behalf of fellow players at Big Ten media day.

He's in program top-fives and top-10s in several career statistical categories, and yet he has just 14 starts and 25 total games on his resume. He steered Indiana to a win at Missouri last season and but has thrown just one career pass against Purdue.

Sudfeld is Indiana's unquestioned leader — the program's most recognizable face — but his work is unfinished.

"He wanted to help Indiana compete for a Big Ten championship as their starting quarterback," said Steve Gleason, Sudfeld's high school coach. "This is the last year he's got."

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"Urgency" has been Sudfeld's favorite word during his last collegiate preseason.

A headline member of coach Kevin Wilson's first full recruiting class, the 6-6 quarterback talks like a man who can suddenly see where the horizon ends. Sudfeld speaks about raising IU football out of the Big Ten cellar, but he's running out of time.

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"We're working with a purpose," Sudfeld said at team media day last month.

What does that look like?

Shoring up a secondary that can't be anything but young this season. Finding reliable wide receivers from a large, unproven pack. Rebuilding a run game centered as much on power as last season's was on speed.

Indiana's strengths and weaknesses are mirror images of themselves from seasons past. The Hoosiers are strong up front on both sides of the ball, with an experienced quarterback and plenty of big-body depth. At the skill positions, questions remain.

Amid all of this, Sudfeld remains the pivot point, the most fundamental key to a good season.

"He's growing," Wilson said, "into what I think is a pretty strong leader, in his style."

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His style?

In front of cameras, Sudfeld is even-keeled and almost unemotional. Teammates see a different side of him.

"Every time I see Nate, when I come in, he's smiling, with great energy, and that just makes me feel the same way," sophomore running back Devine Redding said.

Sudfeld admits last season wasn't quite the same, that complacency infected IU's offense.

"We kind of just believed it would just happen again, just because we were an Indiana offense," Sudfeld said.

Indiana stuttered through the early part of the season — beating Missouri yet losing to Bowling Green — before Sudfeld's season-ending shoulder injury derailed everything.

Defensive end Nick Mangieri, also a part of the 2012 signing class and Sudfeld's roommate, tried to help his friend through the frustration of being a spectator last season.

"It was real tough for him," Mangieri said.

His shoulder is mended. Sudfeld has stepped seamlessly back into the No. 1 quarterback role, organizing meetings and captaining offseason workouts.

Timing and chemistry were problems last season, ones Sudfeld plans to avoid this fall. He won't count on it "just happening again."

"As a roommate, you don't even see him that much," Mangieri said. "He's always in the stadium, watching film and getting better. That's what you want in a quarterback."

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Sudfeld was supposed to go to Arizona. He was supposed to redshirt his freshman season. He was supposed to have started through all of last season.

His career has had its share of detours, forced by coaching changes, broken legs and busted shoulders. Now, there are 12 games and one three-and-a-half-year-old goal left. That word, urgency, almost can't be avoided.

"(Sudfeld) wanted Indiana to get on the right track, where it deserves to be in football," his father, Ralph, said. "I think he realizes the urgency is, 'This is our opportunity, with the guys we came in with, that was our goal, and it's gonna have to happen now.' "

If it does, Indiana will have to overcome a brutal start to conference play that includes preseason No. 1 Ohio State, and road trips to Penn State and Michigan State, in the Hoosiers' first four games.

And the non-conference schedule has its own traps. Western Kentucky, the kind of non-Power Five program that has tripped Indiana up in the past three seasons, averaged nearly 375 passing yards per game last season and comes to Bloomington in Week 3.

There's no way of knowing whether IU will be ready for a shootout against the Hilltoppers, or capable of moving past what looks to be a rough October.

Or whether coaching uncertainty will prove a distraction. Wilson is in the fifth year of a seven-year contract.

"I don't like to give a litmus test up front or pre-declare what it's gonna take for any of our coaches to continue," Director of Athletics Fred Glass said. "I gave Kevin a seven-year contract for a reason. I think IU football is a big battleship to turn around. ... I think there's reasons to be optimistic, but we'll all find out together."

What is perhaps most certain (or as certain as anything can be in college football) is that success does not come without Sudfeld behind center. He gives a program with one overarching goal an unquestioned leader.

Whatever doubts might exist about Indiana this season, Sudfeld's importance to his team is not among them.

"He's our guy," Wilson said.

Follow Star reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

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