Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor: The duo standing between Indiana and a national title

• A potential weakness at right tackle for Indiana: Right tackle Khalil Benson has a 49.2 PFF pass blocking grade against Power Four defenses — the lowest of any Hoosier.

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Estimated Reading Time:11 minutes

The Indiana Hoosiers have cruised to the College Football National Championship Game, with neither Oregon nor Alabama coming within 30 points of Curt Cignetti’s squad on neutral sites. Their offense, led by Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, has only gotten better since the potential first overall draft pick received college football’s most prestigious individual award a month ago. 

While critics are keen to point out the age profile of Indiana’s roster, leaning heavily on players in their fourth, fifth and even sixth seasons of college football, the Hoosiers are a beacon of consistency. That level of discipline and relentlessness is something that coaches across the nation will try to replicate for years to come.

With a roster devoid of any five-star high school recruits and composed of many players whose collegiate careers did not begin in a Power Four conference, Indiana’s rapid rise has naturally become one of the great stories in modern college football. It just feels like destiny for this team to reach the mountaintop on Monday night, with Cignetti’s legacy cemented among the greatest coaches in recent history. 

However, as always, there’s another team playing, too. If you told the Miami Hurricanes before the season they’d be playing on their home turf in the National Championship Game, they couldn’t have imagined taking a backseat to their opponents in the media buildup.

In any given title matchup with a true blue blood like Alabama, Georgia or Ohio State, the Hurricanes would be the team everybody is talking about as a fresh face on the scene. Instead, Miami will play second fiddle to the travelling Hoosiers both in the media and (rather significantly) in the betting markets. 

As 8.5-point underdogs, the Hurricanes will need a lot to go their way to overcome what Indiana brings to the table. While Carson Beck and the Miami offense have plenty on its plate from Indiana’s steadfast defense, I want to focus on the other side of the ball, where Miami unquestionably has one key advantage in this game. Miami’s undeniable trump card is its edge rushing duo of Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor.

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Bain forecasts as a slam dunk top-10 selection in the 2026 NFL draft, with PFF’s Max Chadwick projecting Bain as high as fourth overall in his latest mock draft. Mesidor has also received some first-round traction thanks to his recent play, and the vast majority of mock drafts see Mesidor coming off the board inside the top 50. Bain and Mesidor’s overall PFF grades of 93.1 and 92.1 rank second and sixth, respectively, among edge defenders at the collegiate level.

Bain has been particularly electric throughout this playoff run, with 21 pressures across his last three games. Bain may not have the ideal length of a can’t-miss NFL draft prospect, but his twitchy get-off and bend around the edge more than makes up for his lack of size. On a handful of plays each game, it feels like Bain just glitches into the backfield — and when he doesn’t, his non-stop motor ensures every play is a ticking clock for opposing quarterbacks.

Let’s not forget about Mesidor either. Just when you think you have Bain contained, here comes Mesidor from the other side. He may not entice NFL evaluators with the same raw upside as Bain, but Mesidor actually has two more sacks this season than his teammate. He has also forced four fumbles on the year.

Unlike Bain, Mesidor also provides coverage versatility — dropping back to defend the pass 64 times this season, including a career-high 12 times last week in the team’s Fiesta Bowl victory over Ole Miss. As an experienced super senior, Mesidor has seen just about everything college offenses have to offer across his 2,500-plus career snaps.

This pair is no stranger to a heavy workload. Bain has played the most snaps of any player on the Hurricanes’ defense, while Mesidor is in third place. No defensive lineman has experienced more snaps of FBS football this year than Bain, who has accumulated over 200 extra reps than Indiana’s most-featured pass-rusher, Mikail Kamara.

Miami aligns its edge rushers according to which hash the ball is on (i.e., field side and boundary side). As a result, opposing offensive linemen must prepare for the differing skill sets of both players. 

Whenever these players move into NFL schemes, where edge rushers often line up near-exclusively on one side, Bain could really showcase his dominance against right tackles. His 18.8% pressure rate when aligned over the right side of the line is the highest of any player involved in the College Football Playoff. 

Up against an Indiana squad that doesn’t have many weaknesses whatsoever, one such area the Hurricanes could exploit is right tackle Khalil Benson. Benson has a 49.2 PFF pass blocking grade against Power Four defenses — the lowest of any Hoosier. In these games, Benson has allowed more than twice as many pressures as any other player on Indiana’s offense.

Of the four pressures surrendered by Indiana’s offensive line against Oregon last week, Benson was responsible for all four. Bear in mind this was only Benson’s fifth-lowest-graded game of the season in pass protection. He has had several rough outings, namely when he permitted six pressures versus Penn State — when Zane Durant ran roughshod over Indiana in a late thriller. 

During the regular season, Mendoza’s time to throw (2.63 seconds) ranked inside the top-20 fastest quarterbacks in the Power Four. While Mendoza ostensibly hasn’t missed a beat in the playoffs, his time to throw has elongated to 3.05 seconds in three games against defensive coordinators determined to muddy up Mendoza’s reads. It may only be the difference of less than half of a second, but over the course of the 2025 season, it would place Mendoza among the top bracket of football-holders in college football.

Indiana fans could rightfully debate that, if anything, this extra time with the ball in hand is working for Mendoza — It’s tough to argue with a playoff passer rating of 140.9 and a 93.4 overall PFF grade! But all the while, the weak links in Mendoza’s offensive line come under increased stress, and I promise you they have not met a pass-rushing force the caliber of either edge defender boasted by the Hurricanes. 

While this all sounds very intriguing for Miami’s chances, we must consider the coach standing on the opposite sideline. Cignetti is a master of the details and always seems to have a plan. Senior transfer tight ends Riley Nowakowski and Holden Staes are well-versed in pass protection, and Cignetti could employ one or both of these players on every passing down to mellow the onslaught of Bain and Mesidor.  

Cignetti will be trying to find chinks in the armor his former colleague Corey Hetherman. The Miami defensive coordinator coached under Cignetti in the same role during his first three seasons at James Madison.

While Cignetti’s Hoosiers look a whole lot scarier than those James Madison squads, not much has changed about his overall philosophy from those days in the Colonial Athletic Association. Will Hetherman be able to anticipate which weaknesses his former boss wants to exploit?

While Miami’s rushing success, Beck’s ability to limit turnovers and Indiana’s slot receiving prowess up against a potential first-rounder in Keionte Scott are many ways the outcome of this game will be impacted, the true inflection point of this matchup remains how Indiana copes with the ferocity of Bain and Mesidor.