Curt Cignetti's explanation for baffling CFP punt shows he still has a lot to learn

From the moment he took the head coaching job at Indiana, long before he won a single game with the Hoosiers, Curt Cignetti talked a big game. He began his tenure by telling several conference rivals that they sucked, and the smack talk has only gotten cranked up from there. Through the Hoosiers' 11-1 run through the regular season, they seemed to feed off their coach's confidence, and he continued to portray himself and his program as one that refused to back down from any challenge. Even hours before not just the biggest game of the season but the biggest game in his program's history, a first-round College Football Playoff matchup against Notre Dame, he was still picking a fight with anyone who would listen.

And then, once the game began, all that bravado collapsed like a house of cards. It wasn't that Indiana got physically outclassed in a 27-17 loss to the Irish; that was, to be frank, not a huge surprise. The really surprising thing, the thing that should have even Hoosier fans questioning everything they thought they knew, was just how profoundly Cignetti shrank from the moment. The most galling example came in the fourth quarter, when he opted to punt from just inside Notre Dame territory down 20-3.

It was a shocking decision in the moment, so much so that even ESPN's broadcast crew couldn't believe what they were watching. Down three scores with just minutes left in the game, there was virtually no chance for Indiana to rally if it came up empty on its current possession; willingly giving the ball away felt like waving the white flag, playing to keep things respectable rather than playing to win. And it doesn't look any better after hearing Cignetti explain himself afterwards.

Curt Cignetti gives baffling explanation for controversial punt decision vs. Notre Dame

Unsurprisingly, the punt was one of the first things Cignetti was asked about after the game. His response? Well, it was more like a shrug of the shoulders.

"I didn't want to punt, but we were doing nothing on offense, and our defense was still fighting," Cignetti said.

On the one hand, Cignetti's not wrong; Indiana's offense was manhandled by Notre Dame's defense all night, and Kurtis Rourke's odds of picking up a 4th and 11 were slim to none based on how the game had gone to that point. But that doesn't excuse not trying: If you punt in that spot, you need your defense to come up with a miracle to have any chance at erasing a three-score deficit with that little time left on the clock. It's all well and good for Cignetti to bemoan the state of his offense, but you have to trust them at some point; if they fail, they fail, and you were going to lose anyway.

None of this means that Cignetti is a fraud, or that his success this season in Bloomington is anything but remarkable. And it doesn't mean that his program is doomed over the long haul. But it does mean that maybe we got a bit over our skis in heaping praise on him over the past few months. Clearly he's got a long way to go to learn how to win on this stage, and how to match his actions to his words.