'Big future': Indiana football’s Amare Ferrell is a name to watch in the secondary

BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football safety Amare Ferrell started the spring game with the first-team defense.

He’s not looking to give that spot up as the team opened fall camp at the John Mellencamp Pavilion on Wednesday.

“Solid spring, big future, expect big things from him,” Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, after the team’s first fall practice. “And looks like he's picked up where he left off. So excited about him.”

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Ferrell would be in a unique position as one of the few returning underclassmen in line for playing time. He’s one of only five players left on the team from a small 2023 signing class that included 12 players out of high school.

He was one of two signees from the class — Jordan Shaw was the other, and he transferred to Washington — who didn’t redshirt last year.

Ferrell enrolled at midyear and made a strong impression on then-coach Tom Allen as a three-star recruit out of Columbia High School in Florida. He had an impressive list of scholarship offers that included ones from Arizona, Florida State, Kentucky, Penn State, Pittsburgh, South Carolina and Tennessee.

“A guy that sticks out to me,” Allen said, in August last year. “Really good football player. Really he’s a guy that we’ve said, you know what, we’ve got to get him involved on special teams, and he’s risen on the depth chart.”

Ferrell played 105 defensive snaps last year, according to Pro Football Focus. He got significant playing time against Rutgers (58 snaps) after Noah Pierre went down with an injury. The 6-foot-2, 200-pounder showed promise against the run with seven tackles (all solo) against a Scarlet Knights team that ran the ball 55 times.

He also played the third most special team snaps (154) on the team.

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Indiana is replacing all three of their starting safeties from last year after Pierre graduated and Louis Moore (Ole Miss) and Phillip Dunnam (Florida Atlantic) transferred. The Hoosiers' new defensive coordinator Bryant Haines is expected to rely on a 4-2-5 base defense that still utilizes three safeties.

Cignetti hasn’t discussed where each of the team’s safeties is getting reps, but in the spring game, Ferrell was playing at the hybrid position alongside Shawn Asbury II and Josh Sanguinetti.

Old Dominion transfer Terry Jones Jr. played the hybrid position with the second-team defense.

Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here .

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: 'Big future': Indiana football’s Amare Ferrell is a name to watch in the secondary