FIU laments missed opportunities as Panthers open season with 31-7 loss on the road to Indiana

Even when things went well, they didn’t.

That encapsulates FIU’s 2024 football opener as the Panthers lost to the host Indiana Hoosiers, 31-7, on a cloudy Saturday afternoon in Bloomington.

Indiana led 21-0 before FIU finally scored with 48 seconds left in the first half.

FIU is now 0-13 against schools from the Big Ten Conference. The Panthers, dating to last season, have lost five straight games and eight out of nine.

Then again, FIU was a 22-point underdog Saturday, which means the final score was no surprise.

But beyond the loss, there were some disappointing things that happened to the Panthers.

Here then — with the details — are six takeaways from FIU’s season opener:

1: ROCKY ROAD: Tight end Rocky Beers scored FIU’s only touchdown of the game — a 7-yard pass from Keyone Jenkins.

But as mentioned above, even when something broke right for FIU, it ended up breaking bad (with apologies to one of the greatest TV shows ever).

Specifically, Beers left the game due to a hamstring injury. He caught all four passes thrown his way Saturday, finishing with 18 yards.

A 6-5, 235-pounder from Colorado, Beers took a redshirt season with Air Force in 2022. He made his FIU debut last year, catching 18 passes for 158 yards and one TD.

“Rocky has been playing really well,” FIU coach Mike MacIntyre said. “We need Rocky. He’s a weapon.

“Hopefully he can come back next week. He’s really improved. He’s really a good tight end. If he can’t play, we will miss him.”

To MacIntyre’s point, in Beer’s two most recent games — including last year’s season finale against Western Kentucky — he has seven catches, including two for touchdowns.

2: CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? There’s a new college football rule where coaches can communicate to one player on each side of the ball with an earpiece inside their helmets.

But, as above, things didn’t go right.

“It kept messing up, coming in and out,” MacIntyre said of the communication system. “We’ve been working on it for a while.

“I don’t know if there’s something wrong with the system. It’s been a problem ever since we got it. We’ve had people come in from the company to look at it, but it’s not working like it should.

“We have to get that fixed.”

3: MORE DIFFICULTIES: One of FIU’s four charter buses broke down about 20 minutes from the stadium. That bus finally arrived just two hours before kickoff.

4: KEYONE’S PERFORMANCE: Jenkins completed 69 percent of his passes on Saturday. That’s an improvement considering he completed 58.4 percent of his passes as a true freshman last year.

However, Jenkins was intercepted once, and he had a long pass of just 13 yards. He finished with 129 total passing yards.

Last year, Jenkins averaged 7.3 yards per attempt. On Saturday, he averaged just 4.4 yards per attempt.

Jenkins also took four sacks.

“He held the ball too long at times,” MacIntyre said of Jenkins. “He’s got to learn when to throw the ball away. He’ll keep getting better at that.”

5: THERE’S WORK TO DO: The Panthers had just the one turnover and only three penalties for 25 yards.

But MacIntyre wasn’t pleased.

“We shot ourselves in the foot and didn’t take advantage of some opportunities,” he said. “We have a lot to improve on, especially our tackling. We also had some dumb penalties. We can’t have that. We will address that.”

6: UP NEXT: FIU will play its home opener on Saturday at 6 p.m. against Central Michigan.

It will be FIU’s first home game since its home field was renamed Pitbull Stadium.

“It’s going to be exciting to play in Pitbull Stadium,” MacIntyre said. “I see a lot of good things in this football team.

“I still like this team. I like these kids. I love these kids.”