Ya. Kind of like Mackey said. Schedule being difficult enough to give it that sense of "unknown" when it comes to results. I personally said 7 wins this coming year. I think Purdue is better than NW, Nebraska, Illinois, should be one of Iowa or Minny. Brohm has also played Wisconsin tough, so maybe this is the year? Won't get my hopes up...
Anyways. Then you look at the roster. Lorenzo Neal is back, as is Rondale. DL should be really good. The secondary is completely rebuilt, which isn't a bad thing. Diaco should be a welcomed edition at DC. If he can be top 50 on D, that would be huge. Many other injuries coming back as well. OL should take a big step. Pieces are there, just to much youth. Beyond the injuries though, last year was always the "bottom" for Brohm because it's where he transitioned to his guys. Issue was, they were super young and that's never great I'm the big ten. Youngest starters and the only team to have an offense and defense averaging under 3 years of program experience. The talent is there, just takes time. But they were somewhat close to being a 6 win team last year if you want to play that game.
As for Brohm and is he worth his 5 million dollar salary. From the outside looking in, probably not. For me personally, yes. Absolutely. I truely believe that if Brohm goes to Louisville, the program is in worse condition than it was before Brohm got there and at that point, any hopes of being relevant for the next 10 years were probably out the door. He leaves, his staff leaves, his ace recruiter leaves, the "transformational class" likely leaves and the team is built of Hazell recruits that couldn't start over true and redshirt freshman last year. Add that in with IU getting better and it wouldn't have been good.
Sorry this got long, but wanted to answer your question the best I could.