Illinois Football Recruiting Thread

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#427      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
thunderwear said:
I think these are great criticisms. I don’t disagree with any of them. I think they are each competing narratives and only time will tell what is correct.

A few things to consider to add complexity to the arguments

1. The difference between the number 1 and 2 recruit in the nation is not possible to decipher. The difference between 1 and 1000 is more palpable. The question is, to What extent is there a difference? How far do the gaps need to be have any level of confidence in the ranking differential? Will a grade of 84 translate to be better than a grade of 83? What factors does this depend on? System fit? Work ethic? Growth? I would venture to bet a team of 5* (Alabama) will likely be better than a team of 3* (Illinois). But will a team with a class average grade of 83 be better than a a grade of 84? I’m not so sure I buy the rankings are that precise. Heck, a person that doesn’t exist got a 3* ranking.

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.awfu...-catfished-their-way-to-a-3-star-ranking.html

The argument that this is all we have to go by doesn’t work. Although a 5* is likely Going to be better than a 3*, I don’t buy that an 83 is worse than an 84. I’m not saying our 83 is better than another teams 84, I just don’t buy there’s a statistically significant difference. I can tell you with near certainty the confidence intervals overlap.

2. How do we deal with past staff assessment and ability to coach up? I don’t have a way to judge talent assessment for system fit or ability to coach up. I’m not arguing that these are in our favor. But how do we address them? For example, Nate Hobbs was ranked a 77 by 247 and his composite was 81. He had 1 p5 offer, it was us. Statistically speaking, his 81 brought down our clasS ranking. In the 17 class, the other recruits that brought down our average were: Blake hayEs, woods, bennet Williams, and Isaiah gay. The 18 class, was brought down by ware, Edwin Carter, syd brown, and Daniel barker. The 19 class was brought down by: Witherspoon, Barnes, Washington, and moore.

did we coach them up? Did we have better scouting? Were the rankings wrong? Or are they just low/middle tier 2* or 3* recruits? How do we account for their impact? Do other schools get similar production from low tier recruits? Was it bad rankings?

3. Given the staffs ability with low tier talent, does this higher tier talent fro the current class mean we will get even more production? I’m not super excited about the class. But I’m also not disappointed. Lineman are hard to rank, and I think we have some gems. Frenchie, Spann, Riggins, Newton, Cooper, Gardner. Those are solid program building recruits. The OL is hard to tell, but we got some big ones. Will it translate, will the staff be able to develop them? I believe we will.

To be fair, im not arguing a point. I’m just thinking out loud. ultimately, considering we lost to eastern Michigan, I’m glad with where we ended the class. Add back cj Dixon and Thompson, and our class looks very consistent with the big ten classes. Can we coach them up? Did we find gems? Only time will tell. I don’t see an end to the need for transfers anytime soon. But I think the staff will be able to find and utilize strong transfers. I also think we need to improve with recruiting. We aren’t great, but the staff has recruited a team that can compete in the big ten. And I’d be happy to qualify for a few more bowls. To me, that’s the next step in the rebuild, Minnesota has qualified for roughly 15 bowls in the last 20 years and only recently have they even been decent. Being consistent, adding Better talent and depth is what we need. The rankings for incoming class is better than rankings of those that left. The classes are balancing. Ultimately, I thinkthis will translate as long as the 21 class has better talent than the class of 17 graduates.
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A couple things to counter this positive narrative....

- we were really close to being 3-9 or 4-8 last year. The MSU win was a fluke, UW beats us with a little better decision making from their coaching staff, and not sure what happens at PU if they aren't playing their 3rd string QB in a rain storm. How are we feeling in this circumstance?
- We have seen some lower rated players do well, no question. Is that due to good coaching and talent evaluation, or is it law of averages? In other words, do we have better outcomes with these types of players than other programs in our situation?
- In general, decision making and execution on the field have been consistently poor
- no matter how you slice it, recruiting under Lovie has been mediocre at best
- Bottom line, I think last year's "success" was a bit of a fluke and I don't currently see anything from this coaching staff in any aspect of coaching that will lead to consistent success, with success defined as winning records more years than not
 
#428      

KevinC

KevinC
KevinC
bluemountain said:
A couple things to counter this positive narrative....

- we were really close to being 3-9 or 4-8 last year. The MSU win was a fluke, UW beats us with a little better decision making from their coaching staff, and not sure what happens at PU if they aren't playing their 3rd string QB in a rain storm. How are we feeling in this circumstance?
- We have seen some lower rated players do well, no question. Is that due to good coaching and talent evaluation, or is it law of averages? In other words, do we have better outcomes with these types of players than other programs in our situation?
- In general, decision making and execution on the field have been consistently poor
- no matter how you slice it, recruiting under Lovie has been mediocre at best
- Bottom line, I think last year's "success" was a bit of a fluke and I don't currently see anything from this coaching staff in any aspect of coaching that will lead to consistent success, with success defined as winning records more years than not
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Using your logic, we were really close to being 9-3 last year, also.
 
#430      

Greensboro

Greensboro
Greensboro
Dude said:
I was really hoping to not be in the position of needing some high impact transfers to make this class acceptable again. I do not think it is realistic to expect to land that talent every year.
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It would indeed be nice not to be in this position. I comfort myself in that transfers last year were able to see the opportunity, so I think we have a very strong sell to an OL/DL transfer. But it is harder to fill depth issues, which I think is what killed us at the end of the year. This is where the recruiting needs to pick up, we talk about finding the diamonds in the rough which is great, but the downside seems to be the many misses that come along with that and the fall off to the back ups. Let’s just all agree to nail 2021, so we can move on to complaining about how we raise the talent level out of the middle of the B1G west instead of the bottom.
 
#431      

Deleted member 654622

D
Guest
Deleted member 654622
bluemountain said:
Not really....we should have beaten EMU, but were badly outplayed by Nebraska, both UM's and NW. if we had a do-over we'd probably have finished 5-7
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Completely disagree that we were outplayed by Nebraska. We couldn't make a GD tackle. IL should have won that game.
 
#432      

Hoppy2105

H
Little Rock, Arkansas
Hoppy2105
bluemountain said:
Not really....we should have beaten EMU, but were badly outplayed by Nebraska, both UM's and NW. if we had a do-over we'd probably have finished 5-7
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Nope. KevinC is correct.

We did what we had to in order to beat UW and MSU. No matter the variables (them making bad coaching decisions, luck...whatever) we still won. On the flip side, we very well should have beaten EMU (7-5) and if we had made 1-2 good plays (or gotten the PI call at the end) could have beat Nebby. (8-4)

Then consider our bad coaching decisions during the NW game (trying to out finesse them in a rainy slog fest) kept us from having the chance to go 9-3.

We used to rail on Tim Beckham for saying “if this play and that play didn’t happen, we would have won.” Doing the “we were so close to 3-9 instead of 6-6” is the same thing.

In the end, a 6-6 caliber team ended up 6-6. If you try to take away plays or add in circumstances that justify why we could have been 3-9 then that same logic can be used to justify why we could have been 9-3.
 
#433      

ILL_INI

ILL_INI
ILL_INI
Dude said:
Completely disagree that we were outplayed by Nebraska. We couldn't make a GD tackle. IL should have won that game.
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Nebraska out-gained Illinois 690 to 299, and had 32 first downs to Illinois' 14.
 
#435      

wma500

wma500
wma500
Hoppy2105 said:
Nope. KevinC is correct.

We did what we had to in order to beat UW and MSU. No matter the variables (them making bad coaching decisions, luck...whatever) we still won. On the flip side, we very well should have beaten EMU (7-5) and if we had made 1-2 good plays (or gotten the PI call at the end) could have beat Nebby. (8-4)

Then consider our bad coaching decisions during the NW game (trying to out finesse them in a rainy slog fest) kept us from having the chance to go 9-3.

We used to rail on Tim Beckham for saying “if this play and that play didn’t happen, we would have won.” Doing the “we were so close to 3-9 instead of 6-6” is the same thing.

In the end, a 6-6 caliber team ended up 6-6. If you try to take away plays or add in circumstances that justify why we could have been 3-9 then that same logic can be used to justify why we could have been 9-3.
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All of which to say is....you are what your record says you are.

Makes for good debate and conversation, but in the end, Illinois was 6-6, nothing more, nothing less.
 
#436      

ILL_INI

ILL_INI
ILL_INI
Homecoming 2019 said:
Illinois was +3 in turnover differential, which might correlate to wins more than any other stat.
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Agreed. But if you were to say a team outplayed another (or not), is that the stat you look at? I don't. I'll say without those turnovers, Illinois gets blown out.
 
#437      

AZis

A
AZis
ILL_INI said:
Nebraska out-gained Illinois 690 to 299, and had 32 first downs to Illinois' 14.
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And yet we lost by 4 points....

The reality is that we won 2 we probably shouldn't have, and lost 2 we should have won, Illini football is in balance ;-)

It's funny, in the preseason a bowl game was the ideal goal of pretty much every single poster. We did that! And now folks are finding reasons to besmirch that accomplishment because of the manner in which we attained it. :noidea:
 
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#439      

ILL_INI

ILL_INI
ILL_INI
AZis said:
And yet we lost by 4 points....

The reality is that we won 2 we probably shouldn't have, and lost 2 we should have won, Illini football is in balance ;-)

It's funny, in the preseason a bowl game was the ideal goal of pretty much every single poster. We did that! And now folks are finding reasons to besmirch that accomplishment because of the manner in which we attained it. :noidea:
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I was merely providing evidence that Illinois could be considered to have been outplayed in the Nebraska game. You're trying to fit my comments into some other narrative so that you can now make some unrelated argument, and I'm not sure why.
 
#440      

pvaughn8

P
pvaughn8
wma500 said:
All of which to say is....you are what your record says you are.

Makes for good debate and conversation, but in the end, Illinois was 6-6, nothing more, nothing less.
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Agreed that Illinois was 6-6 and they earned it. But when assessing expectations for next year, I hope nobody considers 6-6 to be the team's floor. The team could improve next year and still end up at 6-6.
 
#441      

illini80

illini80
Forgottonia
illini80
pvaughn8 said:
Agreed that Illinois was 6-6 and they earned it. But when assessing expectations for next year, I hope nobody considers 6-6 to be the team's floor. The team could improve next year and still end up at 6-6.
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I do. That should mean 5-0 non-con and at least 1 B10 win. Barring catastrophic injuries, I don’t see any reason to expect less. I‘m hoping for 7, maybe 8 wins, but a 5 win season is a real setback and would lead to calls for a change.
 
#443      

illini80

illini80
Forgottonia
illini80
BananaShampoo said:
What are these 5 non-cons you speak of? We only have 3.
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Hahaha.

I literally have no idea what I was thinking there! Apparently Rutgers is not really in the big 10 and we really should win the off week, right??? Sheesh. I'm going to bed now.....
 
#444      

bluemountain

B
bluemountain
Hoppy2105 said:
Nope. KevinC is correct.

We did what we had to in order to beat UW and MSU. No matter the variables (them making bad coaching decisions, luck...whatever) we still won. On the flip side, we very well should have beaten EMU (7-5) and if we had made 1-2 good plays (or gotten the PI call at the end) could have beat Nebby. (8-4)

Then consider our bad coaching decisions during the NW game (trying to out finesse them in a rainy slog fest) kept us from having the chance to go 9-3.

We used to rail on Tim Beckham for saying “if this play and that play didn’t happen, we would have won.” Doing the “we were so close to 3-9 instead of 6-6” is the same thing.

In the end, a 6-6 caliber team ended up 6-6. If you try to take away plays or add in circumstances that justify why we could have been 3-9 then that same logic can be used to justify why we could have been 9-3.
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What I'm saying is net/net we benefited from a lot of lucky breaks last year. We were lucky MSU fell apart in the 4th quarter, we were lucky Chryst forgot he had a Heisman caliber running back at the end of the UW game, we got lucky PU was down to their third string QB in a rainstorm that helped us greatly, we were lucky Nebraska didn't beat us by 40 given how badly they outplayed us. I can't really point to any offsetting bad breaks - it's not like we outplayed EMU; they were a better team that day. Those breaks could very well go against us next year and we end up 3-9 or 4-8; I'm not sure our talent makes us much if any better than that.
 
#446      

Krush 2010

Krush 2010
Krush 2010
bluemountain said:
What I'm saying is net/net we benefited from a lot of lucky breaks last year. We were lucky MSU fell apart in the 4th quarter, we were lucky Chryst forgot he had a Heisman caliber running back at the end of the UW game, we got lucky PU was down to their third string QB in a rainstorm that helped us greatly, we were lucky Nebraska didn't beat us by 40 given how badly they outplayed us. I can't really point to any offsetting bad breaks - it's not like we outplayed EMU; they were a better team that day. Those breaks could very well go against us next year and we end up 3-9 or 4-8; I'm not sure our talent makes us much if any better than that.
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I think you can use about 5-10 years of "bad breaks" to point towards "offsetting" the good breaks from last season.
 
#447      

pvaughn8

P
pvaughn8
illini80 said:
I do. That should mean 5-0 non-con and at least 1 B10 win. Barring catastrophic injuries, I don’t see any reason to expect less. I‘m hoping for 7, maybe 8 wins, but a 5 win season is a real setback and would lead to calls for a change.
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To be clear I'm not saying we should settle for 6-6. I'm just saying there's a significant chance the team doesn't meet expectations. I'm just salty because of the way the season ended. I have to remind myself that a lot of that was due to injuries.
 
#450      

ILL_INI

ILL_INI
ILL_INI
Dude said:
Would tackling affect total yards gained?????
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Well, of course. But isn't poor tackling part of the reason you can get outplayed? The 1-11 third down conversion rate for the Illini had nothing to do with tackling. The Illini also punted twice as many times as Nebraska (8 vs. 4). Third down conversions were 11-19 for Nebraska vs. 1-11 for Illinois. Except for turnovers, Nebraska dominated pretty much every stat.
 
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