Nebraska 54, Illinois 35 POSTGAME

#26      
Dude. Come on. How can you not get what I mean.

They lost to Ohio State by 5 last week. Their offense has been great ALL season especially since Martinez has been back. They were 17 point favorites. They won by 19. What exactly were you surprised about? Not sure how anyone with decent football knowledge can look at a team's record and think "oh they're 2-7 so they MUST stink." You always look deeper than at just the record. Did your expectations really change that much just because we beat Minny? Come on man.

Of which we gave them 17? On turnovers?

Have nt seen the stats, but seems like we did OK, outside of the score. ?????
 
#29      
I just got done watching the game. A few observations.

1) Need to find WR that can catch a freaking football. A couple of those drops make me wonder why these kids have scholarships to play the position. It has been an issue all year.

2) Defense performed as well as I expected against what is becoming a very good offense at NE. If you watched UCF last year you know Frost’s offense will be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come.

3) AJ Bush is not a dual threat QB. He can run and that is it. Once adjustments are made to stop him from running he is lost out there.

4) We will be lucky to keep RSmith as our OC. Someone will see his scheme and play calling ability and he will see that there are a lot of other programs with much more talent that can further his career. Gut feeling he is a free agent after next year anyways as I don’t have a lot of hope for the “progression” of this program under Lovie. So probably irrelevant.

Get through the next two games and hope Lovie and staff can get signatures from top recruits or it will be deja vu.
You really can't say 1 and 3. The QB played well and threw some well placed balls and the wideouts simply dropped the ball.
 
#32      

Illinir1

Camdenton, MO
If you think that was not on the D today you must have watched a different game then I watched.Yes if our receivers could catch the ball,despite the Defense it would have been closer, and special teams sucked,but this is squarely on D or lack of .

Agree. The defense gave up 606 yards (again) today, which is going to give you a loss every time. Making it even more painful is the fact that the offense had 509 yards (we also ran more plays, had more first downs, and led ever-so-slightly in time of possession), which should get you a win almost all of the time. In the end this was a complete Team loss, with fumbles (7 total!!!), interceptions (2), muffed punts (2), dropped passes, blown/poor coverages, and bad tackling all contributing.
 
#33      
Defense certainly was poor at best, but the TOs killed us. Especially the punts. Defense makes the stop but the ball goes right back. The dropped passes were bad as well. AJ had a good day throwing, but one of them was bobbled right to the defense.

Certainly NE was better than their record, but they are still 2-7 going in.

GO ILLINI!
 
#34      
You think Bush had a meh day 35. He had a really good day aside from the fumble. The receivers have got to catch the ball! Illinis the defense gave up 600 yards! Whats a bad day? I guess your right 700. Also, they couldn't have been worn down the first 3 touchdown drives. H#ll the first 2 only took about 7 plays!
 
#35      
I think the disheartening thing is how we lost. Making mistakes that frankly a well coached team doesn’t make. Dropping balls, muffing punts, giving up huge YAC because our tackling fundamentals are poor. These are all sure signs of underplaying to your potential due to mental mistakes, lack of preparedness, and not enough drilling on the things that matter in practice. We shouldnt be practicing how to stand up and strip an opponent, we should be focused on fundamental tackling, gap assignments, film study, etc.

I thought after last week that perhaps Nickerson was the biggest problem. This week clearly showed that is not the case. The scheme and focus is not right for the personnel, perhaps even for college football in general.

When you look at the recruiting class, there is no real defensive help in sight either. Not exactly a lot to pin hopes to going forward.

I think if Lovie would swallow a bit of pride and hires a DC who truly understands modern college dual threat/RPO offenses, there could be potential. As it is, I don’t think that is very likely at all. He believes in this defensive system and will find another Nickerson to run it the way he wants. If he’d find a defensive Rod Smith, we might have something.
 
#36      
No excuse for Lovie to quit on the team today! His defense is bad and he needs to swallow some pride and hire a defensive coordinator that can teach and scheme a defense that actually can stop college football offenses. This bend but don’t break cover 2 crap doesn’t work when you don’t have elite NFL caliber Uber-athletes manning every position. Lovie is a great guy/figure head/father figure kind of head coach and that’s about all he is bringing to the Illini football table.
could not have said it better
 
#37      
I'm not ready to give up on Lovie and his defense yet. This might not have been an accurate test. Nebraska's offense can be really, really good. Compare their talent with our offense at every position, and our offense had more talent then our defense. In hindsight Ron Zook does not look so bad, and remember what he said about the "Jimmies and the Joes" beating the "Xs and the Os.

We didn't just have turnovers in this game, we had nut punching turnovers.

Somebody said special teams was our only clear advantage over Nebby. That was clearly not the case yesterday.

Reggie Corbin had become our one clear Big10 caliber athlete. Ohio St. loses a guy like Reggie and they have three more waiting in the wings. We lose a guy like Reggie and we struggle. Especially with Epstein already out.

So I think it is fair to say the we cannot beat a competitive Big 10 team without: 1. winning the turnover battle, 2. wining special teams and 3. our best playmaker. Not sure Lovie's defensive scheme was the major problem.

Our WRs to seem to struggle to catch the ball. I'm not always big on AJ, but there were some key drops that we really needed yesterday. Seems like there always are. Why wouldn't a great HS WR want to play for Rod Smith? (The one thing I would say positive about our WRs is they seem to block pretty well.)

The good news is that the BIG West is very competitive. The win against Minny is looking awfully good today , as they absolutely pound Purdue and already beat IU, IU beats MD... Just like Purdue, MD and Minny, we can win the next two games, or we can lose them big. How sweet would it be to close out winning against Iowa and NW to go to a bowl?
 
#39      

BZuppke

Plainfield
I’m pissed we gave away what was a very winnable game but we beat ourselves - they didn’t beat us. We can compete and stupid mistakes can be fixed. All of these guys except for Bush will be back next year. Can they put together a game or two in the next two weeks and spring an upset?
 
#42      

BZuppke

Plainfield
Not to be too optimistic but young defensive backs completely out of position is fixable - but frustrating is the word.