Pregame: Illinois at Maryland, Saturday, October 27th, 2:30pm CT, BTN
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I bet Maryland is licking their chops thinking about playing us.
Illiniaaron
- Geneseo, IL
As is Minnesota. And Nebraska. Also Iowa. Including Northwestern.
Big wide open hole between the safties and linebackers all day. Just practice throwing it there all week and you beat us.
Md can not throw we will be 4-4 after next week
Md had just a tad over 100 yards total offense today
Md had just a tad over 100 yards total offense today
Deleted member 746094
D
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That was against Iowa. We...are not Iowa!
Deleted member 746094
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My point was that Iowa is moving up in the Top 25 and 6-1 and we are giving up 500+ yards per game and quite possibly one of the worst 25 teams in D1 football. Comparing any stat MD put up against Iowa should not give Illini fans one iota of confidence that we can replicate any such accomplishment.
Give the keys to MJ Rivers and lets see what happens. This is a winnable if we can put together a clean game.
Sad for me to say it, however I bet they have 478 yards of offense and 38 points next Saturday. I hope I am wrong.
Not going to happen
Soxfreak64
- Bloomington
Winnable, but I don't think that's how it will end up.
the national
- the Front Range
Maryland’s defense is pretty solid. But I feel like if our coordinators are prepared, we could be in a position to take this one. Unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility
To me the final stretch here is the true test of progress. I’d guess 80% of preseason predictions would have had us at 3-4 after 7 games with the hope we’d be more competitive in losses. We were very competitive with USF, not at all with Purdue. PSU very competitive for 3Qs and Wiscy kind of competitive but never really gave ourselves a chance with TOs.
4 of our last 5 we should be competitive. If we win 1 of those 4 we prob meet expectations - win 2 exceed. The key from what I see on this board is competitiveness. Even if we take an L to a Nebraska or Maryland or NW - let’s make it interesting and not post a 45 - 20 loss. I believe this comes down to our defense - offense has had its ups and downs you would expect but D has been consistently horrible - we need improvements on D to compete down the stretch
4 of our last 5 we should be competitive. If we win 1 of those 4 we prob meet expectations - win 2 exceed. The key from what I see on this board is competitiveness. Even if we take an L to a Nebraska or Maryland or NW - let’s make it interesting and not post a 45 - 20 loss. I believe this comes down to our defense - offense has had its ups and downs you would expect but D has been consistently horrible - we need improvements on D to compete down the stretch
Deleted member 4333
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Based on today's results, we'd better be competitive with Minnesota and Northwestern.
Maybe we can get to 5 this year. This game will be something like 35-24 them but at least closer. Then we have maybes left... Minny, Neb, and the Kitties.
Deleted member 29907
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Agree - we're a hard team to judge right now - we were looking 'not bad' at 7-14 against wisconsin and then 5 total turnovers is clearly hard to overcome both from a points given up and mental perspective. Change those 5 turnovers to maybe just 1 which would be closer to our norm - then, we at least don't give up as much time to the Wisc offense.
Perhaps I am just looking for a silver lining but we did score 20 with 5 turnovers - lets improve on that and assuming MJ can find open receivers more effectively - we have a shot - but I think we're good for 2 more Ws this year. Minny really looks bad and I think we can pull out another home win somewhere.
27-21 ILLINI
That's a great post. If we get one more win, we'll reach the total I expected at the beginning of the season. The reasons I'm disappointed are the tough games vs Kent St and WIU, and then the terrible loss to Purdue. Now that Purdue spanked OSU, that one doesn't look quite so bad. And the Wisky loss is about what I expected.
Overall though, the offense has met my expectations, while the defense looks quite a bit worse than I expected. As many have proposed, maybe we have to make a change there after the season.
DaChief4ever
- Urbana
This is be the game where MARYLAND says..."...see we're not such a bad team...look at what we did to Illinois."
The Purdue win against the Buckeyes has me at least thinking about the orange kool aid again. We are not as bad as we think. Hopefully. 
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