Pregame: Illinois at Purdue, Saturday, October 26th, 11:00am CT, BTN

[BD mil]

I think yesterday was finally something that gives a rationale basis for beating teams on your schedule other than Rutgers. I think your team is improved, but also Wisconsin was looking ahead to Ohio State. I remember all too well routing Ohio State and beating Iowa, while getting manhandled by MSU and routed by Minnesota.

Good news for you guys, I think Brohm's mentality is honestly going to be that we can beat Illinois without Rondale Moore... which is reasonable when you see the day that we had against Iowa without him. It probably has more to do with David Bell now being second in the Big Ten in receiving yards than it does with him thinking Illinois is not good. I also think Lorenzo Neal quit on this team a long time ago, and is just sticking around at Purdue to use the facilities to get ready for the draft. We would have beaten Iowa with either player yesterday, but I think you'll be spared both.

We are weak up the middle on defense. If you can get past Johnson and Watts with your backs, which is not nearly as hard as Neal and Watts, there's a 5'11" 220 lb. unathletic coaches son at middle linebacker.. who is routinely dragged for five yards after contact. Ben Holt is NOT a Big Ten talent. Cory Trice, a 6'3" corner who looked like superman v. Maryland.. looked... like a 6'3" corner against Iowa, who twisted him around and got all of their receiving yards on him. The other corner is a step slow. Peters can beat Mackey up the left side if he has time. Cam Allen is a true freshman who is slowly taking over at free safety for the athletically challenged senior Navon Mosley. He's not so exploitable. When Simeon Smiley plays the other spot, things look good. When it's mosley or Brennan Thienemann, there's a safety spot where Corbin could blow right by them to get into the end zone on a long run. The defensive ends and OLBs are good.

Right now, the problem is that without neal, opposing OLs can widen out on Karlaftis and Barnes, and get enough time with the QB to connect. And Peters appears to be good enough to do so. He has to for you to win. This is a Purdue team without their best two players on offense AND defense that starts 12 freshmen.

Offensively, it's the worst Purdue offensive line I've ever seen. They had mainstays like Barron, Hermanns and Mccann and were plugging that with grad transfers. This year, after Barron left just Mccann and Hermanns, they decided to go with two first time starter youngsters and converted DT Alex Criddle. Both first time young starters, Beach and Bramel, have been replaced by first time starters Garvin and Miller, who are better players and doing well. Criddle was replaced by Stickford, who got hurt during Iowa after playing much better than Criddle. Backup RG DJ Washington is out for the year. If Bramel spells Miller at RT, he gets rushed around like a turnstyle... Shaka Toney was in Plummers chest all day when we played PSU. Unlike last year, we are like second to last in NCAA in rushing yards per game. King Doerue is a good back, he just can't buy a hole with this group.

Plummer is the best combo of a cerebral QB and arm talent that I've seen since Kyle Orton, but by the time he's Orton's age (04 season), he will probably be the best since Brees. But he's young, so he's 1-1.5 seconds slower getting the ball out than Sindelar. That's where a lot of the pressure comes from. David Bell is already the best WR I've ever seen at Purdue save Rondale Moore. Better than Standeford and Stubblefield and FAR better than Isaac Zico, who had a huge day on you last year. He's a 4.6 guy but I've never seen a more fluid rout runner and natural receiver in Big Ten games. Problem is, Iowa took him away in the third quarter and the other true freshman, Milton Wright, looks like a true freshman and Plummer couldn't test the field to his left.

Brycen Hopkins can look like the best TE in the nation one week and disappear the next.. or quarter to quarter. I think he has a huge day against lovies archaic defense though.

If I was setting the line I'd say Purdue -5 because it's at home and that gives you like what.. 2.5-3? That's if Moore and Neal are out, and I think they will be. If we had two of the four players we are missing, I think we win comfortably.. but we lose guys in practice every week. Now Cornel Jones, our only other linebacker who came into the season with much experience besides Bailey (out for season), is out.

So, while the reputation of a lot of Illinois fans with Purdue people is that a solid 30% of you think you're actually rooting for Michigan, this week I can buy it, because it's just a team that's down to literally zero guys that we thought we'd rely on this year besides George Karlaftis, Matt mccann, Grant Hermanns and Brycen Hopkins. And even in Karlaftis' case, we thought the five star freshman (247) who was desired by Clemson, Alabama and everyone else... would be a nice compliment to Lorenzo Neal and Markus Bailey... not by far the best player on the defense.

Illinois 28
Purdue 31

 

[OrangeSoda]

Why do I feel like we are more likely to beat MSU and NW than Purdue?

 

[Halloweenie]

Jeff Brohm still has a lot of skill possession talent and he knows how to use it but Rondale Moore’s status for next Saturday will be watched by Illini fans everywhere. He changes everything, his status is unknown at this time.

Indy paper, Purdue columnist, said either this week or next week

 

[STLflyinIllini]

Why do I feel like we are more likely to beat MSU and NW than Purdue?

I kind of feel the same way. Part of it is because Purdue demolished us at home last year, the other part is they run a more innovative offense than the other 2 schools. If we can look competent defensively against Purdue I'll start to believe our defense has turned the corner.

 

[BD mil]

I kind of feel the same way. Part of it is because Purdue demolished us at home last year, the other part is they run a more innovative offense than the other 2 schools. If we can look competent defensively against Purdue I'll start to believe our defense has turned the corner.

Yeah but no Lorenzo Neal, no Rondale Moore

 

[Arizona Bob]

Lovie's biggest defensive weakness is that he doesn't have the staff to teach good fundamentals and teach the mental and technique part of the game. If you look at the LBs and secondary, time after time you see late reads on the play, poor reaction and angles, and frequently missed assignments. The defense is athletic enough to be decent, but the mental part just isn't there. That's coaching.

When there's little thinking or reaction necessary when a team doesn't do much RPO or other things that require quick reads and reaction, the defense can play pretty well as they did against Wisconsin. When playing a team where players need to quickly make reads like against EMU, Minny and Nebraska, they look like Bambi in the headlights. We have the physical talent to beat Purdue by a decent margin. Unless Lovie can all of a sudden make the team a LOT smarter than they've played this season, I'm looking at a 10 point loss with a LOT of big plays given up....

AS far as defensive scheme, Lovie's Tampa 2 has been solved long ago, and you need exceptional back 7 athletes to play it and an intimidating pass rush. Unless you have those things, it's extremely vulnerable in the middle and decent passers will rip it apart both in running and passing. The system just isn't set up to beat the RPO and passing offenses, and our talent isn't good enough to play it effectively anyway. Back around the Millennium, Lovie had a rep as one of the most innovative minds out there in the NFL. That was a long time ago. We've seen little of that "innovation" form Lovie in four years. The game has passed him by and he can't, or won't adapt. That's the root cause of the problem along with building perhaps the worst staff in all of P5 football....

 

[lexwaldez]

Lovie's biggest defensive weakness is that he doesn't have the staff to teach good fundamentals and teach the mental and technique part of the game. If you look at the LBs and secondary, time after time you see late reads on the play, poor reaction and angles, and frequently missed assignments. The defense is athletic enough to be decent, but the mental part just isn't there. That's coaching.

When there's little thinking or reaction necessary when a team doesn't do much RPO or other things that require quick reads and reaction, the defense can play pretty well as they did against Wisconsin. When playing a team where players need to quickly make reads like against EMU, Minny and Nebraska, they look like Bambi in the headlights. We have the physical talent to beat Purdue by a decent margin. Unless Lovie can all of a sudden make the team a LOT smarter than they've played this season, I'm looking at a 10 point loss with a LOT of big plays given up....

AS far as defensive scheme, Lovie's Tampa 2 has been solved long ago, and you need exceptional back 7 athletes to play it and an intimidating pass rush. Unless you have those things, it's extremely vulnerable in the middle and decent passers will rip it apart both in running and passing. The system just isn't set up to beat the RPO and passing offenses, and our talent isn't good enough to play it effectively anyway. Back around the Millennium, Lovie had a rep as one of the most innovative minds out there in the NFL. That was a long time ago. We've seen little of that "innovation" form Lovie in four years. The game has passed him by and he can't, or won't adapt. That's the root cause of the problem along with building perhaps the worst staff in all of P5 football....

I was just discussing this with a friend and we independently came to the same conclusions. The players are talented and they play hard but they're making the same mistakes over and over. They're not getting coached up. So if what you say is correct, how do we fix it? New backs coach and DC in order? Anything else? How do we get better next year?

 

[Dan]

Purdue -9

 

[illinoistradition]

I was just discussing this with a friend and we independently came to the same conclusions. The players are talented and they play hard but they're making the same mistakes over and over. They're not getting coached up. So if what you say is correct, how do we fix it? New backs coach and DC in order? Anything else? How do we get better next year?

It's tough to say. What if this team wins 6, gets to a bowl and wins? I still find that highly unlikely, but it would put Whitman in a tough spot to force Lovie's hand on making changes. I think they need to bring in a DC to at least provide some new blood that can work with Lovie and make necessary tweaks to fit the way many offenses are changing (RPOs especially). At a minimum, Whitman should be pushing him to hire an LB coach. That (his son in that position) will continue to bother me for the duration of Lovie's tenure, no matter how successful he might be.

 

[BD mil]

Lovie's biggest defensive weakness is that he doesn't have the staff to teach good fundamentals and teach the mental and technique part of the game. If you look at the LBs and secondary, time after time you see late reads on the play, poor reaction and angles, and frequently missed assignments. The defense is athletic enough to be decent, but the mental part just isn't there. That's coaching.

When there's little thinking or reaction necessary when a team doesn't do much RPO or other things that require quick reads and reaction, the defense can play pretty well as they did against Wisconsin. When playing a team where players need to quickly make reads like against EMU, Minny and Nebraska, they look like Bambi in the headlights. We have the physical talent to beat Purdue by a decent margin. Unless Lovie can all of a sudden make the team a LOT smarter than they've played this season, I'm looking at a 10 point loss with a LOT of big plays given up....

AS far as defensive scheme, Lovie's Tampa 2 has been solved long ago, and you need exceptional back 7 athletes to play it and an intimidating pass rush. Unless you have those things, it's extremely vulnerable in the middle and decent passers will rip it apart both in running and passing. The system just isn't set up to beat the RPO and passing offenses, and our talent isn't good enough to play it effectively anyway. Back around the Millennium, Lovie had a rep as one of the most innovative minds out there in the NFL. That was a long time ago. We've seen little of that "innovation" form Lovie in four years. The game has passed him by and he can't, or won't adapt. That's the root cause of the problem along with building perhaps the worst staff in all of P5 football....

The scheme is awful against hyper aggressive modern offenses. It's built for the NFL of the Urlacher era. Football has moved on. You guys have the athletes to play more man...

 

[IlliniReb]

I think yesterday was finally something that gives a rationale basis for beating teams on your schedule other than Rutgers. I think your team is improved, but also Wisconsin was looking ahead to Ohio State. I remember all too well routing Ohio State and beating Iowa, while getting manhandled by MSU and routed by Minnesota.

Good news for you guys, I think Brohm's mentality is honestly going to be that we can beat Illinois without Rondale Moore... which is reasonable when you see the day that we had against Iowa without him. It probably has more to do with David Bell now being second in the Big Ten in receiving yards than it does with him thinking Illinois is not good. I also think Lorenzo Neal quit on this team a long time ago, and is just sticking around at Purdue to use the facilities to get ready for the draft. We would have beaten Iowa with either player yesterday, but I think you'll be spared both.

We are weak up the middle on defense. If you can get past Johnson and Watts with your backs, which is not nearly as hard as Neal and Watts, there's a 5'11" 220 lb. unathletic coaches son at middle linebacker.. who is routinely dragged for five yards after contact. Ben Holt is NOT a Big Ten talent. Cory Trice, a 6'3" corner who looked like superman v. Maryland.. looked... like a 6'3" corner against Iowa, who twisted him around and got all of their receiving yards on him. The other corner is a step slow. Peters can beat Mackey up the left side if he has time. Cam Allen is a true freshman who is slowly taking over at free safety for the athletically challenged senior Navon Mosley. He's not so exploitable. When Simeon Smiley plays the other spot, things look good. When it's mosley or Brennan Thienemann, there's a safety spot where Corbin could blow right by them to get into the end zone on a long run. The defensive ends and OLBs are good.

Right now, the problem is that without neal, opposing OLs can widen out on Karlaftis and Barnes, and get enough time with the QB to connect. And Peters appears to be good enough to do so. He has to for you to win. This is a Purdue team without their best two players on offense AND defense that starts 12 freshmen.

Offensively, it's the worst Purdue offensive line I've ever seen. They had mainstays like Barron, Hermanns and Mccann and were plugging that with grad transfers. This year, after Barron left just Mccann and Hermanns, they decided to go with two first time starter youngsters and converted DT Alex Criddle. Both first time young starters, Beach and Bramel, have been replaced by first time starters Garvin and Miller, who are better players and doing well. Criddle was replaced by Stickford, who got hurt during Iowa after playing much better than Criddle. Backup RG DJ Washington is out for the year. If Bramel spells Miller at RT, he gets rushed around like a turnstyle... Shaka Toney was in Plummers chest all day when we played PSU. Unlike last year, we are like second to last in NCAA in rushing yards per game. King Doerue is a good back, he just can't buy a hole with this group.

Plummer is the best combo of a cerebral QB and arm talent that I've seen since Kyle Orton, but by the time he's Orton's age (04 season), he will probably be the best since Brees. But he's young, so he's 1-1.5 seconds slower getting the ball out than Sindelar. That's where a lot of the pressure comes from. David Bell is already the best WR I've ever seen at Purdue save Rondale Moore. Better than Standeford and Stubblefield and FAR better than Isaac Zico, who had a huge day on you last year. He's a 4.6 guy but I've never seen a more fluid rout runner and natural receiver in Big Ten games. Problem is, Iowa took him away in the third quarter and the other true freshman, Milton Wright, looks like a true freshman and Plummer couldn't test the field to his left.

Brycen Hopkins can look like the best TE in the nation one week and disappear the next.. or quarter to quarter. I think he has a huge day against lovies archaic defense though.

If I was setting the line I'd say Purdue -5 because it's at home and that gives you like what.. 2.5-3? That's if Moore and Neal are out, and I think they will be. If we had two of the four players we are missing, I think we win comfortably.. but we lose guys in practice every week. Now Cornel Jones, our only other linebacker who came into the season with much experience besides Bailey (out for season), is out.

So, while the reputation of a lot of Illinois fans with Purdue people is that a solid 30% of you think you're actually rooting for Michigan, this week I can buy it, because it's just a team that's down to literally zero guys that we thought we'd rely on this year besides George Karlaftis, Matt mccann, Grant Hermanns and Brycen Hopkins. And even in Karlaftis' case, we thought the five star freshman (247) who was desired by Clemson, Alabama and everyone else... would be a nice compliment to Lorenzo Neal and Markus Bailey... not by far the best player on the defense.

Illinois 28
Purdue 31

Really appreciate the thoughtful insight. Hoping you’re right on the Purdue injures.

 

[BD mil]

Really appreciate the thoughtful insight. Hoping you’re right on the Purdue injures.

I think the favorable spread comes down to how we are both pretty meh, but only one of us does one thing really well. Purdue is the nations number 9 pass offense.

Purdue offennse v Illinois defense
Run 129th v 103rd
Pass 9th v 82nd

Illinois offense v Purdue defense
Run 89th v 68th
Pass 108th v 115th

For perspective Purdue will be going from facing the 10th ranked defense on the road to the 100th ranked total defense at Home.

I’m still not touching the game and it’s hard not to respect what Illinois did in Champaign yesterday

 

[jrichisamazing]

This is the question, right? The game at Purdue just became the biggest game for this program in 12 years. Win against Purdue, don't lose your wits against Rutgers and we have 3 straight opportunities to get bowl eligible, including a home game against Northwestern to end the season.

Lose to Purdue and we may find ourselves 4-7 heading into Northwestern. Does 5-7 with a win against NW feel more hollow than 5-7 with a loss to NW? Nothing positive, but beating Purdue (with assumed home win at home over Rutgers) makes this season soooooooo much more interesting than a loss to Purdue.

Regardless, hard not to tune in each week after witnessing what happened today, which is more than I could have imagined 1 day ago. So huge!

Mich St and Iowa are basically worse versions of Wisconsin. They rely on a dominant defense and run the ball a lot. We've just shown we can beat teams like that. IMO there is no need to go straight back to gloom and doom if we lose this game. Unless it's an absolute embarrassment.

 

[drwillini]

In full disclosure, Purdue is my second favorite BIG team. (one of my degrees from there, and live in Indiana). I can't remember looking forward to an Illinois game more in the last ten years than this one. I get that we matched up well with Wisconsin. But if our excitement is justified, season long stats are not relevant. We are all hoping some kind of switch was flipped midway through the Michigan game.

I think (OK, maybe hope) this is the game where we get our running game racking up the numbers we all expected. Not bad against Wisconsin and a tough D for sure, but against Purdue I want to see our OL and running back stable dominate. I'm thinking we get 250 yds rushing against them. Maybe more. Purdue is really, really vulnerable against the run, much more so than those national stats indicate.

On D I want to see our DL dominate. Hopefully we are healthy there and can keep a solid rotation going. To me, any reasonable defense can work if the DL wins the battle at the line of scrimmage. And I think we can against Purdue.

I short, I think this becomes a tempo game. If this is an old fashioned BIG game, we should win. This game is HUGE for us. We win this game, and then beat take care of business against Rutgers, and we have a three game win streak going into MSU, and in that position that game is winnable.

I love being excited again about Illini football this deep into the season.

 

[FiveStar]

You guys have the athletes to play more man...

I can tell you didn’t watch the eastern michigan game

 

[Soxfreak64]

I hate this matchup on paper, mostly because Lovie's never proven he can handle a spread offense. Then again, he hadn't proven he could beat anybody before yesterday...maybe it's a year of firsts?

I do like the Tony Adams to CB move a lot. I still have lots of worries about safeties and LBs in coverage. I loved the move of Jamal Woods to DE yesterday. I'd much rather they be stout against the run on the DL so the LBs can play more freely, especially since they weren't getting pressure on B1G ten teams from the edge anyway.

If the offense comes to play and the DL plays like yesterday, I think IL can win. I'm excited, even if I'm not optimistic.

 

[BD mil]

I can tell you didn’t watch the eastern michigan game

Illinois’ defense has athletes.. wait till you see the regular guy we have at middle linebacker

 

[BZuppke]

Can our offensive line dominate the LOS? If we can, I trust Reggie and Dre can have big days. This could be the winning recipe.

 

[IdahoIllini]

Why do I feel like we are more likely to beat MSU and NW than Purdue?

I think that’s natural because we don’t match up well at all defensively with what Purdue likes to run on offense. They are going to score. We have to keep pace, which isn’t totally out of the question if we can run the ball with success.

MSU doesn’t have a terribly dynamic offense and neither does northwestern. We match up better defensively with them. But their defenses, especially MSU, are way better than Purdue.

I don’t expect to win this coming weekend but I do think we can and should beat Rutgers and Northwestern. If we can steal one more somewhere we can still get to a bowl game.

 

[Deleted member 654622]

We gave up 117 points in two games after we smoked Minnesota last year. I'm excited about this game. Please don't let us down again Lovie

 

[IlliniReb]

I think the favorable spread comes down to how we are both pretty meh, but only one of us does one thing really well. Purdue is the nations number 9 pass offense.

Purdue offennse v Illinois defense
Run 129th v 103rd
Pass 9th v 82nd

Illinois offense v Purdue defense
Run 89th v 68th
Pass 108th v 115th

For perspective Purdue will be going from facing the 10th ranked defense on the road to the 100th ranked total defense at Home.

I’m still not touching the game and it’s hard not to respect what Illinois did in Champaign yesterday

Perhaps this this the game where Rod Smith falls out of love with the pass, we run 80%+ of the time.....and dominate the time of possession battle.

 

[BWBW]

Perhaps this this the game where Rod Smith falls out of love with the pass, we run 80%+ of the time.....and dominate the time of possession battle.

Using the run to setup the pass seems a very good use of resources (IMHO).

Pettibone is taking a fair amount of criticism. Is he up to the task?

 

[PNWIllini]

Relevancy in November. Feels good, man.

 

[ChocolateThunder]

 

[Neale Stoner Fan Club]

Purdue is allowing 157 rushing yards per game. Don't get cute, Rod Smith. Run the darn football! Corbin and Dre Brown were pretty good in that 4th quarter, other than that 4th down play that failed miserably. BEAT PURDUE.