Purdue 46, Illinois 7 POSTGAME

#101      
And then back to 3-9 in his 3rd season. #FireLeach! #Regression!

We are talking about building a program, not one season. So, no, it wasn’t until his 4th season that he built things.

Lovie may end up having a better 3rd season then Leach did at WSU. (And it’s really only his 2nd with his guys)

Disclaimer: I am not a “believe in Lovie blindly” person, just that I’ll judge the season when it’s over and then continue to assess the entire body of work. I’m not a fan of how things look right now, but if we go 4-8 this year. I’ll be satisfied to give Lovie another season to go bowling.

Ok then.. I'll hold you to a 9-3/9-4 record next year
 
#102      
This is going to be his last job unless he gets this thing turned around. Nobody is going to hire a 60+ year old coach who crapped out his last two gigs. He does not have a reputation as a schematic genius like some older coaches who land positions as defensive coordinators.
Illinois. The place coaches go to die.
 
#103      

Hoppy2105

Little Rock, Arkansas
Ok then.. I'll hold you to a 9-3/9-4 record next year

Unfortunately for you, I’m on the Lovie is in year 2 group since his players are only in their sophomore years.

Mike Leach did a similar youth movement and got to 9-3 when his first class were seniors. That is what I’ll hold Lovie too overall.

But, like I said before, if we only go 3-9 this year, Lovie will have not met my expectations and will require a good year 4 to get my support for year 5.
 
#104      
The gift that keeps giving, Mike Thomas, fired the perfect coach for this program in Ron Zook
Zook was an above average recruiter and a mediocre coach, he is not the guy you want at the top of your program. Firing him was not the move that doomed this program to perpetual 3 win seasons. I'm ready to die on that hill.
I know Lovie is historically laconic, but I begin to worry that he doesn’t have a great deal of interest in this gig. Is he just biding time until another job in the league opens up? I know, it’s probably reading too much into it, but I’m just that discouraged.
If you think any NFL team will employee Lovie Smith right now as even a coordinator (heck, even as a position coach), I have a bridge to sell you. This is about as low as Lovie has ever been in terms of coaching value. If he ever wants a job after this (and honestly, he doesn't need one), he needs to show he can turn this program into something.

At this point (after listening to the post game presser), I'm half way between understanding 90% of that is coachspeak, and wondering if Lovie has created some sort of alternative universe in his mind where his scheme was good Saturday. The offense will always be a different animal with Lovie as HC, but that defense needs to be better, even in years like this.
 
#105      
Worst game offensively of the season and reminiscent of last year. Say what you want about the defense, but 7 points isn't going to win many games. Purdue scored 37, 30 and 42 points their three prior games against P5 teams. Illinois had to have sustained scoring drives to have a chance.

Still a chance for a couple more wins against Minnesota and Nebraska. This team is better than last year's and will be better next year. Despite a game which has shaken the faith in Lovie for many, the arrow is still pointing up, just not as high as we would like.
 
#106      

Deleted member 654622

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It is funny how the majority of the posters new this was still a team of Freshman and Sophomores at the beginning of the season. Sat totally sucked. But these are still kids going against young men. Let them mature and then judge.
 
#107      

Deleted member 533939

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Personally, I thought AJ Bush looked good today. Maybe I'm watching a different game. LOL The wide receivers did him no favors. And the defense is atrocious. Things are not going well right now. We weren't competitive at home against a 2-3 Purdue team.
Is this sarcasm? Obviously, Bush was not the reason they lost by 40ish points, but there is no reason he should be on the field. He can't throw (and his running was abysmal Saturday) and has no future here.
 
#108      
A
Zook was an above average recruiter and a mediocre coach, he is not the guy you want at the top of your program. Firing him was not the move that doomed this program to perpetual 3 win seasons. I'm ready to die on that hill.

If you think any NFL team will employee Lovie Smith right now as even a coordinator (heck, even as a position coach), I have a bridge to sell you. This is about as low as Lovie has ever been in terms of coaching value. If he ever wants a job after this (and honestly, he doesn't need one), he needs to show he can turn this program into something.

At this point (after listening to the post game presser), I'm half way between understanding 90% of that is coachspeak, and wondering if Lovie has created some sort of alternative universe in his mind where his scheme was good Saturday. The offense will always be a different animal with Lovie as HC, but that defense needs to be better, even in years like this.

Yeah, what?! REGARDLESS of what has happened since Ron Zook departed, he absolutely should have been removed. Hiring Beckman as his replacement was the dumb decision, not Zook's initial firing. Would I kill for some Ron Zook type seasons right about now? Yup, LOL. However, the second you stop respecting yourself as a college program, the second you admit yourself into purgatory. He was already underachieving with the talent we had, and he finished out the season 0-6 (friendly reminder that we made history with that one, folks). We had to TRY to improve on what we had. It didn't work out, but spoiler: if we are consistently going 8-4 every single year for a decade in the magical hypothetical future, we're going to try to improve on that, too! And we should!
 
#109      

Deleted member 746094

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A


Yeah, what?! REGARDLESS of what has happened since Ron Zook departed, he absolutely should have been removed. Hiring Beckman as his replacement was the dumb decision, not Zook's initial firing. Would I kill for some Ron Zook type seasons right about now? Yup, LOL. However, the second you stop respecting yourself as a college program, the second you admit yourself into purgatory. He was already underachieving with the talent we had, and he finished out the season 0-6 (friendly reminder that we made history with that one, folks). We had to TRY to improve on what we had. It didn't work out, but spoiler: if we are consistently going 8-4 every single year for a decade in the magical hypothetical future, we're going to try to improve on that, too! And we should!

I agree with the Zook firing, BUT...

We are talking Illinois football here. As much as we pride ourselves as being a Top 15 to 20 basketball program historically....let’s just say a 10 year run of winning 66% of our games each season would mean we found the right guy to run our program. I would argue that after year 4 or 5 of that run we are looking to replace said coach because he has moved on to greener pastures as a reward for turning this debacle into a solid program. There is talk of giving Lovie another year or two to prove he can win 4 to 5 games. It would be nice to just have a team that wins 7 to 9 games every year with the hopes of putting a season together like 83,89 or 01 sprinkled in every decade.
 
#110      
It is funny how the majority of the posters new this was still a team of Freshman and Sophomores at the beginning of the season. Sat totally sucked. But these are still kids going against young men. Let them mature and then judge.

Yes, most of our players are underclassmen -- but they were playing football for years before they ever arrived in Champaign. Most of them are no longer the most talented player on the field once they reach college, and they need to adjust to the fact that their opponents are stronger and faster than anything they experienced in high school, but those adjustments should happen during training camp of their freshman season. A receiver who was awarded an athletic scholarship should be able to reliably catch the ball; a defensive back should know not to take a ridiculously bad angle toward the player that you want to cover or tackle; a defensive end should understand the importance of sealing the edge; and so forth. None of this stuff is rocket science.
Physical maturation is necessary for most lineman who are underclassman, and linebackers as well, but it's less of a factor for the players at other positions. In any event, I don't think physical maturation is the problem here. There are a sufficient number of talented athletes on the team but, in my opinion, they are not being coached very well.
 
#111      

SKane

Tennessee
The majority of fans have long since given up on caring about Illinois football. Too bad for too long and too many rebuilds that went nowhere.

Those that do still care tend to overreact to beatings like last Saturday because the team/coaches lay an egg every time the fans begin to think that Illini football has an opportunity to might possibly become sort of decent.
 
#112      

Illwinsagain

Cary, IL
The majority of fans have long since given up on caring about Illinois football. Too bad for too long and too many rebuilds that went nowhere.

Those that do still care tend to overreact to beatings like last Saturday because the team/coaches lay an egg every time the fans begin to think that Illini football has an opportunity to might possibly become sort of decent.

I am probably in the middle, I want to care again, but results like Saturday have me stay away. I will record WI game (already recorded whole season anyways), I will watch for as long as there is a chance to keep it interesting. Once WI shows dominance, I will fast forward til the end.
 
#113      
I think the Cyclones are starting a true freshman qb who really wasn't recruited by anyone else. And they totally dominated a highly ranked team last night. Why can't we get guys like that?
The simple answer is that they throw the ball. All of these no name teams that everyone is pointing out (including Purdue) throw the football.A team needs older, stronger guys with quick feet if that teams wants to run against 8 and 9 man fronts. These kids don't even have the experience of knowing where to look next, once a play has started. Illinois fans beg us to run it on every down and, in most games, that is what we have been doing. Don't be such hypocrites that you are getting what you are asking for but, then compare it to teams that throw the ball. Next year with more of our O line being juniors we might see what everyone seems to so desperately desire (running the ball). A passing attack may not be super successful every game but, one gives a team a chance every game. I have to admit that I am disappointed in Bush's reads and selfishness. But, this may be something that his OC has been harping upon him doing. Everyone here wants to fire Lovie just as he is about to get the experienced and strong type of players that he is recruiting for. So much nonsense.
 
#114      

Deleted member 654622

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Yes, most of our players are underclassmen -- but they were playing football for years before they ever arrived in Champaign. Most of them are no longer the most talented player on the field once they reach college, and they need to adjust to the fact that their opponents are stronger and faster than anything they experienced in high school, but those adjustments should happen during training camp of their freshman season. A receiver who was awarded an athletic scholarship should be able to reliably catch the ball; a defensive back should know not to take a ridiculously bad angle toward the player that you want to cover or tackle; a defensive end should understand the importance of sealing the edge; and so forth. None of this stuff is rocket science.
Physical maturation is necessary for most lineman who are underclassman, and linebackers as well, but it's less of a factor for the players at other positions. In any event, I don't think physical maturation is the problem here. There are a sufficient number of talented athletes on the team but, in my opinion, they are not being coached very well.
You don't think physical maturation has anything to do with a DE holding back a 315lb Offensive Tackle to seal an edge? Come on guys. Experience makes a huge difference when the every player on the field is lacking it. 90% of the players on the field Sat will be head and shoulders above where they are right now in 2 years.
 
#115      
What are some good examples of rebuilds where the "youngest team in America" grows steadily over 3 years and becomes a contender? A game with the physicality of football is not always conducive to this theory, there are a finite amount of reps a kid can give to the program. On paper it sounds great, but doesn't the team with more talent and better coaching win > 80% of the time? Look at the last elite team Illinois put out.. were the best players on that team all experienced guys who grew each year? Or were they simply really good football players? And did the production of those guys increase each year after that?
 
#116      
Unfortunately for you, I’m on the Lovie is in year 2 group since his players are only in their sophomore years.

Mike Leach did a similar youth movement and got to 9-3 when his first class were seniors. That is what I’ll hold Lovie too overall.

But, like I said before, if we only go 3-9 this year, Lovie will have not met my expectations and will require a good year 4 to get my support for year 5.
Actually, I would have been perfectly happy (well, maybe happy is too strong a word) with another 2-10 season if and only if we showed improvement as a program and are at least competitive in those games. That doesn't appear to be happening. Thus my frustration....
 
#117      

Hoppy2105

Little Rock, Arkansas
Actually, I would have been perfectly happy (well, maybe happy is too strong a word) with another 2-10 season if and only if we showed improvement as a program and are at least competitive in those games. That doesn't appear to be happening. Thus my frustration....

I felt it was happening until this past Saturday.

I think we should all take a step back and see if his was an outlier or the norm.

If we get carved up every game from here on out, I’ll be disheartened.

If Purdue was our “oops” moment of the year and the rest of the year we are competitive and even win one more game, I’ll say we are right on track.

Everyone is just upset that we crapped the bed and looked like our old selves when we had a legitimate opportunity to prove ourselves and the football world otherwise.

I’m equally pissed about the performance, I just haven’t given up on the season/plan yet.
 
#118      

Hoppy2105

Little Rock, Arkansas
So you like 2-10 seasons, 1-11 seasons and 3-9 seasons better than 7-5 seasons? Heck at least there were fans in the stands in the Zook era, and we were competitive. Now we are the laughing stock of the Power 5 conferences. Name a team that has been worse than us the last 5 years in Power 5. I was good with 7-5, the occasional 8-4 or 9-3 season. Lovie is an awesome guy, but not the answer for this program. , We need a football alum with a little experience to bring back some fan support, and eventually some wins.

Dude, where are you coming up with 7-5?? Zook had ZERO of those and one 9-3 season. He got to 7 wins once with a team that SHOULD have been able to win 9 or 10 (due to bad coaching). His other 6 win season got him fired for going 6-0 and then going 0-6 with a season finale of losing to crappy 2-9 Minnesota.

He lost the confidence of his team and the fans that year. Not to mention his recruiting had fallen off and created the talent issues Beckman had after his first year. (Beckman woefully underperformed with his first year talent)

Regardless, Zook wasn’t consistently going 7-5 “with an 8-4 or 9-3” sprinkled in.

He had failed. Period.
 
#119      

FinalFour88

Charlotte, NC
Is this sarcasm? Obviously, Bush was not the reason they lost by 40ish points, but there is no reason he should be on the field. He can't throw (and his running was abysmal Saturday) and has no future here.
No, it wasn't sarcasm. Seriously. I was impressed by him. LOL! But admittedly, I wasn't paying close attention to his reads and all that. To me, compared to the terrible defensive performance and disappointing wide receiver play, Bush looked adequate.
 
#120      
This was a despicable outing and I don't know how anyone could not have serious concerns about the future under the leadership of this staff.

I've been pondering Saturday's game for some time and I think I can put it in words now. I don't agree with the serious concerns, or I don't think I do. Here's the way I'm thinking about it.

The defense and the offense both suffer from similar things. The defensive scheme isn't atrocious per se. It's worked for us. The thing is, look at the Illini defense before say Vic K. gets here. We're abysmal. We're short on talent, our scheme was terrible, we were rated what like 80... geez maybe bottom 100 in the nation. Super Vic K gets here and he revamps the D completely. He knows we don't have the best kids in the nation so he does what he can to make the most of his talent pool and he does what he can to help them make plays. He really schemed in a way that wasn't super complicated so the kids could wrap their heads around it and do well AND he obfuscated what he wanted to do to make it more difficult for the offense to react to us. He disguised and disguised and disguised. The other things Vic K did was to NOT sit back and let their offense dictate what our defense was going to look like. That D got aggressive and dictated our terms to the opposing team. First we jumped like to top 40 and second year we were what... top ten, top twenty? I mention that to compare our current schemes to.

So let's compare that to our schemes now. The biggest problem I think is that our defense is so easy to figure out. You put a man in motion and get a quick look - are we in zone or are we in man. Do you want to run or pass? Answer those two questions and you have your play and should know your likelihood to complete the play. Done.

Offense is pretty much the same way. Do we look pass or run? Load the box, spy the QB and make us beat you down field.

Given we're pretty easy to ID and predict that REALLY makes the job we're asking the kids to do that much more difficult. They know exactly where to attack and they're better at attacking than we are at running our scheme. On top of that we're seeing kids out of position constantly. I mean, kids missing assignments that result in big gains. Who watches Illinois Football Breakdown on YouTube? That guy does a great job. SHOUT OUT TO THAT GUY!

We gotta find a way to make it easier on the kids. We're just killing ourselves out there. I'm probably wrong, but we don't have the depth, the five stars, the veterans to play a bend but don't break defense that reacts to what their O gives us and consistently win. We make it too easy on them and too tuff on us.

I'm afraid the offensive side of things is similar. I was hoping we'd play Rivers and get a passing game going on a Purdue team that would be keying in our run game. We came at them in the same old way and they beat us... in the same old way.

Pro's - we're going to be better, we should have a little more depth, and we should have more experience with players that are a year older.
Con's - we won't really look that different, we're going to be playing the same people in the same system with little in the way of surprises.

If we're 20% better next year does that really translate into success? I don't think the answer is a revolving door at coach, but we need to find an answer and they need to figure out soon. Like we need to figure it out in the next three weeks. I'm not incredibly down after the loss, but I'm not really optimistic at this point either. If we don't make some changes how can we POSSIBLY ever get any pressure on a QB?
 
#121      
What are some good examples of rebuilds where the "youngest team in America" grows steadily over 3 years and becomes a contender? A game with the physicality of football is not always conducive to this theory, there are a finite amount of reps a kid can give to the program. On paper it sounds great, but doesn't the team with more talent and better coaching win > 80% of the time? Look at the last elite team Illinois put out.. were the best players on that team all experienced guys who grew each year? Or were they simply really good football players? And did the production of those guys increase each year after that?
Illinois is so far from being a contender or elite, I'm just happy to see progress, even if it is slow. At the current state of the program, they definitely need to recruit more players who can challenge for starting positions and not "grow into" them. I'm hoping players like Marquez Beason and Isaiah Williams live up to the hype.
If Purdue was our “oops” moment of the year and the rest of the year we are competitive and even win one more game, I’ll say we are right on track..
That's a tall order with games still against Wisconsin and Iowa. I don't think Illinois is at the stage to pull that off.
 
#122      
No, it wasn't sarcasm. Seriously. I was impressed by him. LOL! But admittedly, I wasn't paying close attention to his reads and all that. To me, compared to the terrible defensive performance and disappointing wide receiver play, Bush looked adequate.

I agree Bush made strides. He looked TERRIBLE in the first half when throwing the ball. He started that tuck and run crap at the first sign of pressure. HOWEVER, to his credit (which I believe he deserves a TON of) his throwing improved a LOT in the second half, and after a quick tuck, he looked downfield and completed some throws. Didn't matter though. Our play calling was... curious if I'm kind about it. I would have gone into Saturday planning on throwing a TON against a team looking to defend run first. And throwing long on first down and immediately getting into second and 10 KILLS us. We can NOT do that crap. We need high percentage passes going 4-6 yards with some YAC. Gimme some quick, fast paced west coast chains movement. And I'd love to see some tight end involvement. I'm promised that every year and every year I am sorely disappointed.
 
#123      

Deleted member 4333

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wax
What are some good examples of rebuilds where the "youngest team in America" grows steadily over 3 years and becomes a contender? A game with the physicality of football is not always conducive to this theory, there are a finite amount of reps a kid can give to the program. On paper it sounds great, but doesn't the team with more talent and better coaching win > 80% of the time? Look at the last elite team Illinois put out.. were the best players on that team all experienced guys who grew each year? Or were they simply really good football players? And did the production of those guys increase each year after that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_NCAA_Division_I-A_football_season
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#125      
Win does not equal be competitive in my book.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Same here. I'll be shocked if Illinois isn't blown out by both teams. Unless by competitive you mean keeping the score close for half of the game or so, I don't see the Illini being competitive in either game.