Illinois at Michigan State, Saturday, October 10th, 2:30pm CT, FS1

#76      
IlliniNash
jimbo72 said:
I never had any hope for this team and the players to be great or top half in 2026. Our secondary and the returning players except Bailey are mediocre, period. Couple that with no Linebackers and DLine, we were always trash. I thought flat out we would give up 30 points plus every game and 200 to 300 yards rushing. Massive, Massive, Massive Fail on Coach for waiting for NFL season to end to get great D Coordinator. Then you bring in a tired old ball coach and his entire family to coach a High School defense. I cannot figure out what CoachB was thinking, but wow. That's how you take a huge Step Backwards. I'm crossing toes and fingers, we spend money on staff and Portal this winter.
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He missed on that first choice for defensive coordinator and had no backup plan.
 
#84      
aaeismacgychel
jimbo72 said:
I never had any hope for this team and the players to be great or top half in 2026. Our secondary and the returning players except Bailey are mediocre, period. Couple that with no Linebackers and DLine, we were always trash. I thought flat out we would give up 30 points plus every game and 200 to 300 yards rushing. Massive, Massive, Massive Fail on Coach for waiting for NFL season to end to get great D Coordinator. Then you bring in a tired old ball coach and his entire family to coach a High School defense. I cannot figure out what CoachB was thinking, but wow. That's how you take a huge Step Backwards. I'm crossing toes and fingers, we spend money on staff and Portal this winter.
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I had significantly higher hope for our secondary, especially X. I also expected significantly more from Juice. X was All B10 prior to the injury and Juice was better than mediocre in my opinion. Now they have both struggled hard this season, but I think it’s 20/20 hindsight to say there was an expectation for that to be the case for either of them this season. As for the rest, yeah, in my opinion a very poor offseason when it came to the defense and poor roster construction based on both money spent on the defensive side of the ball and hiring a coach and system that is predicated on needing to have good DL and LB talent which are our biggest weaknesses.

Kick Return, Punt return and punter coverage have also been pretty ugly thus far
 
#93      
RML
jimbo72 said:
I cannot figure out what CoachB was thinking, but wow.
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I can't afford top defensive lineman, so I'll try something gimmicky." If it woulda worked, we would all be calling him a genius.

I'm OK with it. (But I'm one of the three people who didn't mind Moeller as our head coach. We didn't have the talent, so he tried hurry-up offense (at times). Better to try something new than do something you know ain't gonna work.)
 
#96      
Illinois_2_AZ
I feel less confident going into this game, than I did going into the Purdue game. I wouldn't bet a dollar on this game, because our team is impossible to gauge.
We could play well tomorrow and win by 3 TD's. But we could also look like we did last week and lose by the same amount.
 
#97      
jrock
This will be 1 of our last 2 chances at a W this season. I fully expect an ugly @$$ game.
 
#98      
BZuppke
I really don’t blame our D for last weeks loss. Houser was off and the offense only scored 17 points. Where was the offense that moved the ball so well against tOSU?
 
#99      
Ill... INI 27
Knowing team is down on D Lunnwy/BB should be scheming offense accordingly, not 1 yard and a cloud of dust twice THEN pass..., punt. IMHO.
 
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