Illinois vs Oregon, Saturday, October 24th

#27      
blackdog
therealmiket86 said:
Duke is also 4-1. The problem with those games is the self inflicted mistakes. In the past couple years we win those games because we play mistake free football.
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Absolutely they were both winnable games but I think a lot of the teeth gnashing is because people view those teams as inferior when the reality is both are actually pretty solid.
 
#28      
Illini2010-11
blackdog said:
Absolutely they were both winnable games but I think a lot of the teeth gnashing is because people view those teams as inferior when the reality is both are actually pretty solid.
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Agreed to everthing here.

In addition, it does not help that they were winnable home games. There is slowly becoming the expectation of winning those games, and the reality is that we had two home losses in September/early October. If these two losses were on the road, I am sure there would be more modified grumbles.
 
#31      
lstewart53x3
ForeverOrange said:
And that’s what is so frustrating. The schedule this year screamed the possibility of 10-2 or even 11-1 if the right pieces would have been put in place in the offseason. Such a missed opportunity.
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The schedule pre-season screamed 8-4 (what fans acrually predicted, no one thought we’d win 10 or 11 games). But that’s not the schedule we actually got.

Preseason SP+ rankings vs current on a few teams on our schedule:

Nebraska: 33 —> 14 (+19)
Northwestern: 50 —> 17 (+33)
UCLA: 46 —> 18 (+28)

As the #28 preseason team in SP+, we would’ve been favored in all 3 (Nebraska likely a pick ‘em) now we won’t be favored in any of the 3.

Toss in these teams current rankings:

Ohio St: 1
Oregon: 12
Iowa: 24

Along with these two toss up games (we lost both):

Duke: 45
Purdue: 62 (+16 spots from preseason)

Vegas had the O/U set at 7.5 preseason. Had they had the current metrics, it would’ve been 4.5? Our scheduled turned out to be much more difficult than we thought preseason.
 
#34      
therealmiket86
ForeverOrange said:
Never said I predicted 10-2 or 11-1. You can actually go find my prediction of 8-4. I said with the right pieces this offseason the schedule had potential for better. You guys are dense.

Just an average defense would have this team 5-1 right now.
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I’ve said it a lot I think the defensive coaching has been horrible. With that being said no dc would look good with the talent we have out there. Darrell Prater was our highest paid defensive addition in the portal. That shows you how good our offseason was.
 
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