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.
 
#35      
ForeverOrange
therealmiket86 said:
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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No doubt. The acclimation of talent in the offseason after the momentum we had is so frustrating..

Bielema cannot be expected to Moneyball our way to successful seasons year after year. Something major has to change going forward or we will be back in the cellar while other programs figure out this new era.

Oregon is down but we’re still worried about being 30 bombed. It just stinks to be here again.
 
#36      
New Creation
northwestern is ranked and Oregon is Unranked....

Upside Down GIF by Rhett and Link
 
#37      
phats22
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 or if the offense consistently played to its expectations would have this team 5-1 right now.
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fify
 
#38      
bluemountain
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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Forget about the defense....slightly better execution on offense gets us to 5-1, even with the terrible defense
 
#40      
therealmiket86
ForeverOrange said:
No doubt. The acclimation of talent in the offseason after the momentum we had is so frustrating..

Bielema cannot be expected to Moneyball our way to successful seasons year after year. Something major has to change going forward or we will be back in the cellar while other programs figure out this new era.

Oregon is down but we’re still worried about being 30 bombed. It just stinks to be here again.
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Just between Martin and Tj Taylor it’s a ton of money that could’ve helped the defense. Unless Edmonson is playing for free he’s an over pay. He played 3 snaps this week. Prater didn’t start at Jacksonville state and we paid him 700k. Call me crazy but we should’ve just paid that much to keep Coenen.

We spent all the money on offense and tried to piece it together on the cheap for defense. I do think Hauck was a horrible DC but this roster was already set before he came on board. This is all on BB and the GM. Christian Martin was. Priority addition and is one of the highest paid players. In the past they’ve been very good but this past offseason was insanely bad. Another guy who wasn’t cheap is Morris and he’s been very bad.
 
#41      
Lefty_55
therealmiket86 said:
Just between Martin and Tj Taylor it’s a ton of money that could’ve helped the defense. Unless Edmonson is playing for free he’s an over pay. He played 3 snaps this week. Prater didn’t start at Jacksonville state and we paid him 700k. Call me crazy but we should’ve just paid that much to keep Coenen.

We spent all the money on offense and tried to piece it together on the cheap for defense. I do think Hauck was a horrible DC but this roster was already set before he came on board. This is all on BB and the GM. Christian Martin was. Priority addition and is one of the highest paid players. In the past they’ve been very good but this past offseason was insanely bad. Another guy who wasn’t cheap is Morris and he’s been very bad.
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Not sure if there’s a great answer to this but when it comes to talent evaluation and allocating spending who’s more at fault between GM (Embleton?) and Bielema? Obviously Bielema is the head coach and takes that responsibility but I assume he’s getting recommendations from a whole evaluation department. I guess I’m just curious who takes a larger share of the blame.

I’ve also wondered in terms of the overall player development why that hasn’t seemed to be as successful as we would like. Perhaps in the portal era the type of guys you’d want over 4-5 years are just harder to keep and develop?
 
#42      
therealmiket86
Lefty_55 said:
Not sure if there’s a great answer to this but when it comes to talent evaluation and allocating spending who’s more at fault between GM (Embleton?) and Bielema? Obviously Bielema is the head coach and takes that responsibility but I assume he’s getting recommendations from a whole evaluation department. I guess I’m just curious who takes a larger share of the blame.

I’ve also wondered in terms of the overall player development why that hasn’t seemed to be as successful as we would like. Perhaps in the portal era the type of guys you’d want over 4-5 years are just harder to keep and develop?
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He’s getting recommendations but BB is making the final call. Martin was a guy who struggled at Colorado state but they liked the physical tools. You see NFL gm’s get burned by they all the time.

The development has been lacking because the first several classes we brought in weren’t good.
 
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