Illinois vs Oregon, Saturday, October 24th, 2/2:30pm CT
blackdog
- Champaign
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.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
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.
Oy. Dixon.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
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.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
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.
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.
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.
northwestern is ranked and Oregon is Unranked....
Forget about the defense....slightly better execution on offense gets us to 5-1, even with the terrible defense
I call that smart money….doing more with less.northwestern is ranked and Oregon is Unranked....
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.
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?
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.
Part of moneyball is finding undervalued talent and not spending on overvalued talent. I think Bielema has clearly overvalued the QB position. Not with Luke. He was worth it. But you can’t go pay Houser a ton money unless he was the missing piece to a championship level team and he was never going to be it.
There are definitely some disconnects in where we spent our $. I think I read we paid Houser $1.7M, which is not outrageous given the market. But paying big $ to Taylor, Martin and Morris were big misses.
Hopefully Clayton is the QB 1 for next season and you don’t have to pay a ton of money for a transfer QB. This would free up more money for the defense. Also, was Hauck ever a DC or was he just a head coach who knew the 3/3/5 defense and how to teach it. Teaching it versus calling it would seem to be two different things. I just want an attacking defense from here on out. Our bend don’t break has been the norm for too long.
I had us no worse than 9-3 but if our offense played to their standards, we would be 5-1 with a good chance of being 6-1 after Oregon the way they are playing. I never thought UCLA or Nebraska being as good as they are.
I assume Moore has a decent chance at returning for this game.
I don’t see us beating a team with an nfl caliber QB, although we just made one of the statistically worst QBs in the big ten look like a day one draft pick so maybe it won’t matter.
Either way, excited to watch Clayton play. He definitely has the arm. The children yearn for a homegrown QB to excel.
I don’t see us beating a team with an nfl caliber QB, although we just made one of the statistically worst QBs in the big ten look like a day one draft pick so maybe it won’t matter.
Either way, excited to watch Clayton play. He definitely has the arm. The children yearn for a homegrown QB to excel.
Assuming Clayton looks promising, you have to figure Boyd is gone. That leaves Eisenmenger and Shack. I don't think Illinois will pay a ton but they'll have to find an experienced QB that is willing to take a 1 season nice salary to be #2. I said it before, regardless of what happens (except Boyd staying), Illinois will need a portal QB.
Bielema has a history of making a few decisions that result in him getting kicked square in the testes. Self induced. After standing up and recalibrating, he comes out and does well. Maybe 2027 but more likely 2028 he'll be back and will have figured things out.
He won't change but his paranoia does nothing to help him. The locked down practices, playing a few games with the injuries, etc...., makes little to no difference in the outcome of the games.
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While Oregon looks more beatable than they’ve been in years I think we’re underestimating their offense due to one stinker of a game against UCLA. It was a once in a decade poor performance. Gut feel is they are dialed in the rest of the way and Oregon also isn’t one of those teams that lets up. Plus we’re really not a defense that can bring dangerous pressure or force turnovers. As such this game I just don’t see a way we can really keep them from scoring. If we win it’d be in a huge shootout, but trying to do that with a freshman backup QB? I don’t typically doom too hard in pregame threads, but if we don’t get our doors completely blown off I’d be shocked.
Oregon: 56
Illinois: 17
And if we do get blown out I know there’s going to be a lot of talk about it, but I just don’t think we match up well at all with Oregon and their speed. This one for me is just get through it with no injuries and if we do show something/anything take the positives from it as gut feel this gets ugly.
Oregon: 56
Illinois: 17
And if we do get blown out I know there’s going to be a lot of talk about it, but I just don’t think we match up well at all with Oregon and their speed. This one for me is just get through it with no injuries and if we do show something/anything take the positives from it as gut feel this gets ugly.