Like I said, fans love to fire coaches. They seem to think it accomplishes something. Usually, it causes the program to get worse but i don’t think they really care.
Illinois 20, Northwestern 13 Postgame
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Agreed. Too many times our O line played like a bowel movement.
A quick follow up to my gameday thread nice weather dig, it's now 52 with a wind chill of 46.
I’ll grant you it was an extremely conservative gameplan in the 2nd half but with the wind and weather, I understand why he went that route. Felt like they just didn’t feel like NU could win unless we made mistakes. Seemed to work out pretty well though.
He’s not a perfect OC for sure, but what he did with an atrocious O-line this year and a mediocre group of RBs is pretty amazing. Be careful what you wish for.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
This is entirely accurate. Northwestern could not move the ball at all after the first 2 drives. I think they had around a total of 125 yards of offense after the second drive.
The only time NW scored was after Altmyer fumbled the ball and they recovered at the Illini 1 yard line, and even then they made the dumb decision to kick a field goal.
The relatively conservative offensive game plan was the way to go, especially given the weather conditions and the way the defense was performing. We really could not afford another turnover.
Moving forward, it is clear we need upgrades in the line play (coaching and personnel). But in relation to the game last night, I think some want to nitpick endlessly to justify a preconceived agenda.
Why would it be?
This has nothing to do with Henry the person, but everything to do with a coach and the recruiting process and relationships that come with it.
I'll take Indy's thought process about not really caring about the importance of Juco players. It makes no sense that he would be fired otherwise.
I'm sure he(Henry) was part of the recruiting process for that player. He had to be. It's his defense. When making a commitment, you're committing mainly to a coach/group of coaches, which are the guys who sold parents on expectations.
These commitments happened last week. If my kid committed under a certain set of circumstances, then the set of circumstances changed two weeks later, I'd be pissed. You never know how a new coach is going to value your kid or if he'll bring his own players in from a program he might be coming from. Deion Sanders "Creaned" guys left and right. That's obviously an extreme situation, but the point is you never know.
Maybe Indy or 0440 can provide insight to how these commitments went down, but I just don't see Bret being a guy who would make changes like that after selling a kid on the environment.
That's purely MO and have absolutely no basis to question Bret's messaging. If a change is going to be made, it sure seems like it needs to be made before this next recruiting period.
Illiniaaron
- Geneseo, IL
Pretty sure he will be kicking on Sundays when he’s done at IllinoisThose 2 David Olano kicks - UNDERRATED how important / impressive they were! Great job, and nice win!
That 2023 team should have definitely been a bowl team. The defense was terrible. The Wisconsin loss when Newton got ejected and that Northwestern loss where Illinois had a fumble on a punt return and a fumble on a kick off return.
bottom line is we won.
my cap is tipped to our staff for that
what many of us really want tho is to win that game , playing conservatively , but winning 30-13 .
we have a strange habit of giving up game opening drives for points , and then rarely scoring enough to give us a 14 -17 point lead .
I continue to scratch my head with the number of times we start a new set of downs with a run for no gain , loss of 2 or gain of 1. maybe it’s just me , but we rarely were letting Luke have the luxury of 2nd & 4. it’s just a tiring brand of football to watch for 3 hours .
Chuck Nuggets
Dip your nuggets in my staff source sauce.
Bert has to fix the offensive line. First and foremost. Even before fixing the defense. Whether it's a schematic change or a coaching change—likely both, I think—it has to be better. It's just not as good as it needs to be, and it rarely has in Bert's 5 years here. 36-26 (23-22), so I am happy. But this O-line play has been very frustrating to watch underperform year after year.
He needs to have success without Luke Altmeyer to move to a desirable head coach position my opinion.
At least as much as we would know. We never saw one unless there was an injury.
By your logic then we should either never fire a coach or just shut down all recruiting while we contemplate whether we're going to replace a coach. Bielema has already replaced multiple coaches, of which I'm sure several recruits and players were attached to. We have over 20 commits every year, some multiple years out. Every player on the current team has a relationship with the coaches. There's never a "good" time to fire a coach, but if they're not cutting it, you have to for the sake of the program.
I know you really like Henry, but what exactly has Bart Miller done to deserve yet another year as the OL coach? There has been almost no development, almost no hits on recruits, almost no successful blocking schemes, and extremely substandard performance and year on year growth. There is no reason he should still be next year. I really don't think Henry should be here either but I guess there's more debate there? Maybe? Not really, but I'd be willing to hear an argument.
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I think a few mentioned on here and I thought the same, it was too bad the seniors were going out in a largely empty stadium.
As it turned out, it was so unique it will turn out to be one of the most memorable games they've played.
It was a great group of fans that turned out. Too bad the entire upper deck was locked including the colonnades, I was wanting to get some pictures up there but overall it was a lot of fun.
Maybe he should have taken over the offense in the second half too?
A quick follow up to my gameday thread nice weather dig, it's now 52 with a wind chill of 46.
Not saying that Lunney needs to go, BUT many of the play calls this season defied logic. Don't know if it was due to not having the personel to execute the called plays or bad decisions for when to call certain plays. Trying to repeatedly run up the gut with this O-Line was insanity.
IlliniwekKDR
- Colorado Springs, CO
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