Illinois 30, Nebraska 22 Postgame

#151      
I was at the game in 1986 where we lost 59-14. I left when it was 28-0 (first quarter).
That was the day I got married. A couple of buddies left the reception early to go to the game. They got lost on the way over and by the time they found I-57 it was 28-0, and they just kept on driving north. I really enjoy when the Illini beat Nebby! BTW she is still with me!!
 
#152      
My wife and I were with friends at the Illini/Nebraska game in 86. We were walking into the stadium when we saw a lady
dressed in red & obvious Husker fan. One of us asked her how she thought the game was going to go. She replied, "We're
going to beat you by 50." This was a sweet win.
 
#153      

mhuml32

Cincinnati, OH
What a great win. Excellent job by the staff. Nebraska kept shooting themselves in the foot and Illinois capitalized on their mistakes. Defense was miles better than last year. Really looking forward to what this team can do. Fingers crossed that Hart's injury isn't too bad.
 
#154      
Tim And Eric Too Much Information GIF by Adult Swim
He’s a romantic devil, ain’t he.
 
#155      
Seemed like the RB's all had opportunities but Epstein runs with some power & ended up with 4.6 ypc
with 75 total yards. Had the hot hand for the day.
BB said Chase was "limited". That usually is coach speak for dinged. He is available but we would rather not use him.

Also Neb. returned 87% of their snaps from last years team and Martinez is an excellant QB. This Neb team may tank this year with all the distractions but everyone close to the program will tell you this is the most talented team that Frost has had.

We had 5 sacks today but several of them were "late" sacks indicating that our DB were doing well.

I thought Orlando Antiqua tweeting ILL was cool
 
#157      

mhuml32

Cincinnati, OH
Transfer from Northern Michigan. Walk on. Great story. Had major success up there (granted, several levels down).

Johnson was a <50% passer at a D2 school. We need to pump the brakes a little on his potential. I'm hoping Sitkowski stays healthy and Peters' injury isn't a broken collarbone. Sitkowski's 2020 passer efficiency rating is within shouting distance of Peters' 2019 season. You can envision him taking another step with another year of experience, better team around him, and good coaching staff. A lot of opportunities for wins in the next five weeks. Need to keep Sitkowski healthy.
 
#158      
I was pretty meh about the Bielema hire at first, but he slowly grew on me over the subsequent months, from bringing in a solid staff to winning over the super seniors to his smart pressers.
Plus, he really looks, talks and acts like an Illinois guy. Put a seed co. cap on him and he'd look like every other farmer in the central Ill town I grew up in.
He comes by that honestly. 😁
 
#159      
Observations:
The Marching Illini were a half an hour late starting their parade toward the stadium, and as such went right through the tunnel and into pregame.
The Illinois offense kept sending running backs up the middle for no gain a frustratingly amount of times. When someone woke up and let them run outside, they actually gained yards.
The 4th quarter we played Wisconsin ball.
We are supposed to have a barnyard full of tight ends. In the first quarter, our first gain was a pass to Ford. Later, a pass to Ford in the corner of the end zone. Aside from that, nuttin'. Absolutely nuttin' thrown at a tight end.
Once again, Nebraska fans travel extremely well. Always have. On the way home at a rest stop before Effingham, a car pulled up and had a license plate bracket that said Cornhuskers. But the license plate said Alabama! I struck up a conversation with the couple and they said the drove all the way from Alabama just to watch Nebraska lose. All the Nebraska fans I encountered were gracious and nice to be around.
 
#162      

mhuml32

Cincinnati, OH
Art Sitkowski for Heisman

He really impressed today. He put up his career best QBR rating (95.3) and best QBR rating for an Illinois QB since 2015 (Lunt against Kent State). Still think Peters can do some things for this offense that Sitkowski will struggle with but he really stepped up and had a career game when it was badly needed.
 
#163      

bdutts

Houston, Texas
That was the day I got married. A couple of buddies left the reception early to go to the game. They got lost on the way over and by the time they found I-57 it was 28-0, and they just kept on driving north. I really enjoy when the Illini beat Nebby! BTW she is still with me!!
Awesome! Congrats!
 
#165      

bdutts

Houston, Texas
Hmmm. Questioning your fandom if you couldn't stay for Butkus' jersey being retired at halftime.
That was my first year on campus. Didn’t know that was happening. Wanted to do what all of college kids wanted to do…keep drinking.
 
#166      

Go Nats 88 Illini

Fairfax, VA
Observations:
The Marching Illini were a half an hour late starting their parade toward the stadium, and as such went right through the tunnel and into pregame.
The Illinois offense kept sending running backs up the middle for no gain a frustratingly amount of times. When someone woke up and let them run outside, they actually gained yards.
The 4th quarter we played Wisconsin ball.
We are supposed to have a barnyard full of tight ends. In the first quarter, our first gain was a pass to Ford. Later, a pass to Ford in the corner of the end zone. Aside from that, nuttin'. Absolutely nuttin' thrown at a tight end.
Once again, Nebraska fans travel extremely well. Always have. On the way home at a rest stop before Effingham, a car pulled up and had a license plate bracket that said Cornhuskers. But the license plate said Alabama! I struck up a conversation with the couple and they said the drove all the way from Alabama just to watch Nebraska lose. All the Nebraska fans I encountered were gracious and nice to be around.
You forgot one. Illinois 30 - Nebraska 22.
 
#169      
Like any first game under a first year coach with new offensive and defensive systems, there were some missed blocks and blown coverages. However, the Illini never gave up, fought on despite the loss of their starting quarterback, and just were the more determined and motivated team. They took advantage of Nebraska miscues, and special teams were stellar throughout. There was a lot to like here, Coach BB and his staff are motivators and flexible enough to make timely adjustments to take the momentum from their opponents. I love what I saw. We will lose some games to more talented teams, but I like our odds of a winning season and bowl game appearance. They put the Fight back in Fighting Illini.
 
#170      
He really impressed today. He put up his career best QBR rating (95.3) and best QBR rating for an Illinois QB since 2015 (Lunt against Kent State). Still think Peters can do some things for this offense that Sitkowski will struggle with but he really stepped up and had a career game when it was badly needed.
His underhand tosses were things of beauty, soft, easy to catch, no rotation, right in the bread basket. I don't remember Peters doing that
 
#172      
Artur for president. I hope Brandon et al are okay. Great win everybody..
 
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#173      
I haven’t read through the whole postgame thread yet so I apologize if redundant. But I’m still so geeked I gotta get it out.

Talk about a game that had a little bit of everything. Weird special teams blunders resulting in points, funky 4 run baseball game scores, momentum crushing injuries and potentially devastating.

Not sure if it has been said or not, but that looked like a collarbone injury for BP. I hate it when players get injured. It’s especially cruel when it’s a senior.

After that injury was too big of a reality check. Defense was stout, offense was driving and then you could feel the energy zapped out of the stadium through the television (The atmosphere seemed fun throughout and had an interesting high school game vide with all the Huskers fans. Thank you for bringing it in the heat everyone!).

Then just about every Illini football thing that could happen did happen, but instead of rolling over we fought back and gladly accepted a few Nebraska gifts to get over the hump. I’m going to give the coaching staff a lot of credit with that one because, well, yeah. I think we quit and lose this game with the previous staff, there were a lot of 2019 parallels in this game.

Art did enough for us to hang on, and in no way is that a negative. With a full week with the 1’s he should continue to get comfortable. He has been presented a pretty darn good opportunity; stable of RBs, an O-Line that needed to adjust and be tweaked (still won the TOP battle), good TEs, and a big time talent in IW who looks much thicker from spring to fall? Tank is not messing around in the weight room. You love to see it.
Honestly, Nebraska has been our most relevant rival? If only this were the 80’s and 90’s (before my time but I appreciate the stories) and Nebraska was still “Nebraska.” Since 2015, Illinois is 3-4 in fairly competitive entertaining games. Sorry Nebraska, the Frost Era created a game with Illinois where they don’t fear you. Now it appears Illinois has a competent coaching staff and a fun fast defense?

Plotting The Simpsons GIF


The game plan on Martinez is obvious, contain and make him pass. Take out the 75 yard TD run (wrong call at the wrong time) the defense held him to 2.25 yards a carry (16 carriers for 36 yards). Pretty darn impressive.

The most impressive thing today was maybe our tackling. With the corners in man it’s up to them to get their guy on the ground and they did it. Some might say, and say it with me, elite tackling. Like game changing tackles because Nebraska players would have been running for days, see the 75 yard Martinez run. The front 7 seldom let Nebraska runners fall forward or break free. It was so nice to see.

I hope Hart is okay. Linebacker fortunately is a deeper unit, but Hart was fun and football fast. He made the correct reads and some plays of a big time player, the scoop and score was just icing.

Heading into today, I was most nervous about the secondary and whether or not we could run enough man to be aggressive with blitzes. At the moment, significantly less concerned. We got some really good film, athletically we were competitive, and the tackling was, well, you know, Brad Underwood approved.

If you made it this far thanks for indulging me.

Could not be happier to see us get a W in game 1. It sure makes 6 wins look more attainable. A couple things need to get cleaned up, but we showed we can execute a game plan and that’s good enough for me. Cannot wait for next week to get here. Thanks again for reading.
 
#174      
Seemed like the RB's all had opportunities but Epstein runs with some power & ended up with 4.6 ypc
with 75 total yards. Had the hot hand for the day.
If i'm doing the maths right, Epstein had 1 run for 45 yards and 15 runs for 30 yards... with just three of the carries in the second half.
 
#175      

DeonThomas

South Carolina
I haven’t read through the whole postgame thread yet so I apologize if redundant. But I’m still so geeked I gotta get it out.

Talk about a game that had a little bit of everything. Weird special teams blunders resulting in points, funky 4 run baseball game scores, momentum crushing injuries and potentially devastating.

Not sure if it has been said or not, but that looked like a collarbone injury for BP. I hate it when players get injured. It’s especially cruel when it’s a senior.

After that injury was too big of a reality check. Defense was stout, offense was driving and then you could feel the energy zapped out of the stadium through the television (The atmosphere seemed fun throughout and had an interesting high school game vide with all the Huskers fans. Thank you for bringing it in the heat everyone!).

Then just about every Illini football thing that could happen did happen, but instead of rolling over we fought back and gladly accepted a few Nebraska gifts to get over the hump. I’m going to give the coaching staff a lot of credit with that one because, well, yeah. I think we quit and lose this game with the previous staff, there were a lot of 2019 parallels in this game.

Art did enough for us to hang on, and in no way is that a negative. With a full week with the 1’s he should continue to get comfortable. He has been presented a pretty darn good opportunity; stable of RBs, an O-Line that needed to adjust and be tweaked (still won the TOP battle), good TEs, and a big time talent in IW who looks much thicker from spring to fall? Tank is not messing around in the weight room. You love to see it.
Honestly, Nebraska has been our most relevant rival? If only this were the 80’s and 90’s (before my time but I appreciate the stories) and Nebraska was still “Nebraska.” Since 2015, Illinois is 3-4 in fairly competitive entertaining games. Sorry Nebraska, the Frost Era created a game with Illinois where they don’t fear you. Now it appears Illinois has a competent coaching staff and a fun fast defense?

Plotting The Simpsons GIF


The game plan on Martinez is obvious, contain and make him pass. Take out the 75 yard TD run (wrong call at the wrong time) the defense held him to 2.25 yards a carry (16 carriers for 36 yards). Pretty darn impressive.

The most impressive thing today was maybe our tackling. With the corners in man it’s up to them to get their guy on the ground and they did it. Some might say, and say it with me, elite tackling. Like game changing tackles because Nebraska players would have been running for days, see the 75 yard Martinez run. The front 7 seldom let Nebraska runners fall forward or break free. It was so nice to see.

I hope Hart is okay. Linebacker fortunately is a deeper unit, but Hart was fun and football fast. He made the correct reads and some plays of a big time player, the scoop and score was just icing.

Heading into today, I was most nervous about the secondary and whether or not we could run enough man to be aggressive with blitzes. At the moment, significantly less concerned. We got some really good film, athletically we were competitive, and the tackling was, well, you know, Brad Underwood approved.

If you made it this far thanks for indulging me.

Could not be happier to see us get a W in game 1. It sure makes 6 wins look more attainable. A couple things need to get cleaned up, but we showed we can execute a game plan and that’s good enough for me. Cannot wait for next week to get here. Thanks again for reading.
ELITE tackling. I had the same observation 5-6 times when a NEB offensive player was 1:1 and in a position to break something big. The tackling fundamentals were on full display.