Illinois 42, UAB 23 Postgame

#226      
mhuml32
therealmiket86 said:
Imagine how much better this defense would be if we had McCollum, coenen and Tomiwa. Even just having one of them would’ve been huge.
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I had similar thoughts. It's part of the trade-off of living in the portal for a starting QB. Having Altmyer and Houser are incredibly valuable, but the increased certainty at QB has a cost, which is felt across other areas of the roster. If Boyd had really flashed last year, Illinois likely has Boyd at QB for ~25% of the Houser cost (at least for year 1), which means you likely keep McCollum, Coenen, and maybe have enough financial ammo to bring in another piece somewhere on either line. Now, that means you are risking that your redshirt freshman QB is going to be good (big risk!), but it improves your depth.
 
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#227      
lstewart53x3
mhuml32 said:
I had similar thoughts. It's part of the trade-off of living in the portal for a starting QB. Having Altmyer and Houser are incredibly valuable, but the increased certainty at QB has a cost, which is felt across other areas of the roster. If Boyd had really flashed last year, Illinois likely has Boyd at QB for ~25% of the Houser cost (at least for year 1), which means you likely keep McCollum, Coenen, and maybe have enough financial ammo to bring in another piece somewhere on either line. Now, that means you are risking that your redshirt freshman QB is going to be good (big risk!), but it improves your depth.
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I’m not saying I wouldn’t want those guys back, I’d take them back in heartbeat. But Jeremy Werner did his film review (premium 247) and the d-line actually graded out decently well (B). The linebackers were the big problem in game 1 (D).
 
#228      
therealmiket86
mhuml32 said:
I had similar thoughts. It's part of the trade-off of living in the portal for a starting QB. Having Altmyer and Houser are incredibly valuable, but the increased certainty at QB has a cost, which is felt across other areas of the roster. If Boyd had really flashed last year, Illinois likely has Boyd at QB for ~25% of the Houser cost (at least for year 1), which means you likely keep McCollum, Coenen, and maybe have enough financial ammo to bring in another piece somewhere on either line. Now, that means you are risking that your redshirt freshman QB is going to be good (big risk!), but it improves your depth.
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We paid big money for several prep recruits who haven’t gotten on the field. We will see in the long run if it was worth it. Guys that got close to 7 figures.

I heard McCollum got 1.2 million and coenen was around 800k. Not sure about tomiwa.

Guys like Warren, Hayden, hood..etc would’ve cost very little to come back.
 
#230      
Illini-Rule
Ok, a few of my thoughts after rewatching the game today. I only caught parts of the Thursday night. I am not a fan of the 3-3-5, even before watching this game.

* I think UAB is a better team than people are giving them credit for.
* I would like to see a break down by quarter of the stats. I feel like our defense was better in the 2nd half than the 1st half.
* If we make some of those tackles that we missed, we would have won by a lot more.
* Do we have some work to do? You betcha. But after rewatching the game, I am feeling better about the team than I was Thursday after the game. I'm not saying we are a playoff team by any means, but in a year with a new defensive coordinator and with a bunch of new players, I am feeling better. Hopefully, we continue to get better at tackling and running the defense as season progresses.
* I think we have a good offense and a heck of a good QB.

ILL
 
#231      
blackdog
Illini-Rule said:
Ok, a few of my thoughts after rewatching the game today. I only caught parts of the Thursday night. I am not a fan of the 3-3-5, even before watching this game.

* I think UAB is a better team than people are giving them credit for.
* I would like to see a break down by quarter of the stats. I feel like our defense was better in the 2nd half than the 1st half.
* If we make some of those tackles that we missed, we would have won by a lot more.
* Do we have some work to do? You betcha. But after rewatching the game, I am feeling better about the team than I was Thursday after the game. I'm not saying we are a playoff team by any means, but in a year with a new defensive coordinator and with a bunch of new players, I am feeling better. Hopefully, we continue to get better at tackling and running the defense as season progresses.
* I think we have a good offense and a heck of a good QB.

ILL
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I will definitely take a week 1 defense that is generally in the right place but misses versus one that is nowhere close to the play. One is a lot easier to improve than the other
 
#233      
AirTran
pvaughn8 said:
I think there is a misunderstanding here. I'll try to clarify. I believe that OP understands that wins are awarded by points and not total yards. What he's trying to do is project that performance vs higher caliber future opponents.
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Have you ever played football? I run a quantitative systematic equity and corporate debt trading strategy that took me 32 years to build.

The numbers of yards conceded against UAB is more a function or Illinois scoring 4 touchdowns in less than 3 minutes of playing time. The more opportunities you give the opposition combined with game management (i.e. what is the score and how much time remains) is what determines who is on the field, what defensive plays are called and what matchups we are trying to avoid. Plus it was this crew's first game. Had we controlled the ball longer, UAB doesn't gain 400 yards. That being said, my point was... 400 offensive yards is not an above average number

Mathematically speaking, there is no way to project Thursday's game forward. You don't even know who will be on field next Saturday, let alone the situation (down, distance, formation) - Even the Illinois film crew and game planning team don't know that.
 
#234      
pvaughn8
AirTran said:
Have you ever played football? I run a quantitative systematic equity and corporate debt trading strategy that took me 32 years to build.

The numbers of yards conceded against UAB is more a function or Illinois scoring 4 touchdowns in less than 3 minutes of playing time. The more opportunities you give the opposition combined with game management (i.e. what is the score and how much time remains) is what determines who is on the field, what defensive plays are called and what matchups we are trying to avoid. Plus it was this crew's first game. Had we controlled the ball longer, UAB doesn't gain 400 yards. That being said, my point was... 400 offensive yards is not an above average number

Mathematically speaking, there is no way to project Thursday's game forward. You don't even know who will be on field next Saturday, let alone the situation (down, distance, formation) - Even the Illinois film crew and game planning team don't know that.
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I dunno, that looked like 400 yards due to a bad defensive performance
 
#235      
derrick6
2 cents:

3-3-5 is new to us fans. It’s also new to the defensive players in a real game.

I’d expect their performance to improve next game.
 
#236      
Nohops 73
I expect that tackling fundamentals will get a lot of attention in practice this week, and would expect significant improvement in Duke game.
Many posters thought linebacker play was biggest hole in the defense. Longer term, getting Daniel Brown back and Grant Beerman having more practice time and improved conditioning could go a long way to fixing that problem.
 
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