Illinois vs Oregon, Saturday, October 24th, 2:00pm CT, BTN
I enjoyed watching that Florida team because they had to go for it on so many 4th downs.The only truly successful version of that I think I've ever seen in terms of elite level success was Chris Leak and freshman Tim Tebow at Florida winning a national title.
With a team that couldn't kick a field goal to save their lives either, they defied all sorts of conventional wisdom about winning football.
(Maybe an evolutionary team on fourth down strategy, now that I think about it)
Oregon has a great defense, I dont think the illini offense will be quite as efficient with a freshman QB vs this defense. Points will be few. Oregon offense has slumped but has great athletes. Illini defense would be the bottom of Mac. I expect Oregon to get out of their offensive slump.
Oregon 45
Illinois 10
Oregon 45
Illinois 10
100%. In the parlance of our times, it's not ideal.
Sneaky important game/ROS in my eyes. Of course worst case scenario isn’t the sky falling, but I think Bret can buy back a lot of goodwill with a couple more wins this year.
I just wanna see improvement.
I just wanna see improvement.
I don’t know if it’ll be that bad but I think Dierre Hill will have a monster game. It’s gonna be the only game of his college career he gets to play in his home state. I bet he has lot of people here for it. He didn’t get to play the state title games at Memorial Stadium either. He played at ISU
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
Battle of the backup QB's...............
Oregon definitely has superior athletes. No question about it. As such, this one has the chance to turn into an Oregon route. However, I'm banking on (1) Bielema's resume/history of generally keeping us competitive in nearly every game, and (2) the fact that our three losses this season were all fairly close. And out of nowhere, our Freshman QB and struggling defense win us a game following the highly-advantageous Bye Week. We cover today's +9.5.
22 ILLINI
20 ducks
(6-0 vs the spread; 3-3 in picking the correct winner. I missed on Duke, Purdue and MSU.)
Oregon definitely has superior athletes. No question about it. As such, this one has the chance to turn into an Oregon route. However, I'm banking on (1) Bielema's resume/history of generally keeping us competitive in nearly every game, and (2) the fact that our three losses this season were all fairly close. And out of nowhere, our Freshman QB and struggling defense win us a game following the highly-advantageous Bye Week. We cover today's +9.5.
22 ILLINI
20 ducks
(6-0 vs the spread; 3-3 in picking the correct winner. I missed on Duke, Purdue and MSU.)
This game feels more winnable than ever, but I still think we drop this one.
I do not bet. But the -8.5 looks like a lock.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
It’s the only thing that gives me some hope in this one. Generally a line that looks way too good to be true is a sucker’s bet. But unless they have Grays sports almanac at the ready, or Oregon leaked half their team will be pregaming at Kams before they report to the stadium, -8.5 seems overtly pessimistic on Oregon.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
They're not even close to what they were expected to be, especially offensively, and will be even more short-handed than they have already been.
If we make them look like Marcus Mariota Oregon on Saturday, that's 100% on us.
Yeah, that's the only thing that gives me pause here. Vegas knows something we don't
So you are basically 0-3 picking the outright winner. Ohio State, UAB, and SIU were gimmies. I am not much better as I also missed Duke and Purdue.
Dan
Admin
Chris Vosters (play-by-play), Jake Butt (analyst), and Brooke Fletcher (sideline) have the the national television broadcast on Big Ten Network.
fightingillini.com
Illinois Hosts #25 Oregon for Military Appreciation Game - University of Illinois Athletics
Illinois celebrates its Military Appreciation Game on Saturday at 2 p.m. CT.
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
Exactly. All three games that were so-called "toss-ups" with the talent spread pretty evenly between the two teams ----- 0-3. And yet I'm walking away a big winner in Vegas!!!
Vegas might know, but that's not stopping me from hammering that -8.5
If anyone needs me I'll be taking orders at Wendys.
If anyone needs me I'll be taking orders at Wendys.
Epsilon
M tipping over
- Pdx
This isn’t the strongest Oregon team we’ve seen for sure but I think there’s a few other things we haven’t talked about yet. Breaking in a new OC and DC from within the ranks in the same year was always going to be somewhat of a setback somewhere. Their defense has of course stepped up but I’m not sure where the blame on their offense lies exactly. What I’ve seen is that after Dante Moore got injured Raiola stepped up huge in that game against USC. Then he laid a major stinker against UCLA. Part of that was the O-line allowed too much pressure and for whatever reason that seemed to mess with him, so then ducks threw their third string kid in, who didn’t do too bad all things considered.The next game against Nebraska the third string kid starts. He hasn’t had nearly the reps of Raiola or Moore and he struggles too but Oregon puts Raiola back in at the end of the game as a confidence boost and he does great and wins the game. It was more of a reversion to the mean for him - he’s a VVG QB and probably good enough to hide some other weaknesses on their offense when not playing top 15-ish teams. Also, they seemed to find their footing in the run game against Nebraska. So my specific fears about this game are that I don’t feel confident that we can put enough pressure on Raiola to make him sweat and that they’ll establish the run early on to further relieve pressure. My gut tells me they’re sorting themselves out just in time for us, and we haven’t made enough progress on defense to match. I have no idea what the off field stuff will mean to them so I’m not going to speculate on that. Just my observations as “also a Ducks fan” having paid for 2 kids’ tuition there.