Pregame: Illinois at Iowa, Saturday, November 20th, 1:00pm CT, FS1
- Status
Did you know that Illinois did not play Iowa for 15 years - from 1953-1967... Due to bad blood between these two schools ?
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I think I was at the last Illini victory in Kinnick Stadium, decked out in my orange and blue as a grade schooler who just moved from Peoria to Iowa City…
… you don’t want to know how long ago that was. Let’s break the streak!!
… you don’t want to know how long ago that was. Let’s break the streak!!
IA only scored 19 on Northwestern. The game will be an old fashion Big Ten game. I hope there are a lot of ILL fans in the stands.
Agree, but heads up, Iowa only scored 17 against them.
They have a putrid offense. Let’s hope we can get some points on the board ourselves.
illini80
- Forgottonia
I’m just fine with Iowa beating Minnesota. Either way tho, we are competing with both of those programs for Illinois kids so I don’t really like seeing either one of them ranked.
I would rather see Iowa lose every game!
Thank you! And our qb just threw the ball 9 times in our last game. We can't keep fussing about the qb, who has had a superb completion % over his last two games. We are just not throwing it. Playing not to lose!
I don't think this is true. I just did a little fact checking of the top 25 games this week, and I think you have your figures reversed. Most of the teams had at least 100 yards rushing and most of the teams did not get 300+ yards passing, let alone all having 300-500.
UTSA is ranked above Iowa so this week will be interesting . Iowa is good and they are tough to beat at home. Iowa won’t take the Illini as an easy game. We have to play one of our best games to win
Yes in the early 50’s there was a brawl between Iowa fans and Illinois players on the field. Before my time, but my understanding is that it was pretty bad. Not just pushing and shoving. Broken bones etc. There are articles about it on the internet.
in every sport.
can someone smarter than me help? we could not open a hole if our life depended on it against Rutgers but one week later we were able to gash Minnesota (comparatively). was that difference in defensive scheme b/n the 2 teams or just an uneven effort on our part?
pruman91
- Paducah, Ky
away game was difference..............
the national
- the Front Range
Those four teams at the top are interesting to me. They are doing a mini round robin of beating each other - Penn st beat Wisconsin, Illinois & Iowa beat penn state, Wisconsin beat Iowa & Illinois. It would just be awesome if we balanced it out a bit and Beat the Hawkeyes.
Wisc & ILL would be 2-1, PSU & Iowa would 1-2.
Last edited:
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
I'd love to know the answer to this too. Our O-line looked like the '85 Bears vs Penn State and Minnesota; and then looked like crap vs lowly Rutgers. (Everybody in the Big 10 beats the Scarlet Knights, except us of course.)
Illinir1
- Camdenton, MO
Illini playing relevant football in November. Love it.
The Big Ten West race is going to be great to watch down the stretch. Four teams currently tied at 4-2 with all kinds of possible scenarios to determine the winner. If I'm correct, I think that of those four teams only Minnesota and Wisconsin control their destiny.....win out and they're the champs. And I believe Iowa and Purdue can only be champs by winning out and getting help with other teams losing.
Too bad the Illini didn't have different outcomes in the one-possession Maryland, Purdue, and Rutgers games or we'd be in the West division champs discussion too. Heck, as long as I'm "what iffing", flip two of those games outcome and we're leading the B1G West at 5-2!
The Big Ten West race is going to be great to watch down the stretch. Four teams currently tied at 4-2 with all kinds of possible scenarios to determine the winner. If I'm correct, I think that of those four teams only Minnesota and Wisconsin control their destiny.....win out and they're the champs. And I believe Iowa and Purdue can only be champs by winning out and getting help with other teams losing.
Too bad the Illini didn't have different outcomes in the one-possession Maryland, Purdue, and Rutgers games or we'd be in the West division champs discussion too. Heck, as long as I'm "what iffing", flip two of those games outcome and we're leading the B1G West at 5-2!
I thought we showed a LOT of different looks against Minnie when we looked pretty generic against Rutgers. That initial confusion in the first part of the first half lead to points (oversimplified... turnovers, field position, momentum, etc.) or that was my hot take at the time. Minnie seemed to settle down, make adjustments, and our play calling seemed to show fewer different looks in the second half as we protected the lead and wound down the clock. IMHO - I'm curious to see what others though.
Yeah, that jives with my sense too. Offense has felt and looked completely different for parts of games and has had success but then we revert to more conservative play calls and get stymied.
Would love to see an entire game with a more open play book- for instance, we've used the weak side TE screen/throw back and had some success but would be great wrinkle to add some of different screen looks (wr, rb) to that mix- caveat, I'm not an OC, but do think I slept in a holiday inn express at some point
One of the biggest things that I saw Rutgers doing and fully expect other teams to do in the future is to use an off-set tilted nose and then base their run fits off of the nos being in the backfield. Most of our running game is predicated on getting double team blocks off of zone looks and moving those double teams up to the second level where either the guard or center can peel off and pick up a LB creating lanes. The tilted nose in Rutgers defense basically blew up the C-G double team in the middle by attacking the center at an angle and pushing him into the backfield. So our Gs needed to either get up field to block a LB or try and get together with the C and dig the nose out of the backfield on mid and shallow zone runs (our bread and butter). There was a lot of hesitation and unevenness about what we did here which throws of the timing of the run game and let's MLBs and box plays to read the flow and attack especially in the mid and power zone run schemes which we love to run. So Rutgers shut down out shallow and mid zone running plays this way and really set our offense back. Thankfully their ends and contain players weren't doing much and we had some success on outside zone concept plays early because our Gs didn't need to worry as much about the Nose and because of the tilted position of the nose we had a better than 50% of knowing how to run away from that position. We were in the game but in the second half Rutgers sold out on the run and moved more people into the box and their secondary players actually did a great job of sealing and shutting down the outside zone play while still playing the tilted nose in the middle that ruined our mid and shallow zone plays. Ultimately they played on our side of the ball by breaking double teams and pushing our center in to the backfield.
Comparatively I saw Minnesota playing more of a two gap scheme with their DL. Basically having them play head up on Tackle - Center - Guard and then lock out and try and read the play for their fits instead of just picking a gap and penetrating. Their idea was a hat on a hat and let your LBs scrape and clean, but we were able to successfully execute our GC doubles and get up field to neutralize their LBs creating success in the run game. Basically not attacking our center and playing two gap allowed us to seal lanes and leverage our midline and shallow zone concepts way more successfully. Not saying Minny didn't try and shoot gaps or create pressure but they tried doing it with LBs and edges and not their nose/interior DL which helped us.
I'm sure their is more to what went on in success vs defeat on the line between both games but this is what jumped out at me while watching the Minny game.
Considering these things and truth to get back to the Iowa game. They traditionally play a 4 man line playing off the shoulder of the gap they are supposed to hold/defend. So we will likely see a little more penetration from Iowa, but their alignments should be more conducive for our double teams than Rutgers defensive alignment. I expect a lot of mid line zone runs between the guard and tackle where the running back reads the spill off the tackles butt. With guard center combo on playside DT to the guard peeling to the Mike and the OT taking play side DE whichever way he wants to go and the back has to read if the run the the B or C gap based off that. We probably won't break any big runs as Iowa is based off of prevent the big play and feed off mistakes when they make them type of defense but I expect a big game for McCray if I am right.
blackdog
- Champaign
I posted this in another thread but Rutgers runs a very different Dline front with a NT playing a lot of slanting action which really hinders being able to pull the oline. It really forced us to play vanilla as someone else said or the dline would have been constantly in the backfield.
Drinkinlincoln just blew away my answer so read his instead.
Iowa finally made a switch at QB that seemed to help the offense a little bit this past week. We need to continue mixing up coverages and get pressure on the QB to win this one. This feels like the Wisconsin game to me.....we might struggle to run the football.
Great write up. We have had a lot of our success this year running with the pin/pull(im sure you guys heard it on the TV broadcast and Martin talk about it on the radio) It'll be interesting to see what Iowa does to combat that. IMO Phil Parker is as good as it gets calling a defense. Fun fact Bielema tried like hell to get him to leave Iowa for Illinois when he was hired. Happy we landed on Walters though, kid does a heck of a job scheming.
- Status