Pregame: Illinois vs Southern Illinois, Saturday, September 19th, 1:00pm CT, Peacock/YTTV

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#26      
IlliniKat91
I cuddled the baby after the loss which was remarkably effective when it came to taking it off my mind.

Losing the guys we did, I figured we'd be taking a step back. What's disappointing to me is that we don't seem to be good at the basics, like tackling and not committing stupid penalties. That's what helped put the game out of reach yesterday, and I've been spoiled by BB having the team ready to play well, even in a loss.

I think that's why I'm disappointed more than anything else.
 
#27      
Vinegarben
Second place is 1st loser said:
SIU, shouldn't be a problem.

After that, it's a crapshoot. It's one thing to have a really good defense and struggle on offense. You can get down, dirty and nasty and win games. The opposite is most definitely not true. If you have a defense that is completely incapable of providing resistance in any facet of the game, every game, regardless of Big Ten opponent is 50/50, while games vs OSU and OSU is 0%. If that's the defense, keeping within 30 would be a moral victory and a miracle.

Looking at things from the MSU and Purdue perspective, they are looking at us as a win on their schedule.

Edit: Shifting to the Bears, they had the same type of defense last year, BUT they created an insane amount of turnovers to balance it out. That's the only way to overcome how brutal our interior D-Line in as well as our pass rush.
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I'm sorry but with this new NO TACKLE defense every team will be a problem
 
#28      
kmunt09
Platt coming back will give Houser that 2nd 1A/1B receiver.

Brown coming back will help take care of *some* of the shortcomings on D.

Last year’s wonderful season included 25-42 Loss at Washington and 10-27 Loss at Wisconsin.

While I’m not ignoring the issues, I’m not ready to enter into despair based on 1/6 sample size of the season.
 
#29      
IlliniTaffy
I follow SIU a little. They came into the year pretty hyped for FCS standards but lost their QB DJ Williams pretty early in their first game (loss to new FCS team West Florida). Their back-up looked pretty bad in that game and the next game against Samford (they were 27.5 point favorites and barely snuck out a win).

Williams was back last week against SEMO in their home opener and it took him until the 4th quarter to look like the guy they expected (he had 4 rushing touchdowns on 7 total carries). Williams is a very mobile QB which could give Illinois some problems, his accuracy is pretty hit or miss but looked pretty good on Saturday.

Overall though, they don't look like much of a contender in the FCS even with their QB back. Their offensive line has been very shaky so far so I wouldn't be surprised if the Illini had a bunch of sacks in this game. Haven't seen much of a pass rush from SIU as well so Houser should have all day back there. I expect the Illini to win this game pretty handedly with no scare at any point.
 
#31      
PleaseMakeABowlGame
I feel more confident about the team now than before the season, because I know the offense will be outstanding.

We can score 30 in every game outside of Oregon, Ohio State, Iowa. The only thing that stands in the way of that, is our recurring unwillingness to kick FGs on 4th and short.

When you have an offense that good, it's hard to not come away with 7 or 8 wins.

Offense may or may not win championships, but it does win you games. Kind of the same thing with the basketball team.
 
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#32      
ChiefGritty
jrock said:
Both purdue and msu will beat us. We are looking at 3-9 type of season. One with us likely giving up near 35 pts per game by seasons end.
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It's a battle between what we've got in hand after two games, which this is a very reasonable assessment of, versus a smart coaching staff and a winning culture within the building, which we know having been on the other side of it for so many years just has a way of finding wins.

The wheels are wobbling, there are no two ways about that, but you can't just give up in September. Every bucket of water we can bail out of this leaking boat counts.
 
#34      
Curbelo Fanboy
The rare 1pm kickoff. With tv seems everything hits the 11 or 2:30 window on Saturdays these days. Or a Friday night. In the old days, 1pm kickoff meant no tv or perhaps only regional coverage on channel 3 out of Champaign. We had lots of those 1pm kicks in the mid/late 90's.
 
#35      
NoRival
Curbelo Fanboy said:
The rare 1pm kickoff. With tv seems everything hits the 11 or 2:30 window on Saturdays these days. Or a Friday night. In the old days, 1pm kickoff meant no tv or perhaps only regional coverage on channel 3 out of Champaign. We had lots of those 1pm kicks in the mid/late 90's.
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Being a season ticket holder, I would LOVE a non-televised game at 1 pm once a season. The game would go so quickly without all of the TV timeouts.
 
#36      
Curbelo Fanboy
NoRival said:
Being a season ticket holder, I would LOVE a non-televised game at 1 pm once a season. The game would go so quickly without all of the TV timeouts.
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Sadly tho back then they still took the tv timeouts (for radio coverage) but yes they were shorter & the game was quicker.
 
#40      
GatorMcKlusky
kmunt09 said:
Platt coming back will give Houser that 2nd 1A/1B receiver.

Brown coming back will help take care of *some* of the shortcomings on D.

Last year’s wonderful season included 25-42 Loss at Washington and 10-27 Loss at Wisconsin.

While I’m not ignoring the issues, I’m not ready to enter into despair based on 1/6 sample size of the season.
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When are they coming back?
 
#41      
aaeismacgychel
gary? said:
i am not being a doomer (or maybe i am, whatever), but this could be our last win. not sure who else we beat with this defense. offense petered out, too.
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The thing with our schedule is that we have a ton of 50/50 games with our easiest ones on the road. Nothing that happened in these first 2 weeks really changed that. It’s not like the teams on our schedule suddenly turned into playoff teams. Is it possible we lose every single one of them? I mean anything is possible but we could say that about anything. How I see it we have a much better offense than expected and a significantly worse defense than expected. That doesn’t quite resonate as a 2 win season to me like a team with a significantly worse offense and defense would. This team is significantly better than that and we should know that- we’ve seen what 2 win teams look like. This isn’t that.

One other reason for optimism- I actually don’t think the defense has been as awful as the metrics show primarily because they’re getting absolutely nuked by some of the worst tackling I’ve seen. I would be shocked if that doesn’t improve as the season goes on. It isn’t like opposing players are just running around untouched in space with our players being incapable of getting to the ball. We’re missing tackles plain and simple.

We may not be a 10-2 team this year but we’re also not a 2-10 team
 
#42      
BWBW
aaeismacgychel said:
The thing with our schedule is that we have a ton of 50/50 games with our easiest ones on the road. Nothing that happened in these first 2 weeks really changed that. It’s not like the teams on our schedule suddenly turned into playoff teams. Is it possible we lose every single one of them? I mean anything is possible but we could say that about anything. How I see it we have a much better offense than expected and a significantly worse defense than expected. That doesn’t quite resonate as a 2 win season to me like a team with a significantly worse offense and defense would. This team is significantly better than that and we should know that- we’ve seen what 2 win teams look like. This isn’t that.

One other reason for optimism- I actually don’t think the defense has been as awful as the metrics show primarily because they’re getting absolutely nuked by some of the worst tackling I’ve seen. I would be shocked if that doesn’t improve as the season goes on. It isn’t like opposing players are just running around untouched in space with our players being incapable of getting to the ball. We’re missing tackles plain and simple.

We may not be a 10-2 team this year but we’re also not a 2-10 team
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Would you believe 3-9? :cool:

For the record, I am hoping for at least a minor bowl game.
 
#44      
Mr. Tibbs
aaeismacgychel said:
The thing with our schedule is that we have a ton of 50/50 games with our easiest ones on the road. Nothing that happened in these first 2 weeks really changed that. It’s not like the teams on our schedule suddenly turned into playoff teams. Is it possible we lose every single one of them? I mean anything is possible but we could say that about anything. How I see it we have a much better offense than expected and a significantly worse defense than expected. That doesn’t quite resonate as a 2 win season to me like a team with a significantly worse offense and defense would. This team is significantly better than that and we should know that- we’ve seen what 2 win teams look like. This isn’t that.

One other reason for optimism- I actually don’t think the defense has been as awful as the metrics show primarily because they’re getting absolutely nuked by some of the worst tackling I’ve seen. I would be shocked if that doesn’t improve as the season goes on. It isn’t like opposing players are just running around untouched in space with our players being incapable of getting to the ball. We’re missing tackles plain and simple.

We may not be a 10-2 team this year but we’re also not a 2-10 team
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agree . 6-6 is how I see it now

anything can happen on any given Saturday .

NO ONE in the country could guess OkSt would beat Oregon . from what my son (an alum) says , it wasn’t just luck . the Pokes beat em fair & square . it’s what having a 6’5” stud qb can do for you . Imagine how Oregon fanbase feels right now .
 
#45      
AirTran
Why can't we just focus in Southern Illinois and then incorporate the information we learn from Saturday's game instead of making predictions based on two games and no real assessment of our future opponents?
 
#46      
fuddrules
Mr. Tibbs said:
agree . 6-6 is how I see it now

anything can happen on any given Saturday .

NO ONE in the country could guess OkSt would beat Oregon . from what my son (an alum) says , it wasn’t just luck . the Pokes beat em fair & square . it’s what having a 6’5” stud qb can do for you . Imagine how Oregon fanbase feels right now .
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While I hope it doesn't happen and think it's a long shot - the Illinois basketball fanbase would feel similar to Oregon football if they start off that slow.

That would send an earthquake through CU.
 
#47      
BoiseBaller
Mr. Tibbs said:
agree . 6-6 is how I see it now

anything can happen on any given Saturday .

NO ONE in the country could guess OkSt would beat Oregon . from what my son (an alum) says , it wasn’t just luck . the Pokes beat em fair & square . it’s what having a 6’5” stud qb can do for you . Imagine how Oregon fanbase feels right now .
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I’d take 6-6 with this defense. But sadly, I think it’s closer to 4-8.
 
#48      
Brosky
I think Houser needs to start targeting other receivers besides Dixon. We have other good ones. Get the ball to Feagin in space and we might have something lethal.
 
#49      
DeonThomas
Looking like we may win by 40 and then lose by 40 on consecutive Saturdays. First things first -- SIU:

48 ILL
17 SIU

We win. However, we fail to cover for a third consecutive week as we continue to give up a #**^load of yards on defense. And we finally get confirmation on our backup QB!

Against the spread: 2-0
Picking the winner: 1-1
 
#50      
altgeld88
Mr. Tibbs said:
agree . 6-6 is how I see it now

anything can happen on any given Saturday .

NO ONE in the country could guess OkSt would beat Oregon . from what my son (an alum) says , it wasn’t just luck . the Pokes beat em fair & square . it’s what having a 6’5” stud qb can do for you . Imagine how Oregon fanbase feels right now .
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We watched most of the OkSt-Oregon game Saturday before and during the Illini game at the bar. OK State was solid. Though shockling, the win was no fluke. The Oregon fumble on its final possession was an own goal but otherwise, each time Oregon punched, OK State punched back. Harder, on balance.
 
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