Penalties and yardage for the Illini this year:
vs. Wyoming - 7-80
@ Indiana - 8-81
vs. Virginia - 10-71
vs. Chattanooga - 2-25
@ Wisconsin - 8-75 (Wisconsin had more penalties and yardage)
vs. Iowa - 7-56 (Iowa had more penalties and yardage)
vs. Minnesota - 6-56
@ Nebraska - 8-72
vs. Michigan St. - 4-39 (MSU had more penalties and yardage)
vs. Purdue - 12-121
My take? Illinois shoots themselves in their own feet WAY too many times. That is a LOT of penalties. The officiating is a problem, but not as much as Illinois' inability to overcome bad officiating. Nor, their ability to even allow bad officiating to come into play.
Here are some ideas... How about we shut the hell up when we are walking off the field. How about we have enough game recognition about when to hit a player clearly going out of bounds or sliding. How about we worry about the times we actually
are interfering with a pass and clean that up.
The officiating is bad across the country. Maybe it's the worst in the Big Ten (I'm sure there's
no bias from us there
), but it's bad everywhere. Other teams still win. So can we. We just need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot.
But that PI call was bad. Let's not pretend that call didn't change the flow of the game. I won't say it changed the outcome because that was in the first half, and Illinois had
PLENTY of opportunities after that to put points on the board or stop Purdue from doing so, but it was a game momentum changing call.