** 2024 Opponent Preview : Illinois (Game 4) **

[Toe]

1 hour ago, knapplc said:

A couple of interesting rankings. 

 

Paul Myerberg of USA Today does a ranking of all 134 FBS teams. 

 

He has 3-0 Nebraska at 24th.

He has 3-0 Illinois at 68th.

 

That seemed strange, so I checked Jeff Sagarin (formerly of USA Today, now back to being an Independent).

 

He has 3-0 Nebraska at 26th.

He has 3-0 Illinois at 51st.

 

So, both teams are ranked, both undefeated at 3-0. But for some reason, Illinois isn't getting the same respect from formula-based ratings.

 

Massey has:

 

Nebraska - 35

Illinois - 33

 

He has our SOS at 109, theirs at 125. 

 

 

Massey has us going 4-5 to finish the season. Illinois going 5.5-3.5.

 

FPI has us #25, SP+ #24. Both have Illinois at #46.

[Moiraine]

3 hours ago, knapplc said:

Massey has:

 

Nebraska - 35

Illinois - 33

 

He has our SOS at 109, theirs at 125. 

 

 

Massey has us going 4-5 to finish the season. Illinois going 5.5-3.5.

 

 

I don't know anything about Massey, but based off of this he/she is dumb!

[presidentjlh]

Feels like a game that will clear up a lot of questions about how legitimate this team is. Colorado has little outside of Shadeur and Hunter, and, with all due respect, UTEP and Northern Iowa both are pretty clearly teams that are just outmatched by most of FBS in terms of talent. Illinois strikes me as probably a little overrated right now (Kansas looks awful) but I feel you can say the same about Nebraska.

[Moiraine]

I would guess Illinois is the best defense we will have faced up to this point but I still don't think they're a good team. Also it's at home.

[Saunders]

3 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

And the Illini are +8 in turnover margin. That'll win you a lot of football games.

Looking back at it, the KU game was a bit of a fluke. Illinois got a couple of circus catches by their WR's, and the smart football nerds keep saying Jalon Daniels cant read a defense (Andy Kotelnicki is at PSU now) and he's a turnover machine. So while it was an upset, looking back at it... KU isn't very good, and still probably should have won.

[Mavric]

 

[Husker in WI]

I already ranted about it in the Wisconsin thread, but I really hate both the college rule for downfield blocking on a pass play (3 yards), and even more so the fact that it almost never gets called. 

 

Not only do you have linemen blocking well past 3 yards, you have eligible receivers blocking on a pass completed beyond the line of scrimmage which we have been called for multiple times. I like offense as much as the next guy, but these rules and their enforcement are stupid.

[Guy Chamberlin]

It's hard to complain when your defense only gives up 3 points, but I think the UNI coaches called a smart game against Nebraska, and in many cases got the push on our vaunted defensive line. I think they gave every Husker opponent a good blueprint, and more talented teams will have better results. Despite the near shutout, I hope the defense is making adjustments this week. 

[Moiraine]

3 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

It's hard to complain when your defense only gives up 3 points, but I think the UNI coaches called a smart game against Nebraska, and in many cases got the push on our vaunted defensive line. I think they gave every Husker opponent a good blueprint, and more talented teams will have better results. Despite the near shutout, I hope the defense is making adjustments this week. 

 

 

I don't think one game indicates that our defense fell off that much from last year. A commentary I watched mentioned we only had 5-6 in the box against UNI.

[Archy1221]

Excited to be able to go to this game.  First one since the freezing Michigan St game for me.  
 

Weather may dictate a run oriented offense, but the offensive passing design the last three games is pretty good for wet weather too.  Lots of shallow high success passes with some deep attempts thrown in.  

[Hilltop]

33 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

Excited to be able to go to this game.  First one since the freezing Michigan St game for me.  
 

Weather may dictate a run oriented offense, but the offensive passing design the last three games is pretty good for wet weather too.  Lots of shallow high success passes with some deep attempts thrown in.  

First half, as of right now appears to be dry.  Increasing likelihood of rain the later it gets but most weather models show it arriving in Lincoln after 10pm.  If we continue our first half domination, rain in the second shouldn't be a concern.  

[Husker in WI]

I couldn't be bothered to watch the Central Michigan game (which was only 13-6 at the half), but watching the Kansas game I am feeling more comfortable. They had a lot of things going right for them, including but not limited to:

• A couple really nice catches that either aren't likely to be repeatable, or in some cases really should have been picked off
• Jalon Daniels throwing balls straight at the defenders
• KU just dropping the ball on what would have been a long TD on a reverse right before half, then turning around and throwing a pick six
• A Illini muffed punt being knocked into the end zone, where apparently an Illini recovery is not a safety, not even a return the ball to the spot of the muff, but a touchback out to the 20
• What sounded like a surprisingly lively home crowd which could have been the audio mix of the broadcast.

They are not likely to get all of those same breaks, and definitely will have a disadvantage with the crowd.

 

I know you can't draw huge conclusions from screenshots because it doesn't tell the whole story of what's happening, but in these cases I think they do. This is a TD, they flow hard and got hit by misdirection or Neal going straight up the gut as everyone was running horizontally pretty consistently. 

 

This was an INT. Now I know this doesn't show the coverage on the back end, but you have eight defenders falling over each other biting on the play action. You then have 3 one on ones deep where the receivers have a huge amount of room to find some space - and instead, he throws it to the safety. Again I understand this doesn't show everything, but barring a superhuman play by the DB you cannot throw an INT when the defense bites this hard.

 

Luke Altmyer is just not it, and I do not understand why they keep rolling with Feagin at RB. He's big and when he gets moving he has some speed. But he shifts down like 3 gears to make even a slight cut, runs high and gets chopped down a lot, and just doesn't punish people the way a massive back should. I like Bryant and Franklin but they are more solid than great. The OL is huge but KU got around them a lot with stunts and things we do well.

 

Defensively, hard for me to judge the pass rush because I don't know much about KU's line. They didn't get a lot of pressure, but I'm willing to believe KU's tackles are better than ours and the threat of Daniels breaking contain had them rushing more passively than they will against us. I am not a blocking expert, but really like how much horizontal movement KU did with motions and pullers, and the job Devin Neal in particular did getting north while the defense was going east or west. They seem really overaggressive (may have just been their gameplan against KU), which hopefully we can exploit. Seeing their INT numbers had me a bit worried that their DC had reinvented their secondary from a few years back, but they have played:

• An Eastern Illinois QB who has thrown 27 career INTs
• Jalon Daniels, who I think is really good but made a lot of really bad reads and throws in the game
• Joe Labas, who couldn't find QB playing time at Iowa and is already up to 6 INTs on the year (only 1 to Illinois)

So I do think it's a solid secondary, but it is not the reincarnation of their 2022 Devon Witherspoon (1st rd)/Jartavius Martin (2nd rd)/Sydney Brown (3rd rd) secondary. I think we will have a good day offensively both running and throwing, shut down Feagin, force Altmyer into a couple mistakes, and win pretty handily. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

It's hard to complain when your defense only gives up 3 points, but I think the UNI coaches called a smart game against Nebraska, and in many cases got the push on our vaunted defensive line. I think they gave every Husker opponent a good blueprint, and more talented teams will have better results. Despite the near shutout, I hope the defense is making adjustments this week. 

I think you're overstating it a bit. UNI rushing was 39-139 (stats link), which is 3.6 ypc. That's not as good as we've come to expect over the last year, but it's not bad at all.

[Mavric]

 

[Hayseed]

Stats and rankings don't mean anything. Half the team is gonna need to come out ready to play this week, unlike last week. Spread the word,...Everybody, no taking the week off!