Writing the Pine

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

What a shitty performance.  After thinking that we were going to win the national championship or AT LEAST the Big Ten Championship, I am just confused.  I don’t know what to expect for the rest of the season.  I am very, very disappointed.  I’m hoping that when I wake up tomorrow it will be Saturday and realize that today was just a bad dream.  It’s only 1AM but I am extremely hungover from drinking heavily following the game.  So bear with me if my thoughts are not coherent.

I don’t think there was any argument that our offense was supposed to be awesome, and our defense was supposed to be suspect.  But I did NOT know that our offense was going to be THIS BAD and our defense was going to make huge mistakes in coverage down the stretch.  Our special teams were bad last year, but today they were average.  Nothing spectacular or abysmal from the special teams this game and that’s good enough for me.

I was really disappointed with the playcalling.  Mike Schultz is known to be a “game manager” who tries to control the clock, run the ball and execute short slants and outs.  Arrelious Benn and Jason Ford were injured in the first quarter and Daniel Dufrene didn’t play because of an injury he sustained last week in practice.  That still leaves us with tons of explosive players, namely Fred Sykes, Chris Duvalt and AJ Jenkins who really excel in the open field.  I’m not saying that we should have bombed it every single time we had the ball, but we should have launched a few bombs because that’s where some of our receivers really stand out.

The short passing game was cute.  You could tell on the first drive of the game the short passes gave Juice some confidence and it looked pretty.  But those plays were never threatening.  There were no ensuing blocks — it was just a short pass, receiver would catch it, and get tackled after three yards.  Pointless stuff.  You need to mix and match.  Schultz seems to be the exact opposite of Locksley.  Locksley loved to bomb it, Schultz loves to play the short game.  Both are bad strategies.  The best strategy is to mix it up so the defense doesn’t know what’s coming.

Jeff Cumberland made a few nice grabs but that fumble was thoroughly despicable and disappointing.  Troy Pollard showed some nice speed and nifty moves but was for the most part a non-threat.  It seems that he would be a great complement to Jason Ford’s tough, up the gut running game, but he is clearly not an every-down back and should not be our first option.

Our defense was expected to be bad.  It was.  The defensive line wreaked havoc in the first quarter but was just average thereafter.  The secondary made a few mistakes in reading coverage which cost us a few points.  I was never much of a fan of Garrett Edwards, but I was excited to see that he made improvements to his game by “always knowing where to be at the right time” during the offseason.  He’s just not that athletic.  He was outrun on a few plays and failed to attack at the right angles.  It was good to see Donsay Hardeman back and hitting in full force.  I’d like to see more leadership on the defense.  Giving up 37 points to a young and inexperienced Mizzou offense should not happen.

I’m not ready to throw away the season.  It was a bad game for our offense.  Mizzou was better than I thought they would be.  Blaine Gabbert is a stud.  There’s a reason why he was rated five stars and was the #1 pro-style QB of his class.  I didn’t think he would play so well right off the bat.  Mix up the plays on offense — throw a few bombs out there because certain receivers excel in those situations.

MVP: Illinois offensive line

LVP: Illinois secondary