Writing the Pine

What did you think about our performance in the national spotlight on ABC?

I was pretty ticked off. I get it. We aren’t a 5-star program, Penn State has a much more glamorous and prestigious history. But there was so much fricking bias. Craig James was shamelessly plugging his new book which included stuff about Penn State players and JoePa but I couldn’t really make out what he was saying or most of the night because he had JoePa’s genitals in his mouth.

Do we have any say in the matter of what’s shown on national television? I thought the orange and blue school bus was really cool, but the undergrad library? Really? That’s our crappiest library. Show off Grangier or something or one of the newer libraries. Our library is the second largest in the world and we have a library on every corner. Naturally, the worst one would be on national television.

The announcers must have called Dufrene’s name DuShane at least five times. They also called Anthony Santella, Santinella. You would think if two guys are in the booth calling the game and one guy constantly make a mistake the other guy would hint it out during the commercial break or something.

I was also very disappointed in our school’s half-assed attempt at an Orange Out. If you want to do it properly, you give out orange t-shirts. You can’t just send out e-mails and expect 100% participation. You need to make an effort and throw in some money. You think Penn State’s white-outs are always awesome because all 100,000 fans show up in white all the time? No way. They give out shirts. There are always casual fans who didn’t know about it or a drunk guy who was wearing the same thing as last night. Invest a bit in your program if you want to see some progress. Pitiful.

This whole rant was to get your attention. I wasn’t really bothered by all that. I just wanted you guys to read my actual thoughts on the game and our program because if I posted it in the 10 page long game thread or in one of the several hundred Ron Zook Sucks threads no one would read it.

I think today’s game clearly explained three things:

(1) Zook is an incompetent strategist and X’s and O’s guy BUT should not be fired;

(2) Mike Schultz is an awful offensive coordinator; and

(3) Juice Williams is not the reason why we are sucking this year.

I.

Zook is an incompetent strategist and X’s and O’s guy. Not because of the crappy session he showed ESPN/ABC, but because the guy simply doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Zook should have realized what our gameplan was supposed to be after the second quarter, when we went on what first appeared to be a highly successful first half-ending drive. Juice was finally in a rhythm. He was hitting his receivers. He is a streaky passer, but when he’s on, he’s ON. He was CLEARLY “on” today. The fact that we didn’t stick to the passing game after we tasted some success against the Penn State defense is just mind-boggling to me. During the first quarter and during the third and fourth quarters, all we did was either hand the ball off or throw screen passes. All Penn State did was stack the box. If we were trying everything in our playbook and nothing was working, then it would be a different story. But that wasn’t the case today. Some of the plays actually worked. But we went right back to what didn’t work. It sure made the Penn State Defensive Coordinator look like a genius and our Offensive Coordinator look like an idiot.

All this is pretty much the reason why Zook is clearly not an X’s and O’s guy. He doesn’t call the plays but he should have had some idea what the heck was going on. But Zook shouldn’t be fired. He’s done so much for our program. Being bad at X’s and O’s is not a fatal error. Hire someone who can make up for Zook’s deficiency in the area. Zook is a fantastic recruiter, an admirable and hardworking person, a great ambassador for our program, and for all I know he pisses beams of sunlight. He’s a lovable guy with charisma who stays classy at difficult times. Zook’s gotten some major construction done to our stadium and weight rooms and has Illinois fans caring a lot more about the football program. He’s instilled expectations for our football team — expectations that haven’t existed for the better part of this decade.

II.

In collegiate sports, building a successful program consists of two essential ingredients. Good coaching and good recruiting. We’re halfway there. I made this point before, but look at our basketball program. Coach Weber was getting some major heat about being a poor recruiter. He went out and hired Snacks, who is probably now one of the best in the recruiting business. Now we have a handful of blue-chip recruits slated for 2010 to go along with Bruce’s excellent coaching. Problem solved. Zook is the opposite. He’s an excellent recruiter but isn’t the greatest strategist. Logically, the best thing to do would be to bring in a good offensive coordinator. Naturally, we go out and hire people that are clearly not fit for the job. Mike Locksley never ran an offense before his stint at Illinois. Schultz has a reputation for his work with running backs and rushing formations. Sadly, our running game is below average and all of our explosive athletes with game-changing homerun hitting abilities are involved in the passing game. I would like to see Illinois encourage Coach Schultz to modify his plan of attack or get with a new coordinator. We were just way too predictable today and it was sickening.

III.

Juice isn’t the best QB in the world and he has his flaws. But today’s game clearly showed why our losses aren’t his fault. It’s no secret where Juice’s strengths lie. It’s running the option and releasing the deep ball when opponents don’t expect it. We don’t have a runner who is threatening enough to create havoc for opposing defenses and all we are doing is throwing screen passes, short slants, and handing the ball off. So wouldn’t it make sense to use our talented receivers a bit more? I think last year’s carefree scheme of launching the ball 50 yards downfield on every other down gave us a better chance to win than this year’s scheme of running two downs for two yards then completing a 3-yard pass on 3rd-and-8.

Why on earth can’t we have our offense run somewhere in the middle? Let’s mix it up a bit. We need balance in our play-calling. When we asked for a 50-50 rush/pass playbook, we didn’t want every passing play to be a screen pass.

I don’t see how we will win with this offense. Our defense is giving up around thirty points per game and got dominated on the ground this week. But we knew for a long time that our defense was supposed to be bailed out by our amazing offense. It pains me to see such a talented group of players being utilized in poor fashion.