Illinois’ extended goose-egg shortage has come to an end. Crappy lede, I know, but it’s after 11 p.m. and we’re clearing out of the Memorial Stadium press box.
Illinois’ defense took advantage of a Western Illinois offensive game plan that would make Dubya look liberal (I know, tortured political cliche) and posted the school’s first shutout since Oct. 14, 2000, when Ron Turner’s crew put a 31-0 whupping on Iowa and future Illini QB Jon Beutjer.
Illinois’ 77-game stretch between whitewashings represented the longest shutout drought in school history. The victory ran Illinois’ record to 4-0 against Division I-AA (OK, Football Championship Subdivision) teams since 2003. Over the same stretch, the Illini are just 5-39 against its Division I-A peers.
Juice Williams played all but the final two series and looked haphazard. He admitted afterward that he pressed to make up for last week’s game, when he sat for the final 40 minutes after injuring his left eye. Juice missed open receivers, etc., as he went 12 of 24 for 123 yards, 1 INT and no TDs.
Offensive coordinator Mike Locksley pointed out Juice’s faults, but also pointed out some new-found strengths. I’ll put those quotes in Monday’s Daily Herald.
Like last week, when I broke down the quarterbacks’ incompletions, here’s this week’s quick Juice-o-Meter:
First quarter:
INC No. 1: Right in Jeff Cumberland’s hands. His drop. He did not have another ball thrown his way.
INC No. 2: Bomb to Joe Morgan in the end zone. Morgan got turned around, but seemed to have enough time to gather himself and the ball. Morgan’s drop.
INC No. 3: Juice throws too high for Kyle Hudson on a cross. Juice’s fault.
Second quarter:
INC No. 4: Juice scrambles and fires a ball that WIU LB Bennett tips. Probably wouldn’t have been a completion anyway. Put it on Juice.
INT No. 1: Juice misreads Rejus Benn’s route, then compounds the mistake by throwing wildly. WIU picks it off in the red zone.
INC No. 5: Juice’s quick slant to Benn gets batted at the line by LB Travis Cherry.
INC No. 6: Two plays after completing a deep slant to Hudson, Juice leads him too far on the same type of pass.
Third quarter:
INC No. 7: The first of four straight INCs as Juice scrambles and correctly throws it away.
INC No. 8: Juice throws it too wide to be caught inbounds. His bad.
INC No. 9: Fullback Russ Weil gets open in the flat, but Juice throws it too short to be caught. His fault.
INC No. 10: Juice scrambles to his left, throws across his body and nearly suffers his second pick. LB Jerome Bennett can’t hang on to the bullet as he tightropes the sideline. Should’ve been thrown away. Juice’s fault.
Fourth quarter:
INC No. 11: Juice scrambles and throws it away.
GRAND TOTALS:
Juice’s fault: 7
Drops: 2 (Cumberland and Morgan)
PBU: 1
Smart throwaways: 2.
That’s it from Memorial Stadium for this week.
LW
1 Comment
Monday, September 10, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I have to admit, I was very disappointed in Juice’s performance on Saturday. The analysis you did is very interesting…..to be honest, it seemed like Juice did much worse than “7″ that were his fault. So it is important to look at his performance through a statistical lens, and to remember that Illinois did win, after all. But at the same time, he looked as bad at passing as he did last season. If not worse. And from all reports that came out of Camp Rantoul, he was only about 50% accurate during camp, as well. I’m starting to think he’s just not going to be an accurate passer. By no means do I think there is a quarterback controversy yet. Juice deserves the starting slot– we have to take Zook’s statement that Juice clearly won the job during camp at face value. But if we’re 3/4 of the way through the season, and his passing doesn’t get better, we might be talking more about bringing McGee in. Is this unfair pressure on Juice? No. Pressure is a good thing. Great programs have a stable of athletes at key positions– and they demand top notch performance from them.