Northern Illinois Discussion

This is a team that concerned me the moment it was announced that we put them on the schedule. I assume this game came about from Bielema's relationship with Dave Doeren, but still N. Illinois is not the team we needed to pay to beat us in our own house in the midst of a big rebuilding job.


As the game is now here, I've come to the belief that N. Illinois is just the team we need to play at this juncture. They should be favored to be honest. They see us as an SEC team that can be a feather in their cap and a hobbled member of the herd that should be easy pickings.

I think they'll take us a little lightly (as crazy as that sounds), they'll be a good test as their weakness is pass defense. They're pretty good against the run, they have better size than most would think, they've recruited in the south and brought in athletes from across the country to go with their Chicago metro recruiting base.

Texas Tech gave us a soft opponent with a contrasting style that would give us a look at a spread offense without SEC athletes and SEC OL/DL.

Northern Illinois gives us a good sized team that has skill players and stout run defense. We can measure our ability to dominate the trenches better against a squad we should be more physical than. We also can test our passing game in both vertical routes and through progressions with multiple outlets as we shouldn't need to to keep a TE and RB in to pass protect. Last season we often only had 2-3 receiving options as we kept the FB and RB in to block and only sent one TE out on a route.

I think we'll see Chaney have Brandon throw often as we need to get some work in for those WR's. I'm good with Keon riding pine. He's a liability with his hands, he's not much of a blocker, and SEC defenses should be able to sniff out that end around as much as we run it. The flea flicker overthrow, wasn't as much as an overthrow in my opinion as it was Hatcher not running 100% to catch up to the ball, he looked like he was running at 75% when the ball hit the ground.

If we're going to win a couple SEC games this season, we've got to execute in crunchtime. 3rd down play action and quick slants or screens need to be in the arsenal and we need the ability to complete passes in tough situations.

Just 3-5 times a game will be the difference between a bowl game and another frustrating year with slow progress. We've already seen it too many times this season where a miscommunication on an open route or a mistake by the WR stole 6 points from our hands. We can't make those mistakes and beat SEC teams. When opportunities arise good teams capitalize on them.

N. Illinois doesn't have their Heisman finalist this year, Lynch might have won last year if we had played them. If our D could make the QB's we faced look like Heisman contenders, Lynch would have clowned on us for 60 minutes.

This is the game where we can test our fundamentals and our execution without being at an athletic disadvantage that could put us in a hole we can't dig out of.

I'm looking for another big step forward and some solid mature QB play from Brandon Allen would launch this team into the SEC meatgrinder ready to trade punches instead of just being a punching bag.