Resources: My charting, UI game notes, UI roster, CFBstats

I was all excited for this one in the preseason because they brought in Rich Rod's old QB coach last year, as well as a spate of transfers, and that resulted in one of the best rushing offenses in the country. Unfortunately for the Illini, the dual-threat grad transfer quarterback making that work ran out of eligibility, and all they could get from this year's transfer market was our Brandon Peters. Now they're probably without Peters.

The film: A rainy, chilly-because-of-the-rainy affair in Minneapolis last week. Other options were Akron (yech), UConn (barf), a loss to Eastern Michigan (lol), and the 38-42 defenseless Nebraska game that has no relation to Michigan. Minnesota's defense is somewhat like Michigan's 3-3-5 stuff, but where our edge guys are at times frustratingly responsible the Gophers shoot 'em upfield all the time, expecting their tackles to squeeze gaps using the blockers trying to block them. I judged the OTs largely on the force of their kickouts, and the OGs on their positions relative to the line of scrimmage.

Personnel: My diagram:

PDF version, full-size version (or click on the image)

Michigan transfer Brandon Peters left the Minnesota game after apparently coming down hard on his head. We're expecting him to be out. Which means Illinois is going to have to rely on whatever they could recruit and develop in-house. Which means Russell Bellomy-armed 5'10" redshirt freshman Matt Robinson is probably going to start. Which means they're gonna die. This will be a theme with Lovie Smith's Illinois: he's great at recruiting players out of other programs, who sense the opportunity to play because they've been awful at developing their own.

The opposite is true on the offensive line, where Bama transfer RG Richie Petitbon Jr. Jr. (+1.5/-6 in rushing, 0 pass rush minuses) (yes That Richie Petitbon--dad and grandpa have different middle names) is the weakest link. Oddly for a 5-star son of an NFL safety, Petitbon is kind of a lug, an odd fit for Illinois's stretch zone style. Moving laterally gets him shoved backwards, and the minutiae of zone blocking seems to elude him. That ruined a lot of good work from RT Alex Palczewski (+6/-2.5, –1), who drew a tough matchup in Minnesota's Jake Ryan-esque Carter Coughlin and came out well ahead. Palczewski has a mean first punch and quick feet, plus the length to translate that to the NFL, though at around 300 he's still short on pure mass. I liked a lot of what I saw from C Doug Kramer, a low-built gamer who got in a few reach blocks and was used often as a puller. His downside is he's irresponsible, subjecting Illinois to multiple illegal man downfield penalties on RPO pulls. LG Kendrick Green (+5/-1, –2 pass pro) is a major weapon in their ground game for his heady play, though he gives it all back in not having the athleticism for pass pro. LT Vederian Lowe (+3/-4, –0) is a prototypical pass-blocker who could use some time in the workout room.

They tried to fix tight end—which lost budding star Louis Dorsey to a transfer after giving him a suspension last year—with blue chip Luke Ford, a onetime Michigan target who took Georgia's offer instead. Ford was transferring closer to home because his mom has a serious thing, only for the arbitrary-as-hell NCAA to deny his waiver because Champaign, though the nearest FBS school by drive time, is juuuuust outside the range defined in that rule. Instead they're rolling out true sophomore TE Daniel Barker (+1/-4, –0) who looks/plays about 20-25 pounds smaller than his listed 250. The next guy is blocking-only TE Griffin Palmer (+0/-2, –0), who's 6'6"/245 and was almost certainly offered a scholarship four years ago in the hopes he'd be at tackle and about 60 pounds heavier by now.

Receiver was a disaster last year, especially once Poor Damn Mike Dudek gave in to the Angry Mike Dudek-Hating God. The only remaining holdover is WR Ricky Smalling (206 yards, 4.4 yards per target, 47% catch rate, 1 TD), who has been slipping open then dropping passes for three years now; he dorfed three big ones in this game. He also gets a full third of targets.

Help arrived in two 4.5-star USC transfers. WR Josh Imatorbhebhe (220 yards, 10.1 yards per target, 63% catch rate), is the best non-Corbin option for moving the ball. A top-150 player to 24/7 and Scout, you may recall Imatorbhebhe as the (at the time) 5-star receiver from Georgia (North Gwinnett) who was instantly interested in Michigan when Harbaugh was hired. He's supremely athletic and a work-in-progress route runner, leading the team in all the receiving categories despite being third in targets. His Trojan classmate Trevon Sidney (123 yards, 4.1 YPT, 53% CRt) was ranked a few spots higher than Imatorbhebhe and has some Jeremy Gallon in him—he was another play or two away from a dangerman star from this game—but his previous performances make that seem an outlier. He splits time with Dominic Stampley (59 yards on 6 targets), a better receiver than Sidney but not much of a blocker. Backup Donny Navarro is a Dileo-ish third down specialist who transferred from Valparaiso and has five targets so far. Tall true freshman Dalevon Campbell was a late find who looks like a hit, albeit one that won't be ready for some time.

[after THE JUMP: content about the Illinois offense]

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Spread, Pro-Style, or Hybrid? Spread 'n Shred. I keep adding "Rich" to Rod Smith's name to remind everyone the canny, chalky, yelly large man in charge of this offense was Rodriguez's longtime QB coach. Before that, Rich Rod Smith was the first quarterback Rich Rod ever recruited to run the zone read. What I'm saying is there's something very familiar about all of this.

Three receivers, one of them a slot who does some blocking, usually a tight end they move all over the place, and sometimes two backs. When the tight end was on the line of scrimmage he was almost always flexed out as an extra receiver—only the blocking guy lined up in line. The flex stuff was 11 snaps. Otherwise the single TE was lined up as an H-back, usually as a Y-off (27 times), but often between the tackles, where he might motion to stand to stand right in front of the running back and jog in place (5 times) or stay put and act like a fullback (7 times).

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL? Basketball on grass. You can see their run game was very RPO-heavy, though less so once Peters went out. Many of the Robinson snaps were in two-minute drill or comeback mode, and Robinson hates pockets, so they devolved for much of that into a roll out and throw the out team. By my count the running game was half inside zone (most with RPOs attached), a quarter outside zone (most of the play-action was off it), and the other quarter was multi-puller power stuff.

Remember that play I highlighted with Wisconsin where they pulled the guard and tackle and used the fullback to block the backside? Illinois runs that same thing except instead of a backside fullback to block the backside end they option that guy with a "Bash" read to the running back, using the quarterback as the primary runner. It reminds me of the stuff we thought Gattis was going to do:

Even with Minnesota's crash/replace stuff complicating things it's still a good gainer—you can tell they're good at it by how the pullers don't panic when they arrive and the Gophers are diving inside their blocks. They also run it with a more natural zone read.

By the way, Peters left after this play, holding his head. 

Hurry it up or grind it out? More of a hurry-up. When they want to they can get the ball snapped very quickly, however that wasn't as true once Peters went out. Watch for tempo out of a big third down conversion; the snap is off within 10 seconds, the play is outside zone.

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): A reminder that anything over "5" is a dual threat. I'm putting Matt Robinson at an 8. He might lean to a 7 since the top speed isn't there and the acceleration is just B+, but I give him extra credit for extending mesh points, diving for extra yards, and generally being more comfortable when running the ball.

Frames Janklin Factor: Lovie Smith is pretty old school. On the Illini's first drive they got a 4th and 3 on the Minnesota 40, talked about it too long, sent out the punt unit, then took a delay of game. He gets credit for going for it because his team is often in desperation mode later on, but like a lot of NFL types Lovie will be conservative until he can't be. Lovie also forgot he had timeouts when they tried to score in 92 seconds against Nebraska at the end of the first half, and let 20 seconds drip off the clock against Eastern Michigan in a similar situation.

There's also a sense you get watching Illinois that Lovie took this job as a semi-retirement. Papa doesn't want to think about complicated clock scenarios. Papa's got his beard to worry about.

Dangerman: RT Alex Palczewski is so boringly good that I forgot to clip anything from him. A lot of his day was +0.5 kickouts on Carter Coughlin, until it was time for him to protect the edge that Matt Robinson kept rollout out of. Anyway, he's not the show here. This is the show:

In contrast to the other great backs in the Big Ten, Reggie Corbin's top attributes aren't bowling people nor picking through gaps. Corbin's an accelerator. When his foot goes in the ground, the next 7 yards happen so quickly it doesn't even matter if there is a gap.

I can't help but bring out the holy Denard, because when you slow this down and see which "gap" he's running in, the only proper response is "Holy Denard!"

As with running back Denard, the key is to bottle things up and give him nowhere to accelerate to. He's not big enough to churn out yards, and he doesn't really factor in the passing game—they threaten RPO screens to him out of their two-back sets but defenses wisely cover that. But his top speed is top notch, and he gets up to speed so quickly that a Reggie Corbin in the open is an instant six points.

HenneChart:

The Brandon Peters show was a lot like how I remember it: good start, a couple of pressure moments, and then his accuracy went to hell. His interception was god-awful: a wide open post route 12 yards downfield that was so far behind his intended receiver it was picked off by the safety drawn way out of position by overplaying the RPO.

Also it will be remembered fondly because of what came after, which for Michigan fans subjected to Russell Bellomy in the not-too-distant past was an all-too-familiar horror show. I didn't bother to clip Robinson's first couple of throws because Illinois Football Breakdown got there first:

The bad events were offset by almost equal good, however when they were bad they were really really bad. Robinson is too short to see over the big linemen around him, so he hop-passes. He also sometimes trusts his arm to zing a ball into a guy he thinks is open without bothering to see where a linebacker is. His arm, as you've gathered by now, should not be trusted so.

Robinson's favorite thing to do is roll out to his right. They started calling plays just for this, and he made a lot of really good throws in the process. But America's Rollout Out is a last resort for a reason. And that reason is often "my quarterback won't stay in a pocket even if I give him one":

OVERVIEW:

Yeah, they're probably dead, especially if Michigan's offense isn't punching itself in the face and Illinois has to go back into comeback mode. This is an RPO-heavy offense that's probably without the guy they were training to run all the RPOs. It's play-action passing that can't do much with the windows that creates. It's stuff they lean on so much that you can send the whole damn house at it.

The offense—especially with their only decent passer unavailable—is mostly predicated on probing gaps for Corbin to break a big one. The defensive plan should be to bottle up Corbin at all costs. The OL are agile but not pushers, and the tight ends aren't that scary. Set the edge, gum up the gaps, and keep him contained for 20 runs a game and you'll be fine. Miss a gap and you're going to have a bad time.