You know that tremendous buzz that all of Illini football nation felt when Lovie Smith was hired?
Well, we’re now at the polar opposite of that. College football preseason preview magazines are filled with almost all pessimistic words about Illinois’ upcoming season. Believe it or not, we’re just 54 days away from the Big Ten Kickoff Luncheon.
Both Lindy’s and Athlon picked the Illini to finish 7th, dead last in the Big Ten West.
Athlon ranks Illinois 92nd overall in the nation, and worst among all B1G teams. Lindy’s has the Illini 96th, ahead of only Rutgers, who the publication ranks 104th. There are 130 teams in FBS by the way.
The defense will be very young this season, meaning that they will have to be carried by the offense this year, a unit that is…well, let’s just say that previous sentence is a very scary thought for Illini football fans. As Lindy’s wrote, without hyperbole, “overall the starters are suspect, and the depth is perilously thin.” That’s their “bad news” entry.
For “good news” they write: “QB Chayce Crouch is a tough runner. RB Kendrick Foster has explosive ability, as does WR Malik Turner.”
In “our call,” the Tweet style offering is “Coach Lovie Smith will miss the NFL a lot.”
The publication only names two Illini football players on their three All-Big Ten teams (OL Christian DiLaurio 3rd, DB Jaylen Dunlap 3rd) Lunt was the only Illini on their Big Ten “honor roll,” and no Illini football players made their list of top NFL talent, which had 10 slots available.
Only one game, the pillow fight against Purdue made their list of “big ones,” and that was all snarky; not genuine.
No Illini freshmen-to-be made the list of the conference’s top 20 incoming frosh, the league Honor Roll (describing players with superlative skill sets) or the B1G’s top 10 NFL talent. Moving over to Athlon, they rated every coaching hire made in the power five since 2012, and guess who came in dead last?
Yep, you got it- Tim Beckman.
Which pretty much explains how we got to where we are today. Beating Northwestern on the final day of 2014 and making that bowl game ended up being a massive disaster in disguise for the Illini football program. That put the inevitable and mandatory regime change off a year, and delayed the gargantuan rebuilding project further.
Of course, all the turmoil and change in the athletic department and the university itself certainly exacerbated the problems.
However, Lovie Smith is here now and by this time, he’s certainly aware of the true scope of the challenges ahead of him. It’s not all gloom and doom though in every single preseason college football publication. Street & Smith’s picked Illini football to finish 6th in the division, ahead of Purdue! Huzzah!
The magazine’s write-up also includes this uplifting sentence- “Smith should see an increase in wins in his second season if the Illini negotiates a nonconference schedule that includes Ball State, Western Kentucky and South Florida. The game against USF and its first-year coach Charlie Strong, is on the road, however.”
They are correct, an uptick from 3-9 to 4-8 is still quite likely. Illinois visits Purdue and hosts Rutgers.
Combine those two league games with that very unexciting and extremely weak (but now actually a perfect fit for this reclamation endeavor) and yes, four plus wins is indeed realistically doable.
That’s also what you would call forward progress for Illini football, and it’s an idea Lovie could easily sell to recruits.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes to WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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