As I was wandering around the ever-shrinking Illini Football internet message boards yesterday, I came upon a thread discussing the Nebraska defensive line and how they were able to get to Blaine Gabbert Thursday night.  To the tune of 17-43 for 143 yards and 2 INT’s (more or less the exact numbers I expected on September 5th).  Besides Ndamukong Suh, what makes Nebraska’s DL so much better than ours?  This post pretty much nailed it:

“they do the things they’re capable of doing”

That’s pretty much it, isn’t it?  They do the things they’re capable of doing.  The 2003 Fighting Illini Football Team was not capable of doing such “things”.  The talent just wasn’t there.  The 1997 defensive line wouldn’t have been able to apply pressure – they didn’t have the size and strength.

This team is capable of doing these things.  Yet they don’t.  Juice is capable of hitting 62% of his passes and throwing for 320 yards.  We’ve seen him do it.  And yet he’s 51-89 for 170 yards per game with 1 TD and 4 interceptions.  And now planted firmly on the bench.

Ryan Palmer and Randall Hunt are capable of being productive run blockers.  Yet their missed blocks and bad penalties have the coaches turning to see if Corey Lewis and Graham Pocic are ready yet.

Dere Hicks is capable of being a senior leader in the secondary.  Yet he’s struggling to hang on to his starting spot.  Donsay Hardeman has the physical tools to be a Kevin Mitchell Field General, only faster.  Yet he’s either scared of his neck or scared of another flag, because he’s not aggressive. One of the young running backs is capable of stepping forward and proving that they deserve the most carries.  Yet so far, they’re doing the 4-way stop standstill (“You go.” “No, you go.”).

Most importantly, Doug Pilcher, Corey Liuget, Josh Brent, and Clay Nurse are capable of controlling the line of scrimmage.  They have the size, the strength, and the football play-making ability to dictate the other team’s offense, just like Nebraska did to Mizzou Thursday night.  Yet they don’t.

So is our staff poor at coaching certain techniques?  Well, Cincinnati had a pretty fantastic defensive line last year, and we hired their defensive line coach to make our’s better, so I doubt that’s the case, at least specifically with the DL.  Do we just have talented yet unmotivated (and unmotivatable) players?  Maybe.  Is it the scheme?  That’s a good bet, but it’s difficult to draw the line between “this part is on underperforming players/that part is poor schemes and play calls”.  I could be talked into both, at the same time.

I mean, if we’re comparing specifically to Nebraska, they’ve recruited better at D-Line, and they have probably the best DT in the nation (you see that, Corey Liuget? You’re capable of that).  So it’s easy to see why they have a better four-man pass rush.  But this isn’t 1997.  We haven’t recruited that much worse.  We should be on par with a lot of teams in the lower end of the top-25.  Yet we’re not.

So where does that leave us against MSU?  Can we salvage the season?  Win this one, and a couple low-end teams like Indiana and Purdue await. 3 of our 4 most difficult games are behind us.  And our two most difficult Big Ten games are behind us.  I could see the Big Ten finishing Ohio State – Iowa – Wisconsin – Penn State, and two of those aren’t on the schedule while the other two we’ve already played.  If we really did get on a roll and finished 5th in the Big Ten, we might be able to throw a fun stat like this out there at the end of the season: “In our last 6 games on the Big Ten schedule, we played the teams that finished 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th.”  So a window exists that I can look through and see the Insight Bowl.

But until I see the team we all expected this fall, I just can’t predict it.  MSU leads the conference in Passing Offense, and we’re 10th in Passing Efficiency Defense.  It would take one of two things to pull out a victory today:  Eddie on fire, or 2+ interceptions.  I can’t see either.

MSU 33, Illinois 24