I see two paths.

Hawthorne Trail is beautiful.  Along that path, the entire season turns around on one play.  You know, like last year.  After a crazy game where we’re putting up the yards but Minnesota is putting up the points, Juice hits AJ Jenkins for a 54 yard touchdown (yeah, I know – we totally threw long touchdown passes and stuff. It was sweet). Minnesota gets the ball back and we force a punt, so tie ballgame here we come.  First play Juice steps up in the pocket and

Juice Williams sacked by Willie VanDeSteeg, fumbled, recovered by Minn Simoni Lawrence at the Illin 9, Simoni Lawrence for 9 yards, to the Illin 0 for a TOUCHDOWN.

Illin indeed.  We scramble around and make a game of it (oh to get that toss to Judson back), but we drop to 3-3 instead of 4-2, and the season is off the rails.  One defensive touchdown because Jeff Allen shoved his guy inside to where Juice had stepped up, and bam – season heads downhill.  Juice was a shadow of his former self the last half of the season, and we all sat at home over the holidays.

So on the Hawthorne Trail, this season becomes the exact opposite.  One tackle by one glorious Black Cat turns the season on a dime.  We roll over Michigan, win a hard-fought battle at Minnesota, and as we take the lead with a defensive touchdown in the third quarter of the Northwestern game (yeah, those are still legal. Who knew?), we all let ourselves think it. “We’ll beat Fresno in the cold.  Which means the game at Cincy is for a bowl! Now, I doubt we have the slightest chance, but wouldn’t it be just like a Zook team to roll into Cincy…”

Let me stop you there and describe the other path. Disch Trace.  Along this path, the goal line stand means nothing because the defense can’t replicate the goal line stand because the defense isn’t allowed to.  Blitzes are reserved for third down, defensive substitutions simply follow the personnel the offense is putting on the field, and the innovative defenses we practiced in Rantoul, like the run blitz out of the 3-3-5 – the ones that would keep the opposing coordinator on his toes – those aren’t used.

Disch Trace has many other dark corners.  Drive sustaining roughing-the-passer penalties.  Drive killing holding calls.  That old familiar feeling of a decent 40 yard drive, followed by a sack on first down, followed by a false start, followed by two runs to set up a “we’ll get ‘em next time” punt, followed by a punt that rolls into the endzone for a net of 19 yards.

We all know this path.  It has played out in various forms since the Minnesota game last year.  Sure, we win games like Iowa last year and Michigan this year (yay!) where we call our friends and say things like “where has THAT been?”, but inevitably we fall back into the same pattern where we’re sitting at the Indiana 6 with a chance to take the lead late in the game and fumble.  Or we get to the Western Michigan 20 with a chance to score the winning touchdown, and we throw four straight incompletions.  The ESPN announcers during the Missouri game identified our shootourselvesinthefootedness, and we’ve been walking that path ever since.

In my mind, I can picture a victory over Minnesota.  Their run defense is 89th in the country, and our little surge behind My Man Mikel has led us to the #2 rushing offense in the Big Ten.  So a scenario exists where we control this game on the ground, get a few Tate Forcier-ish turnovers, and win going away.

But in that same part of my mind, I thought the same thing about the Indiana game.  And the Purdue game.  And the Michigan State game.  In those three games, we showed very little emotion, rolling over at the first sign of trouble.  And despite searching up and down the sidelines for a Kevin Mitchell or a J Leman to prevent the rollover, not a single leader could be found.

And that has made all the difference.

Minnesota 33, Illinois 20