blackdog
- Champaign
Illinois 45, Eastern Illinois 0 Postgame
Joel Goodson
- dawgville
sheer insanity, in my book
MoCoMdIllini
- Montgomery County, Maryland
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
Way late on these but have been traveling:
(1) Top 3 player PFF scores from the roster are all WRs. Bryant (duh), Elzy (makes sense), Hollins (!). Elzy and Hollins set personal highs for their game scores. Third highest game score, and highest run block score, for Bryant. Extremely good signs with the quality and depth at WR.
(2) Tanner Arkin showed real progress in game 1 with a strong performance at a position of serious need. His run blocking was MUCH MUCH improved. Can we sustain it? TBD. Other wrinkle/concern is he played 50+ snaps (out of 72). That's a lot of snaps for a TE (puts him on pace for 600+). Is that because Arkin is that valuable? No faith in non-starting TEs? TBD.
(3) Everyone knows the love for Priestly, so let's look deeper at offensive line. The tackles (Priestly and Davis) both performed well. Another good sign is Brandon Henderson looked good in spot-up duty, so tackle should be set for this year and left tackle for 2025. Magnus Moller got in for ~10 snaps and wasn't bad, but that's a really small sample size against an FCS team.
(4) Interior line is a different story. Kreutz was pretty average. You can chalk that up to having a camp injury and working back. Gesky and Crisler were not good. PFF was especially damning for Crisler's run blocking (but also especially high on his pass blocking). Wigenton and Whitenack came in as second string and performed about the same. One positive is that TJ McMillen came in a second string center and looked good. It's still a really small sample size but it's enough to make me believe he can play snaps this year without hurting the team and has a chance to start as a RS-Sophomore next year.
(5) This doesn't necessarily bear out in the stats but I'm happy Laughery is improved in the coaching staff eyes and he had good moments this past weekend but I need to see more wiggle to his running style. It's great that he has speed, and more important that he understands the offense and can block, but utilizing more athleticism when he gets the rock would go a long way. For now he reminds me of a Reggie Love running back, where he has a higher floor but lower ceiling than most RBs.
(6) Seven Illini defenders score a 70+ PFF game score. That's an incredible stat and likely the highest recorded since 2022 Northwestern.
(7) TeRah Edwards had one of his best performances as an Illini. The staff really needs him to bloom with all of the interior defensive line questions going into this year. His best two PFF game scores are the final game of last season and the first game of this season.
(8) Xavier Scott, Miles Scott, and Matthew Bailey played every defensive snap. Interpret as you wish.
(9) Corners need to show more - It's likely more signal than noise that EIU decided it was in their best interests to target Cox as often as possible on passing downs. Cox put good moments together - the INT and only 3-7 when targeted. Teams will keep throwing at Cox (or avoiding the safety tandems?) until proven otherwise. One interesting twist could be teams going more after Xavier Scott (3 pass attempts, 3 catches) or whoever is the fifth wheel (Clarke, Patterson, Resetich, Canada).
(10) Joe Barna is my guy. Great first showing. Played 26-of-44 snaps!
(11) No injuries, let's keep that rolling.
(1) Top 3 player PFF scores from the roster are all WRs. Bryant (duh), Elzy (makes sense), Hollins (!). Elzy and Hollins set personal highs for their game scores. Third highest game score, and highest run block score, for Bryant. Extremely good signs with the quality and depth at WR.
(2) Tanner Arkin showed real progress in game 1 with a strong performance at a position of serious need. His run blocking was MUCH MUCH improved. Can we sustain it? TBD. Other wrinkle/concern is he played 50+ snaps (out of 72). That's a lot of snaps for a TE (puts him on pace for 600+). Is that because Arkin is that valuable? No faith in non-starting TEs? TBD.
(3) Everyone knows the love for Priestly, so let's look deeper at offensive line. The tackles (Priestly and Davis) both performed well. Another good sign is Brandon Henderson looked good in spot-up duty, so tackle should be set for this year and left tackle for 2025. Magnus Moller got in for ~10 snaps and wasn't bad, but that's a really small sample size against an FCS team.
(4) Interior line is a different story. Kreutz was pretty average. You can chalk that up to having a camp injury and working back. Gesky and Crisler were not good. PFF was especially damning for Crisler's run blocking (but also especially high on his pass blocking). Wigenton and Whitenack came in as second string and performed about the same. One positive is that TJ McMillen came in a second string center and looked good. It's still a really small sample size but it's enough to make me believe he can play snaps this year without hurting the team and has a chance to start as a RS-Sophomore next year.
(5) This doesn't necessarily bear out in the stats but I'm happy Laughery is improved in the coaching staff eyes and he had good moments this past weekend but I need to see more wiggle to his running style. It's great that he has speed, and more important that he understands the offense and can block, but utilizing more athleticism when he gets the rock would go a long way. For now he reminds me of a Reggie Love running back, where he has a higher floor but lower ceiling than most RBs.
(6) Seven Illini defenders score a 70+ PFF game score. That's an incredible stat and likely the highest recorded since 2022 Northwestern.
(7) TeRah Edwards had one of his best performances as an Illini. The staff really needs him to bloom with all of the interior defensive line questions going into this year. His best two PFF game scores are the final game of last season and the first game of this season.
(8) Xavier Scott, Miles Scott, and Matthew Bailey played every defensive snap. Interpret as you wish.
(9) Corners need to show more - It's likely more signal than noise that EIU decided it was in their best interests to target Cox as often as possible on passing downs. Cox put good moments together - the INT and only 3-7 when targeted. Teams will keep throwing at Cox (or avoiding the safety tandems?) until proven otherwise. One interesting twist could be teams going more after Xavier Scott (3 pass attempts, 3 catches) or whoever is the fifth wheel (Clarke, Patterson, Resetich, Canada).
(10) Joe Barna is my guy. Great first showing. Played 26-of-44 snaps!
(11) No injuries, let's keep that rolling.
awesome break down! no tardiness in the future please
i also really live the Laughery/Feagin tandem sets, seems like you could do a lot of different things out of it