What did we learn Illinois edition

The_Fan_Man said:
One thing that I learned is that our WRs aren't doing a great job at getting separation against man coverage, especially in shorter/medium routes. The real exception to this seems to be Barney, who is putting real fear into opposing defenses.
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Part of, and maybe a lot of, getting separation is pushing away the defender as the ball is coming. I’ve noticed a lot of this across college football and OPI is almost never called - Travis Hunter is a great example. I think all of our receivers could be better at this, especially Neyor, and that may be why an earlier post described him as afraid of contact. That said, I think Neyor is a great receiver. 

 
The_Fan_Man said:
One thing that I learned is that our WRs aren't doing a great job at getting separation against man coverage, especially in shorter/medium routes. The real exception to this seems to be Barney, who is putting real fear into opposing defenses.
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runningblind said:
I'm seeing the same thing watching replays.  This makes running the ball even harder as teams will throw an extra defender up.  No bueno. 
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A talking head after game one spoke to this.  He said we are bigger than what we had last year at wr, but we don't have the speed to stretch a D and get separation and against better teams that would be an issue.  Barney being the one who can.  Not having Chai healthy/prepared hurts as he had some top end speed.  McGuire needs to work on getting our guys to highpoint and fight for those balls.  Be more physical.  DR is threading that ball, but at times I am amazed it hasn't been picked they way he gets it in there.  A couple passes were a touch behind, but I am sure that will improve with more live games.  

 
Illinois looks like a good team vs PSU tonight. They are down 14-7 in the 4th and may not win, but they are certainly showing they are a tough team. PSU is in a dogfight tonight. Assuming PSU holds on to win this game, CU is now 4-1 and ILL would be 4-1, apparently a 4-1 Husker squad ain’t too bad after all………

 
caveman99 said:
Illinois looks like a good team vs PSU tonight. They are down 14-7 in the 4th and may not win, but they are certainly showing they are a tough team. PSU is in a dogfight tonight. Assuming PSU holds on to win this game, CU is now 4-1 and ILL would be 4-1, apparently a 4-1 Husker squad ain’t too bad after all………
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They’ve hung around, but Penn St has absolutely owned the LoS pretty much all game. 

 
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Jason Sitoke said:
They’ve hung around, but Penn St has absolutely owned the LoS pretty much all game. 
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Regardless, ILL had the ball near midfield with under 4 mins to go only down 14-7. They had also just made 2 first downs in that drive as well. A great defensive call and execution by the DB to show man coverage but go to zone post snap to trick Altmeyer to throw a game sealing pick. PSU couldn’t score against the ILL D either, I would say they are a pretty good team.

 
caveman99 said:
Regardless, ILL had the ball near midfield with under 4 mins to go only down 14-7. They had also just made 2 first downs in that drive as well. A great defensive call and execution by the DB to show man coverage but go to zone post snap to trick Altmeyer to throw a game sealing pick. PSU couldn’t score against the ILL D either, I would say they are a pretty good team.
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They’re a good team. But this game wasn’t as close as the score would indicate. Outrushed them 241-39. Illinois is well coached though and came up with a couple big plays to stop Penn st drives.  Gave themselves a chance. 

 
Toe said:
Man, the computers really don't think too highly of Illinois. They're #57 in FPI, #47 in SP+, and #52 Sagarin. They're #21 Coaches/#22 AP.
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It's an interesting balance between the actual results and looking at which team was probably better on a play by play basis. I think the computer numbers are really interesting and valuable for figuring out whether surprising results are sustainable, but I don't like when they creep into the playoff rankings. Like if you have a great team with a bad loss and a good team with a decent loss, the computer rankings (and many voters) will have the great team higher. But I want that bad loss to be penalized more heavily, even when it's clear that it was an outlier. I may be in the minority there.

I love the computer numbers, but using them for rankings minimizes the impact of actually losing games. Is Vanderbilt better than we thought? Sure, but that's still not a good loss. And Kentucky/Alabama don't lose much at all in the rankings because they "outplayed" Vandy according to the numbers. Now obviously things get complicated because you have head to head results too - should Bama be ahead of Georgia based on head to head, or behind because their loss to Vandy is worse than Georgia losing to Bama?

TL;DR, it's fun that computers can tell you who probably should have won but I don't like using that in playoff rankings. We should not have lost to Illinois, but we did.

 
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