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Lovie is supposed to be a defensive coach. Seems to me that he has been napping while Fitz pretty much recruited all the Illinois defensive talent that could qualify at NU. I'm going with 12.
I get the feeling that Lovie is just playing out the string in beautiful Rantoul .
He has offered over 100 kids for 2018, but does not seem that great at closing the deal. He really seems to be striking out in Illinois. Recruits don't seem to be buying what he is selling.
He's having to learn on the job having never been a HC or Coord at any other school. I wonder if he was really prepared for that side of the job after being in the NFL so long.
He had a few good gets in 2017. I think that brand is really tarnished thanks to Mr. Lasagna. NU is especially adept at early strikes. With high stakes this year in IL, it is hurting Lovie to be up against us.
Wow, those are really sad pictures. What was their average attendance? and relative to stadium size?Yes, and maybe this too.....
I just answered my own question and lets just say we should delete this thread as we have nothing to crow about either in average total or percent of capacity for the last two years.
Over Illinois State and Miami-Hydroxide. The kid's tape is decent (definitely raw, but solid physical skills) so have to wonder why he wasn't getting any more recruiting traction. Any ideas @corbi296 ?
Yeah. That's not a bad tape at all. Arm strength is certainly there.Just a long release.
My best guess is that he is late riser. He really came on during last season's state playoff run and most of his highlights are from those games. Hadn't done much prior to that.
Illinois should have gone after Re-Al Mitchell big time because he could have started for them Day 1. That kid is going to make someone a very good QB and right it looks like our old friend Louis Ayeni and Iowa State are in the driver's seat. For some reason Illinois did not offer even though they extended a lot of offers to dual threat QBs. Just reinforces that Lovie really has no clue what he is doing, particularly on offense.
He has been in the pros too long. QBs who are in the pros are often not the ones most successful in college. Dual threat is more needed in college, especially when you do not have the rest of the team
Because he didn't go after a QB from California? While I happen to agree that Lovie is unlikely to right the ship at Illinois in any meaningful way, it's a bit of a stretch to use Re-Al Mitchell as an example.
For what it's worth, Illinois seems to be going after bigger, athletic QBs (Taylor, Dwayne Lawson as a transfer, Cameron Thomas). That's pretty much par for the course for McGee's preferred QBs.
Under Lovie, McGee has pursued primarily dual-threat, athletic QBs. Given that they're all projects, the bigger question might be whether Lovie and McGee will be around long enough to develop any of them.
They extended 10 QB offers for this class and they are from all over. While Mitchell may not have the size they covet, I have no doubt he will be a very successful starting dual threat QB in college. Given that Mitchell appears to have strong interest in ISU, I have no doubt he would have considered Illinois had they offered. A mistake on their part.
That's a lot of certainty. I agree that Mitchell looks very solid on tape against some of the better competition in the country and the intangibles seem to be there, but the list of unsuccessful 5-10 QBs is much longer than the list of successful 5-10 QBs.
I'm surprised that Lovie's start has been so flat at Illinois. I guess that is because he was just about the only thing I liked about the Bears for a while there. Not counting Sherick and Wootten and a couple of other short timers from NU.
I was a fan of Lovie as a Bears coach until I realized that Ron Rivera had more to do with the success of the D than him. It was that D (and Hester) that made those Lovie teams great. I'm not sure I'm willing any longer to give Lovie much credit for the success realized early in his tenure.
Don't disagree but it's not like the guy that committed and some others they offered were sure things. These guys are much more athlete than QBs right now. Mitchell is very polished relatively speaking. He actually reminds me of a more polished version of former Illinois QB Nate Scheelhaase.
Yet Scheelhaase measured 6014 at his Pro Day...
http://www.nfldraftscout.com/ratings/dsprofile.php?pyid=89768&draftyear=2014&genpos=QB
I wasn't saying that he was the same height. Besides, a couple of inches won't make much of a difference. The kid can clearly play.
Are we so short-sighted that we have forgotten that it wasn't until 2 years ago that we started pulling in kids before April? For the most part, Fitz recruits started coming in after the spring game. It has taken more than ten years to build the network and system to name to get the early commits. And the program at Illinois has to get some success and stability before they start pulling in early classes. Lovie is doing the right thing. His staff is looking for the needles in the haystack. The recruits with good alternatives are not going to run to their door. Illinois will settle for some late bloomers, some under-the-radar, some over achievers, and a few core die-hards. Don't underestimate them because those are the kids who play hard. That school have beaten us enough times in the past ten years to never think of them as anything but a dangerous adversary.
The trend of early commitments is a system wide trend across college football that has been exacerbated over the last couple of years. A couple of years ago we got most of our commitments starting in April/May but so did most of college football. That timeframe has accelerated by a couple of months across most of college football and the fact that Lovie and Illinois have not participated in that trend is a troubling sign for them. Lovie was brought in with the idea that his NFL background would have an immediate star power impact on recruiting and translate into a quick turnaround on the field. The reality is that college football is way different than the pros and Lovie compounded a difficult transition by hiring a staff of people close to him as opposed to proven coaches who could develop talent and had experience in recruiting. The first year yielded very few signs of improvement on the field and recruiting has been a complete disaster so far reflecting the inexperience of the staff and the fact that most kids that are being recruited were too little to have any memory of Lovie Smith in his Chicago Bears Super Bowl heyday. The reality is that things are likely to get worse this fall because they graduated a lot of top contributors and the depth chart looks extremely weak from the poor recruiting that took place in the last couple of years of the Beckman regime. I think Illinois is in trouble and it would not surprise if Lovie walks away from this monumental challenge after next season.
I like the fact fact that the Fighting Lovie's are focusing their offers instead of the blanket approach under Becky. However, if you are a fan of central IL's team, you have to wonder what the heck is going on with in state recruiting. 9 of the top 10 committed elseware and 1 uncommitted ( which Lovie has a good shot at). O'Rourke, Newsome, Jones, and Ford were priority targets that they not only struck out on but didn't seem to be in the final group Ford maybe).
They are jubilant over landing their QB yesterday out of Peoria. He had no other P5 offers. Zero. Maybe he will fit their system and no one else's. At least he seems to have potential if McGee can mold him. Lovie has struck out in IL this year and no spin can change that. Saint Louis is loaded and Lovie has put in the effort to land these players. Missouri is way down so he can still right the ship, but I think he needs Saint Louis this year.
I never want us to underestimate anyone. We could lose 4 in a row to Lovie. I certainly doubt that will happen, but it could. We have won 4 of the last 5 against Illinois. The one game we lost, we dressed less than 40 schlorship players. That was one of 4 games we lost this decade. Go back the last 14 years and we are 10-4. Lovie seems like a good human being, but turning Rantouls ship will be harder than I believe he anticipated. He will need to finish with a flurry in recruiting and I think he will grab guys that wait too long on their preferred offers late in the cycle. PJ's elite sales pitch seems to be more effective so far. Ugh!
They are jubilant over landing their QB yesterday out of Peoria. He had no other P5 offers. Zero. Maybe he will fit their system and no one else's. At least he seems to have potential if McGee can mold him. Lovie has struck out in IL this year and no spin can change that. Saint Louis is loaded and Lovie has put in the effort to land these players. Missouri is way down so he can still right the ship, but I think he needs Saint Louis this year.
I never want us to underestimate anyone. We could lose 4 in a row to Lovie. I certainly doubt that will happen, but it could. We have won 4 of the last 5 against Illinois. The one game we lost, we dressed less than 40 schlorship players. That was one of 4 games we lost this decade. Go back the last 14 years and we are 10-4. Lovie seems like a good human being, but turning Rantouls ship will be harder than I believe he anticipated. He will need to finish with a flurry in recruiting and I think he will grab guys that wait too long on their preferred offers late in the cycle. PJ's elite sales pitch seems to be more effective so far. Ugh!
In other words, when Illinois kids aren't buying what Lovie and Illinois are selling ... the window of opportunity closes very quickly. Barnett squeezed through only because he won Big in his 3rd year. That's Lovie's challenge and the measure of how long he has before the window closes. Right now, the handwriting on the wall is not promising.
GOUNUII
I hope we take the opportunity to drive them into irrelevancy. Because that is our next step IMO. Not that I hate Illinois, I really don't. But if NU wants to be consistently at the top of the heap, NU has to consistently hold other teams beneath them. We talk a lot about being competitive with the big guys like OSU but we have to dominate the bottom feeders in many aspects so that when we are recruiting head to head it will look like this year.
NU has to build a reputation of superiority. It is really a shame we lost to them twice in BB because I think the reputation, especially locally, is contagious.
I would say you are right but I would also say it would be a mistake for the Illini. This is a program headed for the gutter and the fastest way would be to give up on Lovie that soon. Lovie has some good coaches and if he gets coach-able kids, he can win. It just won't be in year 3 or 4 or 5. They have to stick with him for a long time. If they do, they will have a respectable program. If they dump Lovie after next season, they will be in the gutter for the next 5-10 years. They would have lost the state, they would have lost a program with a good enough name to draw the right coach. They won't be able to row their way out of that situation.
Disagree. NU needs a rivalry. The only way Illinois will be a rivalry is if both teams are relevant. I'd much rather see both team ranked and battling than one team god and one irrelevant. Think Michigan-OSU football (at least in the Bo-Woody years), or Duke-UNC hoops. When it is embarrassing to lose (like NU's 2 losses to UoI last year in hoops) then you don't have a rivalry.
A sad sack Illinois football is bad for us. We want IL high school kids excited about playing football for NU against a competitive Illini team. We want Illinois to be competitive with bowl aspirations before we thwart them late in the season.
Josh Whitman is not dumb like Mike Thomas. He will be patient with Lovie. He will not chase a lasagna quick fix. He won't tolerate clowns at Illinois athletics.
Josh Whitman is not dumb like Mike Thomas. He will be patient with Lovie. He will not chase a lasagna quick fix. He won't tolerate clowns at Illinois athletics.
Don't think I've ever heard a kid say "I picked NU because I get to play against Illinois." I'm perfectly fine kicking the crap out of a bad Illinois program every year.
[QUOTE="gocatsgo2003, post: 416943, member: 602"I'm perfectly fine kicking the crap out of a bad Illinois program every year.[/QUOTE]
Yep
Yep
I grew up in Central Illinois. Every year, my father would buy tickets for an Illini football game. I saw Dick Butkus play his first game. Most of my high school friends went to UofI. I am with GCG and am more than happy to see us kick the crap out of them annually in recruiting and on the field. We have enough competition for the best players in the state with schools like Notre Dame, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Of course not. But the rivalry matters to local kids who stay and attend the schools.
Not much fun in my book kicking the snot out of a bad team. And I don't worry about us recruiting vs. Illinois.
Actually having Illinois at or near the bottom of the conference is good for NU. Hopefully they stay there along with Rutgers, Purdue and Indiana. next NU needs to start winning consistently against Minnesota, Io-a, Wisconsin and Nebraska. next up should be MSU, Maryland and Pen St.. Then there is Michigan and OSU. Also I don't think Lovie and his wife will be around Champaign for long and it won't be Whitman's choice.
