Iowa’s football prowess often goes unnoticed ... until you have to line up against Kirk Ferentz’s rowdies.
Oh, they don’t send out sudden-strike running backs like Wisconsin (a quarter century of Ron Dayne and close copies Montee Bell, Melvin Gordon and Jonathon Taylor), or flashy NFL quarterbacks.
No, they’re constructed around tight ends who catch passes, throwback fullbacks with collisions on their mind, and time-developed linemen who carry their lunch pails with belligerent pride.
They tend to maul opponents to death, which is what happened Saturday at Illinois.
Unable to extract themselves from early starts at their 15-, 8- and 11-yard lines, the Hawks soon reversed the field position on Illinois on this chilly Saturday. After Brandon Peters’ two TD passes sent Illinois ahead, 14-0, it was all downhill, the Illini managing to advance the ball just 50 yards in the next six possessions in a 35-21 loss.
Contributing to the strangest homecoming on record was the unfortunate thinning of the UI defense throughout the encounter, not only seeing standouts like tackle Jamal Woods and cornerback Nate Hobbs helped off the field but linebacker Khalan Tolson joining non-participants Tarique Barnes and Delano Ware on the sideline.
Quarterback talkPeters hit his first eight passes, but only two of his last 10.
That brought redshirt freshman Isaiah Williams into the spotlight — the same guy who ran for a school QB record of 192 yards against Rutgers — and even though the game was lost, the 5-foot-10 speedster lit a fire with late marches of 63 and 75 yards.
His 29-yard TD pass to 5-foot-9 sub Carlos Sandy in the final minute raised two questions:
(1) Who is the quarterback when the Illini line up at Northwestern next Saturday?
(2) Are his passing skills sufficient for Williams to be the starting quarterback when the Illini resume in the fall of 2021?
And then there’s the elephant in the room. Will it be Lovie Smith making the call after his fifth straight loss to Iowa and a five-year record of 10-32 in Big Ten play?
At the very least, Williams gives Illinois fans something to chew on as this weird season winds down.
It all boils down to recruitingBut what does the future hold? Iowa has now gone 12-1 against its eastern neighbor since the idle seasons of 2001-02.
In those 12 losses, Illinois has averaged exactly 10.4 points, and Iowa has played 21 consecutive games without allowing as many as 25 points in any of them. They’ve won 52 of 73 games in five-plus seasons, and 16 of the 21 losses came by single digits.
That’s consistency. Nor has Ferentz’s operation shown any on-field effects from a summer of racial uprisings.
So they’ll have a jammed stadium in Iowa City when virus restrictions are ultimately lifted. But what of Illinois? Can the UI revive an increasingly apathetic fan base that once averaged 70,000 in the 1982-86 period but had dwindled into the 30,000s (sold) prior to the pandemic?
Another weak class of prep football recruits is set to sign with Illinois from Dec. 16-18.
The announced group of 15 three-star preps ranks No. 68 nationally by 247sports, and is ahead of only Purdue in the Big Ten.
Seven conference members show 2021 listings in the Top 25, headed (of course) by Ohio State at No. 2 with four 5-star and a dozen 4-star prospects.
The current Illini freshman class was listed No. 88 by 247sports. The other major ratings organization, Rivals.com, lists the UI’s last four classes, beginning in 2018, at Nos. 50, 73, 88 and 69.
Offsetting these low numbers are two considerations: In coming days, Smith will sit down with a large group of seniors to determine who might take advantage of the NCAA’s virus-related extra season. And Smith has made it clear that Illinois will be busy in a transfer market that will soon allow all first-time transfers to play immediately.
Smith’s plan was evident this year when he bolstered 12 freshman signees with nine transfers.
But a plan to reverse the recent woes against Iowa? That’s a bit more unclear.
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December 07, 2020 at 01:00AM
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Tate | So many questions going forward | Sports | news-gazette.com - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
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