For the second straight week, an opponent tried to give Illinois a win with its mistakes. Unlike the Iowa game, however, the Illini made the most of Penn State’s mistakes, and grabbed a 16-14 victory. The win was the team’s first Senior Day victory in seven years.
And, thus, Tim Beckman lives to die another day.
Saturday’s game at Memorial Stadium was a weird one:
- Exhibit A: David Reisner was the goat for missing a field goal with the wind at his back that would have won the game with 3:29 to play, then he was the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) for making a field goal with the wind at his back to win the game with eight seconds left to play.
- Exhibit B: Illinois’ defense, the same group that looked like a high school team against Purdue, basically won this game by not allowing Penn State’s offense to move the ball, especially in the Nittany Lions’ final drive of the game (allowing just nine yards and giving the offense the ball back with a little less than two minutes to play).
- Exhibit C: Illinois’s lead back, Josh Ferguson, was held to just five rushes (a coach’s decision), leaving the offensive load squarely on the shoulders of number two running back Donovonn Young and back-up quarterback Reilly O’Toole.
- Exhibit D: Illinois won its second Big Ten game of the season.
For the Illini it didn’t matter whether the game was weird or not. The team was just happy and ready to praise each other afterward (giving the obligatory and well-trained “We played as a unit” response to almost every question asked; it was like a Key and Peele sketch talking to them). As Beckman is fond of saying, “A dubya is a dubya,” and “All wins feel good.” I don’t if all fans felt as good about the way the team played, though.
The biggest story for many people in this game is how Reilly O’Toole replaced Wes Lunt and won the game for Illinois. But saying O’Toole won the game is totally misleading.
In his first three plays, O’Toole ran three designed runs and gained six yards, forcing a punt. But then Penn State ran offsides and gave Illinois a second chance, which they took advantage of to the tune of seven points. Sure, the final outcome was good, but only after three straight play-calling blunders were erased.
After that touchdown drive O’Toole was able to move the ball with some proficiency through the middle of the field, but he didn’t come up with the final ball again, instead leaving it to Reisner’s foot to score for the Illini. I don’t know if Wes Lunt would have been throwing touchdowns in those situations — he didn’t show anything of his best form in the quarter-and-a-half that he played — but I don’t think Lunt was given the best plays to work with (on multiple third downs in the first quarter Illinois ran routes that were shorter than the yardage necessary for the first down, so it’s not exactly Lunt’s fault for throwing to the open receiver that was short of a first down).
This brings me back to the weirdness of this game. Once again the play calling was bad, but it wasn’t the usual suspect, defensive coordinator Tim Banks. Instead it was offensive coordinator Bill Cubit and Beckman whose decisions were suspect. Banks’ squad won the football game for Illinois. Jihad Ward was a beast off the end, Darius Mosley filled in incredibly after V’Angelo Bentley went down with injury, and walk-on Clayton Fejedelem (who recently earned a scholarship) was a boss in the secondary.
It’s hard to square that in my mind. How this defense went from the worst thing about Illinois to the unit that was winning football games. But the defense being outstanding still isn’t the weirdest thing about this game.
The weirdest thing is that this Illini team is somehow still in the hunt for a bowl game. At 5-6, should they beat Northwestern in what Beckman called the “State Championship,” Illinois would be bowl eligible. They’d have accomplished what everyone thought they could before the season and what no one thought they could at midseason. And, of course, they’d have fully guaranteed a fourth season in Champaign for Tim Beckman.
That’s fucking weird.
