Illinois Fighting Illini Football Preview, Schedule, Record Precitions - Off Tackle Empire

It brings me little joy to report that the Illinois Fighting Illini will begin playing competition football in just three short days.

I say this because I’ve never felt lower or more empty in my entire life than I felt immediately following the last time I watched this team. It wasn’t entirely about football, but football sure could have done more to help!

On Thursday, the Illini have the opportunity to follow up the absolute master class in cynicism validation that was 2023 by picking up the most embarrassing loss in program history.

They’re not actually going to do it though. They won’t come close, in fact. It’s the kind of game that can’t really tell you anything positive about the state of the team.

So what CAN we know about this team?

I. Opening

A. Case History

In 2022, Illinois notched its first winning season in fifteen years. Despite fumbling the last opportunity they will ever have to compete for a Big Ten title, they brought incredible amounts of joy and an equal measure of optimism. This, after all, had been year 2 of head coach Bret Bielema’s reign. Who knows what the future could hold for this era?

The answer to that question: every single Illini skeptic. Illinois simply did what they’ve done following every regular-season winning record since John Mackovic’s 1992 departure. They won five games.

Put 2023 right next to 2008, 2002, 2000, 1995 and 1993.

Winning Seasons: 1992, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2007, 2022

Five-Win Followups To Winning Seasons: 1993, 1994, 2000, 2003, 2008, 2023

Zero Big Ten Wins: 1997, 2003, 2005, 2012, 2017

B. Opening Statement

There are two other types of seasons since 1991.

Bowling At 6-6: 2010, 2011, 2014, 2019

The last three coaches to achieve one of the above seasons were all fired by the beginning of the next full 12-game season.

Reader, I posit to you that this season will be in line with the fifth and most common kind of season.

Nothing Happened: 1998, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021.

This is the territory in which the 2024 season will live.

II. Discovery

Illinois Football Will Either Get With The Times Or Get Left Behind

What Needs To Happen For Illinois Fighting Illini Football In 2024

Illinois Roster Review w/ Steve Braun — QUACK 12 (quack12podcast.com) (This whole series is worth a listen, an Oregon writer has done extremely deep dives on the Big Ten rosters and compared his takeaway with what various team bloggers believe about their own team)

Mailbag Time: Ask Illini Questions, Get Illini Answers

Predictions for the Illinois Fighting Illini Season

Illini Century: Red Grange and the Greatest College Game of All Time

III. Timeline of Events

Aug 29 (Thursday) – vs Eastern Illinois

Sept 7 – vs (22) Kansas*

Sept 14 – Homecoming vs Central Michigan

Sept 20 (Friday) – @ Nebraska

Sept 28 – @ (8) Penn State

Oct 12 – vs Purdue

Oct 19 – Memorial Stadium 100th Anniversary Game vs. (9) Michigan

Oct 26 – @ (3) Oregon

Nov 2 – vs Minnesota

Nov 16 – vs Michigan State

Nov 23 – @ Rutgers (ILLINUTGERS)

Nov 30 – @ Northwestern (Wrigley Field)

*Veteran podcast listeners, DID I NOT TELL YOU THIS EXACT THING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? I called “Illinois hosts ranked Kansas” all the way back when David Beaty was hired in Lawrence.

IV. Appeal to Nihilism

I have picked up some Pavlovian conditioning after last November in which thinking about Illinois football causes a distress response, but I’ve been holding my hand on that hot stove because, as I first noted roughly 10 years ago when I started posting here, SOMEONE MUST DEFEND THEIR HONOR IN THIS THE ARENA OF BIG TEN SHITPOSTING

But it’s exhausting.

In my Closing Arguments last year, I noted the following:

For most of my time at OTE, I’ve been out here asking myself why I let a college football team bring me despair when I have plenty of good stuff going on. Irony of all ironies, I now find myself with plenty of not-so-great things going on, but at least I have Illini Football to be my rock. I have no emotional safety net for a repeat of 2008.

We all knew they were going to do it, didn’t we?

As for how it happened, it can be boiled down to the loss of Ryan Walters and the entire secondary on defense, and a shaky offensive line no longer having the steady hand of Tommy DeVito or the crushing running of Chase Brown to move the chains over on the offensive side.

But it’s late August, and I’ve seen a lot of speculation from those close to the program that this offense is going to be the best we’ve seen in Champaign for a long time.

Why? Because we plugged several transfers in on the O line and our quarterback has enormous potential based on his physical tools? Zakhari Franklin is a hell of an addition at receiver provided he’s healthy and develops the timing with Luke Altmyer, but I just don’t see it as a foregone conclusion that the Illini offense will be generational.
If our offense is indeed fantastic, well…our best offenses in the post-Zook era were 2013 and 2018. Those also had the worst defenses of this time frame! A bad 2023 defense (29+ppg) loses a first team All-American DT and suddenly it makes sense why Illini fans are talking about how good the offense is going to be: an elite offense is our only path to 6 wins this year.

I can’t see six wins. Purdue will be bad, but Ryan Walters humiliated us last year and surely still knows everything we’re going to run. I don’t have a ton of faith in Rutgers and it’s hard to imagine losing to Athan Kaliakmanis, but it’s ILLINUTGERS. The records don’t matter. Minnesota is more than an opportunity, it’s probably one that Illinois needs to win. Michigan State will have a brand new roster, but they can beat us if their coaches are better than ours. It’s mid-November when all the reps start mattering and well-coached teams play their best. Back in 2021, I saw Illinois’ November performance as an encouraging sign about their coaching. Do we have a coaching advantage, or are we once again on the back foot? Let’s find out!

We’re in an 18-team Big Ten after expansion reached what’s clearly an unstable equilibrium. Three top-10 opponents in four games doesn’t even present the opportunity it used to. In 1989, a preseason top 5 team losing at home to Illinois would end their national title hopes. A 4-8 season could still be memorable if you could crush a frontrunner’s dreams.

In 2007, such a team losing at home to Illinois would suddenly need a lot of things to break their way to get a shot at playing for a national title. It was still a massive blow, made all the more crippling by the (warranted) lack of respect for Illinois football in the media.

If Oregon was #1 and lost to Illinois on October 26th, it would barely matter for their championship hopes. It might cost them a high seed, but there’s no such thing as a season-ender anymore.

At Illinois, we’re probably never getting back to a bowl game. I went to what’s certain to be our last ever sold out game back in September 2016. But there was always the chance that we could destroy someone’s season some Saturday afternoon, and now we don’t even have that.

All of this shit has become unstable and transitory in the name of making a more compelling TV product to sell to people who don’t like football. Illinois won’t remain at the top level for much longer. There’s maybe 2 or 3 more big consolidation moves left before the “trim the fat” stage begins. We’ll be first on the chopping block. Vox will have long shuttered this blog by then.