Let’s get right to it, but along the way we must remember….isn’t a 30-0 win EXACTLY what we wanted to see?
Jeff at The BBC
Pryor to continue improvement – Incomplete grade, because the rain changed the gameplan too much to properly give Pryor any real opportunity to show improvement.
Two-parter – Subtitled “Fix the reasons we lost in 2007″
Part One – Do NOT allow Illinois to convert on 3rd-and-long – The game didn’t start off well on this point, allowing a 3rd-and-11 conversion and a 3rd-and-6 conversion in the first quarter. But when the Bucks started to take the game over, Illinois found themselves getting shut down on anything bigger than a 3rd-and-3. I’ll give them a thumbs-up for their performance here.
Part Two – Competent officiating, please! – After what we saw at the end of the Michigan game, anything short of a ref stabbing Jim Tressel with an icepick would have been considered adequate officiating.
MaliBuckeye
Juice on his back– Oh, yes I think that we can call this one in our favor. Juice wasn’t all Tebowed-out on the turf, but he was down enough to keep his head out of the game.
More of the same – Defensively, it was exactly what we called for. Another shutout. Success!!!
No false starts – One. Thats still one too many. The good news was that our lone false start came in the 4th quarter when the game was well out of reach.
Return of Gidorah, squared – Receiving yards were down (the driving rain had everything to do with that), but the rushing yards were a nice sight. Three rushers with more than 5 yards per carry, all of them over 50 yards, I’ll take it. A triple-headed beast of rushers will win a lot of games.
Jim
Establish the run game –See the above. Watching Saine crack off 9 yards per carry in the first half was what broke the game open, and it may have given him top spot in the depth chart for Indiana.
Our line needs to move people off the ball – Victory! Your team doesn’t average 5.1 yards per carry without some serious O-Line domination. Pryor was sacked only once all day, too.
Limit making dumb decisions, Pryor – Again, there’s no way to verify his success or failure in this quest. Try again during a better-weather game like this Saturday at Indiana. Or maybe not, because the forecast calls for 30% chance of showers. Hey, at least we know we can run in the rain!
Make Juice Williams one dimensional – After watching the game a second time, I’m pretty sure that Juice Williams was rendered less-than-one dimensional. Is zero-dimensional possible? Yes, yes it is
Eric
Juice Williams accounts for less than 200 yards of offense – Hell to the yeah. Juice was held to a meager 95 yards of offense. He had only been held to less than 200 once in his career before Saturday.
At least 4 sacks from our D-Line – Ask for four, ye shall get four.
The Broken Record: Continue to throw to the TE’s and RB’s -Again, we didn’t throw it much in the rain…but three of the 13 passes did go to the TE/RB positions. So can we call that a success?
Bonus: The Game – Did ya see enough of it, Eric????
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