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Illinois Football: Predicting the Rest of the Season Off Recruiting Rankings
The Illinois football team played their worst game of the short season against Western Michigan and the score at the end of the game reflected that fact.
There isn’t much to rehash from this beat down that the Illinois Fighting Illini endured on Saturday.
Ke’Shawn Vaughn only received the rock 8 times for a total of 22 yards. The team as a whole only had 3 yards rushing. That isn’t a typo, the number is 3.
Despite having a solid completion rate, Wes Lunt didn’t have a great game turning the ball over multiple times which enabled Western Michigan to score.
The defense wasn’t on point either. They gave up 287 yards on the ground to a Western Michigan team known for their passing attack.
Overall, the Illini really laid an egg in this game.
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I have heard many people say we just don’t have the talent on the field to compete with teams.
While I think Illinois has some solid players at certain positions, I do think they lack the playmakers necessary to compete in college football.
This fact has been made clear the last two games in which Illinois couldn’t either close the game out or even compete like we saw against the Broncos.
I wanted to see if the talent and depth are really an issue with this team based on numbers. I looked at the Illini schedule and then took the past five recruiting classes for each team to see where the Illini ranked.
Well, the first game was against an FCS team so that should be a win every time. Murray State should not be close to the Illini and they weren’t.
The next game was against North Carolina and the score reflected what the recruiting rankings reflect.
North Carolina has had an average recruiting rank the last 5 classes of 32.2. This blows the Illini out of the water who has averaged a class ranking of 61.
That now brings us to the Western Michigan game.
Based purely on recruiting rankings over the last five seasons, Illinois should have won this game. The Illini had an average of 61 the last 5 seasons while the Broncos have only averaged a class rank of 70.
This was an upset according to the recruiting rankings.
If you continue to base predictions off recruiting rankings in the last 5 seasons, the schedule looks mighty bleak for the Illini.
The following teams all have a class rank average over the last 5 seasons better than Illinois; Nebraska 25.8, Rutgers 51.8, Michigan 19.6, Minnesota 59.4, Michigan State 30.2, Wisconsin 45.2, Iowa 50.4, and Northwestern 58.4.
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You might think, wow that is a lot of teams and you would be correct. That is every team the rest of the way out except for Purdue.
Purdue has averaged a class rank of 61.2, which is only .2 worse than Illinois.
The main reason I took the recruiting rankings for just the past 5 seasons is because those are the players that still could don their respective jerseys in college.
What can an Illini fan conclude from looking at the numbers I just gave them?
Well, Illinois recruiting hasn’t been on par and that is why we are seeing losses to teams that we shouldn’t be losing to.
If you just based wins and losses off the recruiting ranks over the last 5 classes then Illinois would have gone 3-9 this season. But, they just lost to the Broncos so that record would be 2-10 now.
This is also a reason not to blame Lovie Smith for what is happening on the football field right now. He has to deal with what the last two coaches left him.
Like I mentioned last week, the Lovie era isn’t about one game or even the 2016 season. It is about building recruiting classes and that in-turn will build programs we can be proud of.
Illinois football will be great once again, we just have to wait a little longer than we would like. I promise the Illini will be back and We Will Win.
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