Illinois Football: Lovie Smith passes evaluation after year one
The Illinois football team finished the 2016 season with a 3-9 record. This might get some people down in a normal situation, but everything is different with the Illini.
That 3-9 record doesn’t dictate where momentum lies with this Illinois football program. Illinois has more momentum and positive vibes right now than it has had in the last eight years.
Lovie Smith is the main reason why this program seems to be trending in the right direction. He continues to build and lead this program in the right direction and it all started about a year ago.
March 7, 2017 marked the one year anniversary of the hiring of Lovie. This was a monumental moment in history of the program. Not only did a newly hired athletic director, Josh Whitman, make a quick move on the head coach of the football program, but he had a homerun hire in Lovie as well.
Now that one year under Lovie has been completed we can all look at the progress this team has made. You have to look deeper than just the record, though. While the Illini finished 3-9, which was worse than the 2015 season, there are other factors to judge Lovie on.
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The first area to look at is recruiting. Getting a better quality of player into the program is a huge task for a new head coach and Lovie passed this test in year one.
Lovie had to come in and create relationships with recruits that other coaches had four years to build. That is a difficult task but he still managed to pull in the No. 34 class in the nation. That is just in year one as well.
It took the previous regime four seasons to be able to get that good of a recruiting class. Even then, the other three classes struggled mightily. The fact that Lovie snagged the No. 34 class in year one gives me confidence future classes will be good as well.
The other area I want to look at is on-field decisions. This doesn’t mean play calling because we don’t have the talent to really judge the playcalling just yet.
What I mean by on-field decisions are the personnel moves. One example is the benching of Ke’Shawn Vaughn. This seemed like a weird move at the time but something happened there and it enabled Kendrick Foster and Reggie Corbin to shine. Illinois now has a stable backfield for 2017.
Lovie also realized that some of the older talent on the team just wasn’t up to par so he played a lot of freshmen and younger players who also had talent. This was a decision that was probably hard but he needed to find out who can play.
Playing the younger guys showed what holes Illinois had on the team so Lovie could recruit those players to fill those holes. There were a lot of young players who emerged out of this decision and I am excited to see how they develop over time.
In year one there isn’t a ton you can evaluate Lovie on, but recruiting and on-field personnel is two areas that I focused on. He has not only passed both with flying colors but I have more confidence in this program than I have had since the team went to the Rose Bowl.
Next: Quick look at the 2017 schedule for the Illini
This team is on the right track and I can’t wait to see how the future unfolds. I truly believe that we will win.