Illinois Football: 3 observations from the Illini loss to Wisconsin

2. I don’t know what to do with Brandon Peters

Coming into the 2020 campaign, I was excited to see Brandon Peters come back because I thought he was going to take a leap from a solid player in 2019 to a contender for the NFL Draft in 2020.

Boy, was I dead wrong.

Peters fell right back into his old tendencies on Friday night against Wisconsin. He finished the game with 87 yards, 0 touchdowns and 0 interceptions. His completion percentage was awful as he completed just 42.1-percent of his passes.

If a person just looked at Peters’ box score, you would think Illinois went up against an Alabama-level defense. That wasn’t the case at all. The Wisconsin defense isn’t amazing by any means. They are good, but a Big Ten quarterback should be able to throw for more than 87 yards on 8-of-19 passing.

All night long Peters was disappointing. He would take the snap and immediately look to roll out or would panic and try to pull the ball down and run. There is no clock in his head on when to get rid of the ball. Once or twice did I see Peters actually go through his progressions and it worked out when he did.

When Peters would actually throw the ball, it was rarely accurate, and this would either lead to an Illinois receiver dropping the ball or a Wisconsin defender acting in disgust because they dropped an easy interception. There were also too many occasions where Peters couldn’t get the ball to the wide receiver. He would skip it into them.

So, as of right now, I am not sure what to make of Peters at quarterback. I know he can put up solid numbers in games. I have seen it with my own two eyes. But games like the one on Friday night are unacceptable.