Illinois Football: Illini fans want Brandon Peters as starter

It was an ugly game for Illinois football quarterback Brandon Peters on Friday night, but most Illini fans want to keep the same course.

Despite obvious struggles by the Illinois senior quarterback, it seems that Peters is getting overwhelming support to continue to be the starter behind center for the Orange and Blue. In a poll put on by the Writing Illini on Saturday that asked who should start at quarterback for Illinois vs. Purdue, 57.9-percent of the 535 votes said Peters.

The second-place finisher was Isaiah Williams, who brought home a respectable 29.7-percent of the vote. Coran Taylor finished third with 7.9-percent, and Illinois’ third-string quarterback, Matt Robinson, finished fourth with 4.5-percent of the vote.

I published this poll without my own opinion because I wanted to see what Illini Nation was thinking. While the sample size isn’t big, the majority of the poll wants to see Peters keep his starting job and correct things on the field.

Opinion

Peters’ 8-of-19 for 87 yards on Friday was hard to watch. He struggled mightily to get the ball to the wide receiver. He would short hop some passes, or the ball would be off-target. Thankfully, Peters was able to run the ball well to make up for some of his shortcomings in the passing game.

This has started to become a trend with Peters, which is what worries me. He isn’t a transfer quarterback coming into a new situation with a new offensive coordinator anymore. Peters has been in the Rod Smith offense for a full year now and still puts up those bad numbers.

In games where Peters is playing a team that finished .500 in the regular season or better, he completes 52.7-percent of his passes for 9 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. He is 2-5 overall against those teams.

When Peters matches up against a team below .500, he completes 57.7-percent of his passes for 9 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. He is 4-3 against those teams.

Just looking at those numbers, the play of Peters decreases substantially when he plays teams who are just .500 or better. But, beyond that, the numbers when he plays sub-.500 programs are actually not very good. You should light up bad teams.

In 2019, Peters failed to complete at least 10 passes in five out of the 11 games he played. In seven out of the 11 games, he failed to hit the 55-percent completion mark. That is bad quarterback play and there is no way around it.

And now Peters starts the 2020 campaign, the season where he is supposed to have a great year and get Illinois back to relevance, with a completion percentage of 42.1-percent on 8-of-19 passing and failed to put the ball in the end zone.

My thoughts on the quarterback situation are; if we are going to have a quarterback behind center who struggles to throw the ball, why not have Isaiah Williams? Williams will struggle greatly throwing the ball, but he is a better athlete than Peters. He is going to be able to create plays with his feet. Let’s have Williams run wild and develop his passing confidence as the season progresses.

That is my two cents. I realize that Peters is going to start, probably for the entire season. Whoever ends up starting, I just want to see wins. I want what is best for the Illinois football program.