Illinois Football: 3 observations from the Illini loss to Minnesota

1. Illinois continues to self-implode

Coming into the game on Saturday against Minnesota, I made it a point that Illinois had a chance to win the game if they could win the turnover battle.

That statement remains true that their chances of winning greatly improve if they can win the turnover battle. In fact, they won the turnover battle against the Gophers 2-0. But you can’t ignore the other parts of the game that take discipline, or the turnovers really don’t matter.

Illinois’ lack of discipline on the football field reared its ugly head on Saturday. While the Illini won the turnover battle, they gave up over a football field worth of penalties. Minnesota finished the game with two penalties for 22 yards, which is pretty good. Illinois, on the other hand, had 12 penalties for 120 yards.

This extravagant penalty display increased Illinois’ average to eight penalties per game, which ranks No. 105 out of 130 teams in the nation. This number is also worse than their number last year when the Illini averaged 6.7 penalties per game.

On top of having that many penalties and giving up that many yards due to penalties, some of them were absolute backbreakers for the Orange and Blue.

Illinois extended Minnesota’s drive with a penalty that led to a touchdown. The Illini had bad penalties on third down multiple times which made their yard to gain 10+ yards. They also had it down in the red zone but then had a big 15-yard personal foul which ended up driving them back to the 25-yard line.

The Illini continue to shoot themselves in the football. This is a sign of a lack of discipline. This is year five of the Lovie Smith regime. We shouldn’t be seeing this sloppy of play from this experienced of a team.