The Illinois football team is finishing off their eight-game regular season with the No. 14 ranked Northwestern Wildcats.
Northwestern has a good program this season, but Illinois is looking to finish off a weird year in the right way. I think the Wildcats are vulnerable, and the Illini might be able to sneak in and win one on the road. But Illinois is going to have to do a few things before that happens.
Here are four ways the Illini can beat the Northwestern Wildcats.
1. Make Peyton Ramsey make mistakes
Northwestern is having a good season led by former Indiana quarterback, Peyton Ramsey. The kid has a good arm and even better legs, but he is prone to making errors through the air.
With a career touchdown-to-interception ratio of 1.7:1, Ramsey’s passing has actually hit an all-time low this season with the Wildcats.
Through six games, Ramsey has thrown for 8 touchdowns and 6 interceptions while throwing for a career-low 59.1-percent completion percentage. What that means is Ramsey doesn’t know the playbook fully, and this has likely to have caused him to be even more inaccurate with the ball.
This is a perfect chance for a ball-hawking Illinois defense to force a couple of turnovers through the air. The Illini haven’t been great at much this season, but intercepting the ball is a strong point.
Illinois currently averages 1.2 interceptions per game, which ranks No. 21 in the nation. That is a solid stat, especially when we are about to play a quarterback in Ramsey who has had multiple interceptions in two out of the six games he has played in 2020.
Mistakes by Ramsey is going to be crucial for Illinois to be competitive in this game. Northwestern has a good team, but we can change the momentum of this game if we can force a few bad mistakes through the air.