Illinois Football: 4 observations from the Illini loss to UTSA

Illinois football fell to 1-1 on the season Saturday, as they dropped a close game to a tough UTSA program.

This was a rough loss after beating Nebraska the week before. The Illini played decent against the Cornhuskers, but the Roadrunners were a better team. They were more experienced and, overall, a more talented team. Illinois experienced that on Saturday night.

Here are four observations from the Illinois football loss to UTSA.

1. Optically, that was a bad loss

I know that UTSA is a program that has some real talent. They returned a ton of experience for their 2021 campaign.

UTSA also had a good year in 2020. They finished 7-4 in the regular season and then fell just short to No. 19 Louisiana in a bowl game. UTSA is a good team, there is no questioning that fact. But this loss doesn’t look good for the Illini.

If you are someone who actually looked at how talented UTSA was on paper, you aren’t shocked by this loss. But most people just overlooked UTSA, therefore this loss looks horrific to those people because it is the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The Bret Bielema era is just starting. I get that and things will continue to improve each week. He has a roster full of players who he didn’t recruit and who haven’t played under him. It will take time to gel. The only worry I have about the optics of the loss to UTSA is with recruiting.

It was already hard enough for Bielema to recruit players to Illinois based on the past decade or so of losing, and now a tough loss to UTSA has to hurt a little bit when it comes to the recruiting trail.

At the end of the day, Bielema will recover from this loss. It is just a little speed bump in the rebuild.