Illinois Football: 4 observations from the Illini loss to Maryland

4. The offensive line has to be better

Coming into the game against Maryland, the Illinois offensive line was banged up. Center Doug Kramer was out with injury, which is a big blow to the overall run and pass blocking.

Blake Jeresaty had to move over to center. But even with the change in the offensive line, this doesn’t excuse the awful play on Friday night.

The entire night the offensive line struggled in both phases of the game. I will address the run blocking first. The only reason Illinois finished with good running numbers was due to the fact Josh McCray carried the entire Maryland defense on multiple occasions.

Reggie Love did all he could to find any semblance of a gap. Most of the time, there was no room to run because the offensive line couldn’t open a hole. I remember one occasion on a play outside where all we needed was one block, but Vederian Lowe looked lost and couldn’t find his man.

That leads me into the pass blocking phase. Wow, we were bad on Friday night. There was little to no protection for Brandon Peters. The biggest culprit of the bad blocking was, again, Lowe. He had one of the worst nights I have seen him have in an Illinois uniform. The defensive end was constantly getting around Lowe the entire night. This put so much pressure on Peters to scramble.

The strongest part of the Illinois football team should be their offensive line. That isn’t the case at all. I have been disappointed with how the Illini front five have played this season. Their bad block reared its ugly head again against the Terrapins.