Illinois Football: 5 observations from the Illini win over Virginia

4. Illinois has to be less sloppy

A 24-3 victory over Virginia has a lot of positives. The way Chase Brown played, the secondary shutting down the wide receivers, and the front seven being a menace to Virginia were all big-time contributors to why we won the game. But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows on Saturday.

Illinois was way too sloppy with the football for much of the game. Let’s start with the first half and the turnovers.

I would argue that most teams in the country would get blown out of the water if they had four turnovers in a game, let alone in the first half. Illinois would cough the ball up four times in the first half against the Cavaliers. Thanks to our defense, we went into halftime up 21-3.

The turnovers were sloppy turnovers too. It’s not like Virginia made good plays. It was all on the Illini players. Tommy DeVito threw a bad pass to open the game that was picked off. Brown fumbled the ball away. Pat Bryant was going in for a score only to have the ball stripped right before the end zone because he wasn’t holding it well enough. And then DeVito would fumble the ball on a sack late in the second half.

I am not going to just harp on the ugly turnovers either. The field goal kicking was bad for the Illini as well. We can’t be okay with missing field goals at the rate we are missing them this season. It will eventually bite us in one of these games.

Illinois was up 21-3 early in the second half, and a field goal would have helped in sealing up the game. But we missed two field goals in a three-drive span. That could have let Virginia back in the game and given them momentum.

I am used to having confidence in Illinois’ kickers. I don’t have that confidence anymore. Caleb Griffin went 1-of-3 against Virginia. He is now 4-of-8 on the season. 50% from field goal range is not good. Illinois needs to get that fixed.