Illinois Football: Good, bad, and ugly from the Illini quarterbacks through week 3

Ugly

Again, Tommy DeVito has been an asset for the Illinois football program at the quarterback position. They have a good passer, and that excites me moving forward.

As mentioned in the previous slide, the bad for DeVito is his third quarter passing. This bad might just be an anomaly, but the numbers bear out that DeVito’s completion percentage drops dramatically in the third quarter.

The bad for DeVito is only a small issue that I have. There is one big issue that I have, though. The ugly for DeVito is his turnovers.

DeVito has four turnovers on the season, two interceptions and two fumbles, and they have all come at pretty bad times in the game. They weren’t turnovers when we had the game easily in hand.

Let’s look at the Indiana game first. Illinois was up 17-16 in the third quarter. We were driving to expand the lead. With 2:37 to go in the third quarter, DeVito fumbled the ball on the Indiana 20-yard line. That was a huge turnover.

Illinois’ defense held strong, though. We still had the lead 17-16 in the waning moments of the game. At the Indiana 38-yard line, DeVito threw an interception with 5:53 to go in the fourth quarter. This would ultimately doom the Illini.

If it wasn’t for the stout Illini defense, we probably would have dropped the Virginia game too. In the first series against the Cavaliers, DeVito threw an interception at the Illinois 38-yard line. Somehow we managed to jump out to a 21-3 lead late into the second quarter, though.

With 2:36 to go until halftime and up 21-3, DeVito would then fumble the ball away to Virginia. Again, Illinois’ defense came to the rescue.

These turnovers by DeVito are ugly. We can’t keep having the ball given to the other team. It bit us in the Indiana game, and if it wasn’t for our defense, Virginia might have beaten us as well. This has to stop.