We only got a sample of week two on Friday night, and the full meal starts in hours, as Illinois football begins the festivities.
The first game of the season for the Illini went fine. No one expected anything more or less, as Illinois throttled an undermanned Western Illinois program, 52-3. Northwestern beat the same Leathernecks squad last night, 42-7. Doing the always reliable comparison game, that puts Illinois a two-touchdown better program than the Wildcats, which makes sense.
But enough of the FCS talk. Illinois is now entering big boy football on Saturday. This is the real deal. Duke isn’t just a basketball school anymore. The Blue Devils put a good product on the football field, led by Tulane transfer Darian Mensah.
This is the first sniff test of the season for the Illini. We are going into this matchup as a 2.5-point favorite on the road. I haven’t looked it up, but I can’t imagine the last time Illinois was a favorite on the road against a non-conference FBS opponent.
At one time in the summer, when speculation was running rampant because no football was going on, Illinois was a trendy pick to be in the College Football Playoff. I feel like every pundit was putting the Orange and Blue in the mix. That has since worn off. You will be hard-pressed to find the Illini in a College Football Playoff prediction now.
To me, that is due to two things. One, the pundits are bored and need to shake things up in their predictions. Moreover, it says to me that there aren’t a lot of people who think Illinois is a legit contender.
Every game is going to be a prove-it game for the Illinois football team this season
There are a couple of handful of teams in college football that can drop a game or two and still be in the running for the College Football Playoff. One of those teams isn’t Illinois. The only case where the Illini can lose a game and still make it is if we fall to Ohio State or if we lose against another team but beat the No. 1-ranked Buckeyes.
Illinois is skating on thin ice for the entire 2025 campaign. We have to be on our game, and the game against Duke is where everything officially starts. The Western Illinois game was fun, but that wasn’t real football. That was a warm-up. It was an elevated practice.
Saturday is game one of 11 more sniff tests Illinois will go through this season. If we can pass most, if not all, then maybe we can add more to what could be a pretty magical run.