IlliniGuys.com needed some extra time to discuss with Illinois coaches what unique set of circumstances and trouble transpired throughout the week and the 60-minute game vs. Purdue.

Matt Stevens, IlliniGuys Staff Writer

October 17, 2024

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Some IlliniGuys.com subscribers might have been wondering where the film review was this week, am I right?

Well, this one took longer to put together and it’s for a simple reason. I needed to make sure the best I could that what I was seeing on the television copy was even similar to the interpretation of the coaching staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This is part of my guarantee to you, the loyal subscriber, because the simple fact of the matter is oftentimes, I must rely on outside expertise versus attempting to convince others that my evaluation expertise is at a high enough level to preside judgement in certain situations.

Here’s another fact of the matter coming out of last weekend’s 50-49 overtime victory by then-No. 23 Illinois over a struggling Purdue program: Purdue scored 46 points in the final 30 minutes and overtime of action in the contest. Here’s another safe conclusion: Illini fans lost their collective minds over the previously mentioned fact of the matter.

My task with this particular film review was answering the why and how it could be rectified within a week when Michigan will arrive at Memorial Stadium in the following weekend for arguably a new most important game of the Bret Bielema Illini era.

We’re going to use the start of this film review to answer the why in regard to how Purdue were able to hit 15 big plays (pass plays of 15 yards or more; run plays of 10 yards or more) that accounted for 373 (69.5 percent) of its 536 total yards.

Illini QB/Defensive Preparation Wasn’t Nearly Perfect Throughout the Week

Maybe it’s possible Bielema, Illinois defensive coordinator Aaron Henry and defensive backs coach Corey Parker all have their stories perfectly in order when asked throughout this week by IlliniGuys.com to effectively lie about how they just underestimated the skill of Purdue quarterback Ryan Browne. However, what is much more likely of course, is all three men are being as honest as possible that Illinois’ defense found out about the same time, Thursday afternoon (which was after the Illini’s Thursday morning practice session) as the general public that Hudson Card was in concussion protocol and wouldn’t be making the trip to Champaign-Urbana. So, on Thursday late afternoon, here is the situation for the Illinois coaching staff as it was portrayed to IlliniGuys.com: They’ve just completed their last full-pad contact practice and had just a walk-through on Friday as the only on-field action to prepare for what they now believed would be a different philosophical offensive plan because Browne’s skills simply do not match Card in many ways.

Bielema arrived at the Smith Family Football Complex extremely early on Friday morning to personally do a cut-up of Ryan Browne’s previous action at Purdue while Henry attempted to adapt the weekly game plan they’d practiced all week to a scheme more likely to handle the eye candy nature of a triple option scheme.

“We basically had from Friday morning to kickoff to figure out what they were going to do because of who we were playing, I figured they’d have something different for us and more suited to (Ryan Browne),” Bielema said on Monday.

Let it be known and stated clearly: This is the nightmare scenario of all defensive coordinators.

“Absolutely the worst-case scenario and trust me, if you’ve done this job long enough, it happens to everybody at least once,” A current Football Bowl Subdivision defensive coordinator said. “If this happened that way at Illinois, which is more plausible than fans would likely believe, I can imagine the chaos in that building trying to figure out what to throw out, what to go over in the Friday walk-through and the gameday adjustments from drive to drive that the staff and players have to make. Just terrible.”

The plan that Henry came up with was to simplify the scheme. Illinois played a majority of man coverage in the back end and the objective was to load the line-of-scrimmage so that the edge rushers of the five-man Bear front (Seth Coleman and Gabe Jacas) wouldn’t be on a proverbial island forced to read the handoff and immediately make a play on the football.

It’s clear, based on the answers that Henry gave to media on Monday and Parker gave to media on Wednesday, Illinois’ mistake was not getting out of the aggressive coverages that worked so well in the first half but were leaving their now-less veteran secondary (without cornerback Xavier Scott) vulnerable to the RPO action in the backfield.

“It’s tough,” Illinois linebacker Dylan Rosiek said with a laugh. “It’s not easy. What we’ve got to do, no matter what scheme we’re looking at with the offense, is have better eye discipline. A lot of times, their motion or play-action was just designed to get us out of position but if we stayed home, stayed sound in our fundamentals and tackled well, we were fine.”

The misconception was it was Browne’s rushing (118 yards on 17 carries) that was the damning act toward the Illini defense, but it was the second-half adjustment and lack of eye discipline in the Illinois secondary that Purdue head coach Ryan Walters took advantage of in the final 30 minutes and overtime.

On this 53-yard touchdown pass to Jahmal Edrine, the television copy doesn’t pick this up properly, but Matthew Bailey isn’t in position to provide adequate over-the-top help as the deep safety once Browne starts rolling to his right. The double move route by Edrine immediately leaves Illinois cornerback Torrie Cox Jr. completely turned around and the Ohio transfer is all by himself down the sideline. Because Browne had effective shown on three runs for a total 48 yards, Illinois was determined to not let the Florida’s Class 8A Player of the Year and Mr. Football runner up out of high school to not break the pocket and therefore, a spy (Dylan Rosiek) was deployed to eliminate anything in the middle of the field. However, once Cox was beat, Browne knew an average meant a good chance at six points and this was likely to Illinois selling out its front seven and playing man-to-man on the outside.

Browne finished the game 5 of 8 for 124 yards and two touchdowns on throws of 10 yards or more that were down each sideline. This means Walters decided to exploit a second-half adjustment that if Illinois was going to play man coverage on the outside, they needed to use a first half deploy of Browne designed runs to suck in the safeties and draw in the second level (linebackers and nickel cornerback) of Illinois’ defensive scheme.

“I have to put our players in a better position to be successful,” Henry said. “There was some calls, some newer calls that we’d put in (during the open week of preparation) that we’d executed well throughout the week but maybe I could’ve got away from those new calls in the second half. I definitely think that could’ve helped us.”

Illini Safeties Eye Level Unacceptable

Walters simply picked on the Illinois safeties (Miles Scott but specifically Matthew Bailey) throughout the entire second half of the 50-49 overtime win.

On this 40-yard simple pitch-and-catch from Browne to tight end Max Klare, Bailey is completely sucked in as a rush defender in the ‘A’ gap (between the guard and center) leaving the middle of the field completely wide open (again, because Illinois coverage is man-to-man) and once Browne pulls the football out of the stomach of the tailback on the fake, Klare is right there for a simple pop fly pass where he’s able to get about 30 yards after the catch. Walters exploited that reckless aggressiveness of the Illini safety despite the fact that Purdue averaged just over three yards a carry inside the guards throughout the game.

Bailey and Miles Scott played each of the 62 defensive stops on Saturday and their lack of eye discipline (again probably because they were trained Monday-Thursday to see a different scheme) was not effective in reading Browne and left Illini cornerbacks on their own throughout the contest.

Is what Purdue did something Michigan can exploit?

The answer to this is yes and no.

Michigan (4-2, 2-1 in Big Ten) does a lot of its damage on the ground, which is actually just seventh in the Big Ten Conference at 191.33 yards per game, in the ‘A’ gap but it’s the Wolverines offensive line does a great job of not using double-team blocks to get the job done.

You’ll see on this first-down run by Donovan Edwards nearly two weeks ago in a loss at Washington the scheme is actually simple while looking fairly complex. On this run, the Michigan center and right guard attack the defensive tackle in this four-lineman (with only two of them in a hand down position) defensive scheme but the center immediately pulls off when he realizes that stop is held. In this scheme it’s not really about getting a push but an initial win so the center can go hunting for the linebacker. Michigan also does a really solid job of getting kick-in blocks from the tight end and that comes on the other linebacker. At this point, the entire middle of the field is secured and Edwards is able to scamper for a 10-yard plunge on a 2nd-and-4 play.

The amazing thing about Michigan’s consistency in the run game is whether Edwards or Kalel Mullings are in the game, attempting to find tendencies or tells in their run game is nearly impossible. Of 188 interior line (from guard to guard) runs this season, 97 have been to the right and 91 have been leaning toward the left side of its line. What motion they usually use is with the tight end (Colston Loveland or Max Bredeson) to find an advantage in the run game.

“They’ve played three different quarterbacks this season. No matter which one they play, I’ll tell you the one thing I know all three of them can do,” Henry said. “I’ll tell you this. No matter who is at quarterback I’m sure at some point in the course of the game, maybe at the start of the game, they got two tailbacks who are ridiculous [Donovan Edwards and Kalel Mullings] so that (quarterback) is going to turn around and hand the football off to them.”

Luke Altmyer RPO Action

One of the interesting items for Illinois in this game has been the effectiveness of its run game to set up its play-action deep attacks in the pass game.

According to Pro Football Focus data, throughout the 2024 season, Illinois quarterback Luke Altmyer has only utilized an RPO or play-action maneuver on 37 percent of his dropbacks but 12 of those 48 completions have resulted in touchdowns. The Illinois defense is still determined to get sucked in on later downs due to a run game that is being used on first down. Illinois quarterback Luke Altmyer is completing 77.4 percent of his RPO/play-action passes for 8.5 yards per attempt. What Illinois offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. is doing extremely well this season is figuring out the tendencies of the second level of the defenses he’s facing in order for Altmyer to have success in the middle of the field with either a slot receiver (Collin Dixon or Hank Beatty) or a back out of the backfield (Josh McCray or Ca'Lil Valentine.

According to PFF data, Altmyer is the seventh most efficient quarterback among all Football Bowl Subdivision programs in play-action concepts this season and his 12 touchdown passes in this philosophy leads all quarterback by three.

Even though No. 22 Illinois (5-1, 2-1 in Big Ten) is just 12th in the Big Ten Conference in rushing at 139.5 yards per game, their insistence on running on most first downs (6th most in the Big Ten) has allowed the middle of the field and check-down options for Altmyer to be wide open because linebackers and safeties are being forced to read the Illini’s RPO handoff much more closely.

“Luke does an excellent job of reading the defense in real-time when he’s needed to pull the ball or where the football needs to go in the pass game off that action,” Lunney Jr. said. “I think Luke’s ability to pull the ball and go helped our running game (versus Purdue) but it also helped him have some open field to deliver the football as well.”

Illini Offensive & Defensive Snap Counts vs. Purdue (via Pro Football Focus)

Offense - 75 total snaps

QB - Altmyer - 75

RB - McCray - 43

RB - Laughery - 18

RB - Valentine - 15

WR - Bryant - 65

WR - Franklin - 55

WR - Dixon - 29

WR - Beatty - 23

WR - Elzy - 22

TE - Arkin - 68

TE - Gooda - 17

TE - Boyer - 17

OL - Kreutz - 75

OL - Davis - 75

OL - Gesky - 75

OL - Priestly - 74

OL - Henderson - 50

OL - Crisler - 26

OL - TJ McMillen - 3 (used in barge/big package)

Defense - 62 total snaps

DL - Briggs Jr. - 45

DL - Bray - 16

DL - Holmes - 11

DL - Farrell - 3

NT - Edwards - 43

NT - Warren - 16

LB - Rosiek - 57

LB - Meed - 33

LB - Kreutz - 20

LB - Odeluga - 1

OLB - Jacas - 48 (Also played at DL)

OLB - Coleman - 45

OLB - Bryant - 20

OLB - Barna - 12

OLB - JoJo Hayden - 6

CB - Patterson - 62

CB - Torrie Cox Jr. - 31 (also played some Nickel)

CB - Terrance Brooks - 27

CB - Xavier Scott - 13 (injured in pre-game warmups)

CB - Tyson Rooks - 11

Nickel - Tyler Strain - 30

Safety - Miles Scott - 62

Safety - Bailey - 62

Safety - Saboor Karriem - 5