One of Editor & Publisher’s ‘10 That Do It Right 2021’

Generally cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 80F. Winds light and variable..

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.

First-year Illini offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. provides updates from his side of the ball heading into the Big Ten opener at Indiana:

What challenges will the Indiana defense, led by coach Tom Allen, present to your offense?

Kind of the polar opposite of what we just played (against Wyoming) to some degree.

From a mentality standpoint, it’s an attack-driven defense and an attack-driven team. That’s Coach Allen, and that’s kind of their mentality. They’ve made that very clear in watching them on film.

They try to create havoc on you from an offensive standpoint. Very aggressive. Very calculated in when they come try to get at you. It’s a really strong dichotomy in what we saw last week in our preparation.

Are you stressing the vertical passing game?

There were several routes that were vertical down the field the other day that didn’t unveil whether it was the progression, the read, the coverage.

Wyoming chose to play off coverage quite a bit and stayed deep and played a lot of Cover 3 during the course of the game. Things that protect the ball from going vertical down the field. I’m going to plan on trying to execute the best plan we can to win.

Sure, we need to be able to put the ball down the field. That’s part of the plan. We run play action and run the ball and create opportunities to create chunk yardage plays. It’s important to us offensively, but you can’t be stubborn about it either.

How did Illini receiver Pat Bryant fare in the opener?

Practice habits become game-day realities. That’s what I saw with him and a lot of players, but he performed at the level that he’d been performing through spring and fall camp.

He had a really strong fall camp. He loves football. That’s one thing about Pat. We’ve got a lot of guys on our team that love football, but he loves football and he loves to do whatever it takes to win.

What’s your ideal run/pass balance?

Balance, to me, is being able to win a game throwing and being able to win a game running. After that, I don’t really get too caught up in pre-scripting or trying to target a certain number of each.

It’s just how the game unveils and how it unfolds. It just so happened the other day it ended up being almost perfectly harmonized, which is unique. It doesn’t happen like that very often.

I wouldn’t anticipate that happening much more during the course of the year.

How do you evaluate how the offense did in the red zone in Week 0?

The bottom line is we have to have touchdowns, not field goals, when we get down there.

We had some critical penalties that removed us from striking distance that ended up resulting in a field goal made and field goal attempts.

It’s important. To be an effective offense, it’s really about red-zone scoring and touchdowns. That’s a point of emphasis. We did OK there the other day. We were OK. I don’t know if it was good enough to win a Big Ten game.

What led to so many receivers getting involved in the passing game last week, with 12 different players catching at least one pass?

That was something that showed up during practices. Each day was kind of a different guy.

Each receiver had their moment — whether tight end or back. It’s something that’s not necessarily intention, but a byproduct when you rotate guys.

We’re just going through our progressions and our reads. We probably don’t know who’s out there half the time because we’re going fast. ... Going through progressions helps create multiple touches for people, and it’s something I believe in.

Scott Richey is a reporter covering college basketball at The News-Gazette. His email is srichey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@srrichey).

Second-year Illinois defensive coordinator has helped improve that side of the ball for the Illini. If the trend continues, what does his future look like? 'He'll be head coach at some point, and he'll be a good one.'

Scott Richey is a reporter covering college basketball at The News-Gazette. His email is srichey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@srrichey).

To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.