2024 NORTHERN IOWA RECAP: On Schedule

Nebraska takes care of business against a lesser opponent, aside from the defense giving up a steady march

Sep 20, 2024

Ty Robinson swats a pass against Northern Iowa. Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics.

Sometimes, the biggest games are the ones where you beat a team you should.

Sandwiched between after a high-profile, high-emotion matchup against Colorado and a Friday night conference opener that’s also a sellout-streak milestone, the Week 3 game against Northern Iowa seemed like a classic “trap” game, one where a better team overlooks a smaller opponent and ends up in trouble.

Nebraska didn’t let that happen Saturday. Playing a schedule that’s backloaded with all of the hardest matchups in the final six games — one that’s looking a little tougher now that Curt Cignetti’s transfer portal gambit appears to have worked at Indiana — NU doesn’t have much room for error against the front half of its lineup. Nebraska learned that lesson last season, when a blown game against Minnesota cost them bowl eligibility as the competition stiffened down the stretch. From what we’ve seen so far, NU should be a favorite in all of its first six matchups in 2024, and its goal should be to emerge from that stretch 6-0, or, at worst, 5-1. So far, that’s on track.

To their credit, the Huskers largely didn’t mess around against the FCS opponent. The starting offense’s only drives that didn’t score came on a fourth-down redzone failure in a two-minute drill and on a late joint-possession interception call with the game well decided. The starting offense finished with a 59% success rate and averaged 8.7 yards per play, both the best marks since I’ve started this newsletter. The defense was less dominant than fans are used to and had a surprising amount of trouble knocking the Panthers off track or stopping third downs. But underneath the aesthetic concerns, the starting still finished with good underlying numbers and allowed only three points while playing with a lot of subs.

More performances like that will get NU to that midseason mark it’s shooting for.

This week’s sections are:

What Happened With The Defense?
Raiola Check-In
More Production Is Coming For Fidone
Defensive Tendencies
Schematic Infrastructure Around A Young Quarterback
Blitz Success
Tempo
Unsung Play Of The Week
Turnover Margin Tracker

What Happened With The Defense?

After two dominant performances by Nebraska’s defense to open the season against FBS opponents, Northern Iowa was able to hit some runs, stay on schedule, and hold the ball for over 38 minutes of game time.

On the surface, the defense’s numbers weren’t materially worse against UNI: The starters allowed a season-best 4.02 yards per play, and their success rate of 64.4% was only a couple percentage points below what it was against Colorado.

Where Nebraska fell off — relative to its past performance — was in the creation of havoc plays and third-down defense.

Against UTEP and Colorado, NU’s starters generated a havoc play — that’s any tackle for loss, sack, forced fumble, pass deflection, pass break-up, or interception — on 27.6% and 24.5% of their snaps, respectively. Extremely good — and also probably not sustainable, even for a very good defense. Against UNI, that rate came down to 17.8%. So, while the NU defense’s play-to-play efficiency was similar to the Colorado game, it wasn’t doing nearly as much to create “disaster” plays for the offense or put its opponent in bad situations.

With less havoc generation, UNI was in more manageable third downs and able to convert more of them to keep drives alive. UTEP’s offense had an average third-down-to-go distance of 11.8 yards against Nebraska’s starters, while Colorado was at an even 7 yards — Northern Iowa was at 6.4. NU also just defended those third downs worse than it did in the first two games, with the Blackshirts having success rates of 83.3% and 78.6% on combined third and fourth downs against UTEP and Colorado but that rate falling to an even 50% against UNI.

People call third down the “money down” or talk about them being key to the games — this is what they mean. If that slippery UNI quarterback doesn’t evade a couple sacks on these third downs and the Blackshirts get off the field, the performance probably feels a bit more dominant and no one’s worried. Small margins.

But what allowed Northern Iowa to stay on schedule the way it did?

First, credit to UNI. They came in with a good offensive gameplan, prioritizing downhill runs, using the quarterback as a plus-one in the run game, pulling linemen to mess with the box counts for the defense, and putting two tight ends and unbalanced formations out at a heavy rate to create numbers advantages to sides of the defense. They also used a lot of screens and arc blocks to use NU’s aggressiveness against it. Smart stuff, and certainly makes more sense as a way to attack this NU unit than UTEP’s “Let’s Run Three RPOs At Tempo And Punt Every 35 Seconds” or Colorado’s “Let’s Throw Downfield Shots Behind The Worst Line In The P4” strategies.

UNI also just has some good players. When I ranked all of the opposing backfields NU would face in the offseason, I had UNI’s group ahead of three of the FBS teams Nebraska is playing this year. Both Tye Edwards and Amauri Pesek-Hickson were Power 4 conference recruits before they ended up going down a level and probably could still play for some FBS teams. UNI had a couple decent linemen, too, who were getting some push. That team played well and made its share of good calls and individual plays.

But Nebraska’s issues were also mostly self-inflicted. There were a lot of mental errors, blown assignments, and sloppy tackling and run fits that we hadn’t seen in previous games.

A decent chunk of it was personnel: A lot of front-seven defenders who don’t normally play for NU were on the field for increased snaps vs. UNI, either because of missing starters or because Nebraska wanted to get them reps against an easier opponent. They were the primary culprits in the mistakes.

At linebacker, with Mikai Gbayor out for most of the starters’ snaps with a targeting penalty from the previous game, linebacker Stefon Thompson played 47 snaps, more than double what he played in each of the previous two games, and true freshman Vincent Shavers also saw the field at increased usage with the 1s.

On the defensive line, with Jimari Butler out injured, Kai Wallin and pass-rush specialist James Williams played more on early downs. They also seemed to be making an effort to rotate more linemen against an FCS opponent, with true freshman Keona Davis playing in staters’ rotation at end and Vincent Carroll-Jackson playing 11 snaps replacing Nash Hutmacher at nose tackle.

All of these players were at times liabilities.

At linebacker, Thompson was at times struggling with gap responsibilities and tackling:1

This is a rep of Thompson (#56) playing the strongside linebacker in a basic 4-2 shell. UNI is running a quarterback keeper to the edge of the edge of the formation toward the boundary, with the tackle to that side pulling out in front to lead block with the running back.

Instead of following the pulling lineman to the outside of the formation as he should, Thompson initially steps up into the A gap, compromising the run fit. The playside corner also initially steps inside, too. UNI now has a pulling offensive tackle and a running back lead blocking out in front of the ball carrier with leverage on both defenders, with the only player capable of making a tackle here a deep safety playing at 12 yards — a three-on-two advantage for UNI. Had Thompson followed the puller to the outside and engaged with him head on (and the corner, who has outside contain, not sucked inside), Thompson could have washed out the back, the corner could have played force contain, and the safety and the play would have been dead at the line. Instead, Thompson is outleveraged and sealed by the back, the offensive tackle pushes the corner 10 yards down the field before he can regain outside contain, and the play only doesn’t go for big yardage because the safety, DeShon Singleton, makes a great flying tackle from depth. This was a mental/discipline mistake that should have hurt NU more than it did.

This is another iffy rep from Thompson, but as a tackler. Nebraska is again in a 4-2 shell, and UNI is in a spread closed trips formation and runs Pin-Pull away from the strength to the side NU doesn’t have numbers, with two pulling lineman to that edge. The other linebacker, John Bullock, makes a great play to engage with one of the pulling UNI lineman to reestablish contain on the play after NU was initially outleveraged and force the back inside (the secondary was also in man coverage and had their eyes on their receivers, so if the back had gotten around Bullock on a sprint this would have been a decent gain.

After Bullock does that work, Thompson should have an easy cleanup for a negative play and a loss. But he overpursues and doesn’t settle his hips down to make a tackle, forcing him to grab at the 230-pound Edwards, who blows through it and picks up a few yards when this should have been a havoc play.

The younger defensive linemen were also having issues with the run fits:

NU is in a three-man front but brings two blitzers from the second level into the B gaps, establishing a de-facto five-player Bear front. UNI is running GF Counter, with two pullers coming to the weakside. James Williams (#90) is playing the edge to the top of the screen; his job is to not let anything get outside of him and spill the run to the interior for the linebackers and safeties to clean up. Instead, he does this:

He follows the down blocks to the inside of the formation and lets the two Counter pullers get an unimpeded path to the second level. Nebraska’s DBs do a nice job cleaning up the damage to only make it go for a gain of 9 yards, but against a good Big Ten team, that play would have gone for a touchdown. Plays like this are why Williams has been largely relegated to rush-specific situations, but the Butler injury forces him into more early-down work.

Some of the backups just lacked play strength at times, too. This is another rep of Counter:

Williams does a better job of keeping outside leverage against the first puller and forcing the play inside, but next to him, Carroll-Jackson (#55) is playing nose tackle and gets moved by the down-block double team about 5 yards down the field. Watch him (he’s the player to the immediate right of the offensive center) get manhandled by a double team.

There were also just other uncharacteristic mental mistakes by the vets, too. This is a big pass pick-up on one of UNI’s drives that got them out of one of the rare long-yardage situations they encountered:

UNI is in a two-tight-end doubles look. Nebraska is in man coverage here, with safety Malcolm Hartzog down in the box playing like a quasi linebacker to match the heavy personnel from the offense. With it being man coverage, he has a one-on-one responsibility to cover the inside tight end if he releases on a route. Hartzog’s tight end gives an initial block as the backfield goes through a play-action fake, and Hartzog gets fooled by this and takes his eyes off his coverage responsibility. The tight end then releases on a delayed crossing route. Hartzog isn’t paying attention and lets the tight end run free for a big catch.

So, mistakes were made. But, should anyone be worried about this?

For the starting unit, not really. I think UNI got some fairly fortunate third-down outcomes, and Thompson and Williams are rotational players when Gbayor and Butler are available for a reason. That’s their useful role on this team. And I think Carroll-Jackson and Davis were getting snaps because NU expected to beat UNI by a lot and thought it could get them some game work. But it is a little worrisome for the front-seven depth. If Butler, Gbayor, or any of the d-linemen go down with injuries, these will be the players who fill in, and they didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory Saturday.

Raiola Check-In

Saturday represented an improved game from a decision-making perspective for Nebraska true freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola.

I don’t have access to Nebraska’s playbook or coaching points, but in trying to evaluate/chart decision-making from the general progression of certain concepts and where the ball is meant to go within those concepts against specific coverages, I had Raiola going to a “correct” spot with the ball during his true dropbacks about 62.5% of the time against UTEP, 65.2% of the time against Colorado, and then a big jump this week to 82.4%.

The first couple of games I felt like he was operating a bit outside the offense, turning down good concepts to go into backyard ball/creation mode or hunt receiver/DB matchups he thought he had an advantage. He’s obviously very good at backyard ball/creation mode, and it’s understandable why a young player would do that, but he was also making his life harder by not taking some of the easier stuff the offensive design had schemed up for him. I thought that improved Saturday.

Nebraska under Marcus Satterfield runs a lot of split passing concepts, with the routes to one side of the formation meant to attack a certain type of coverage and the routes on the other side meant to attack another, usually split either by (A) a man coverage-beater or a zone coverage-beater or (B) a single-high coverage-beater or a two-high coverage-beater. Northern Iowa was generally running zone, primarily Cover 3 but with a little bit of two-high Cover 4 mixed in. Raiola seemed to be identifying safety rotations well and getting to the right sides of concepts in ways he hadn’t in the first two games.

This was one of the early reps that was impressive, which came on the game’s second touchdown:

NU is running a “Shock” concept to the trips side, with a short hitch route by the No. 1 receiver (red arrow), a slot fade from the No. 2 receiver (orange arrow), and an option route from the No. 3 receiver closest to the formation (yellow arrows). Northern Iowa is aligned in single-high coverage, and is running a Cover 3 weakside blitz, with a strongside dropper into coverage from the line of scrimmage.

UNI is trying to trick the quarterback into an interception here: By bringing the linebacker/safety blitz from one side (purple arrows), the Panthers are trying to make the quarterback throw “hot” (meaning: quickly) to the other side of the formation. Within this concept, that would be the option route from the No. 3. But UNI has a defensive end dropping into that space to try for an interception (blue arrow). A bad quarterback sees the blitz and throws hot without checking for a dropper.

By watching Raiola’s head, you can see him clock the dropper, and his eyes leave that side of the play to go to the backside, where he has a post and an option route from the single receiver and back:

You can then see him high-low evaluate the rolling coverage linebacker (now the orange arrow), who runs with the back on the option route (yellow arrow) and gives Raiola access to throw the post route (blue arrow).

This is a true freshman quarterback in his third start, (1) identifying a weakside blitz, (2) clocking a dropper/sim pressure taking away his hot answer to the playside of the formation, (3) getting his eyes to the other backside of the concept, (4) reading a zone coverage defender on a high-low to the backside, and (5) throwing a ball in-rhythm for a run-after-the-catch opportunity that leads to a touchdown. That would be impressive operation for just about any quarterback you’d evaluate for the NFL draft.

That shows he can do some of the more advanced processing. Some of the consistency is still coming along, though. This is a later rep in the redzone, on fourth and 3 just before the half:

NU has on a modified Slant-Flat concept to the boundary (with an out route instead of a flat), and a fade route and a whip route meant to function as a sort of “matchup” side against man coverage.

Northern Iowa starts in a two-high-safety shell, giving the appearance of zone coverage. But after the snap, it drops into single-high, with one of the safeties coming down to play as a robber in Cover 1 (a man coverage).

The slant-flat side of the concept is designed to be the answer for single-high structures, whether they’re Cover 1 or Cover 3. The slant and flat routes cross their defenders in man coverage, which should create a natural rub to spring one, if not both, open.

Raiola’s eyes do go to that side first, which it correct. The play works as intended, as the outside receiver’s slant route picks the defender covering Thomas Fidone on the out route. This should be an immediate throw to Fidone at the bottom of the image:

Instead, Raiola’s eyes leave that side completely, and he goes into creation/matchup mode, choosing instead to throw the whip route from the slot receiver on the other side of the formation. That receiver is well-covered. Raiola squeezes a good ball in, but it’s dropped on the hit, and NU doesn’t convert and gets no points.

Evaluating that slant-flat pick is the first read on the play for single-high, and either route getting the other open is an immediate take for a quarterback, but he doesn’t pull the trigger. Additionally, if he would have been patient to that side, he would have seen the slant coming open after the hole safety overpursues to the flat.

There wasn’t any pressure here from UNI, so this was just a brain seize-up from him. When I say he’s “going into creation mode instead of taking easy answers from the offense,” this is an example of what I mean: He turns down an easy completion schemed up well by the OC to instead take a play that requires a harder throw from him and a more difficult catch from the receiver, which falls incomplete. That in-structure stuff will come with more repetitions — the early games with a freshman are more about triage and survival, and there are NFL quarterbacks who struggle with this stuff, still — but it is an area that’s a little lacking so far.

Back to the strengths: He’s remained accurate in all three games. In classifying an “accurate” pass, I’m trying to evaluate (A) if a pass was delivered to a receiver in their frame without major extension if they were open and static, (B) in a position for a catch-and-run opportunity if they were open and on the move, and (C) away from the defender if covered tightly in any circumstance. I had Raiola’s accuracy rate at 85%, 85%, and 84% through three games. I’ve found his footwork to be pretty disconnected with concepts at times (for example, taking a five-step drop on a quick pass or doing a backpedal instead of taking a drop at all), but he’s delivering the ball in a good position repetitively, so it’s hard to complain. He might just have enough natural arm talent and feel that he can deliver the ball accurately without the footwork being a huge deal for now; the NFL will probably want a lot of that stuff cleaned up, but that’s a long way off and we’re talking about a college true freshman.

One thing to watch is that on Raiola’s dropbacks against “open” safeties — where the middle of the field between the hashes is unoccupied by a safety (this means two-high structures) — his dropbacks have a 60.5% success rate. But against “closed” safeties — meaning there’s a safety standing in the middle of the field between the hashes (single-high structures) — he’s at 41.9%. Could just be small sample-size stuff, but he seems to be struggling more with generating good plays against the single-high/closed coverages, Cover 1 and Cover 3. It will be interesting if defense’s start playing more of those or if that’s just a blip.

More Production Is Coming For Fidone

Fidone, the starting tight end, was a popular pick as a breakout player in the offseason but has just six catches for 27 yards through three games. Not the start that was expected from a statistical standpoint, but the tape shows he’s performing at a high level and better production is likely ahead.

A promising sign is that linebackers and safeties are having real issues staying with Fidone when isolated with him on pass routes, both vertically down the field and on crossing routes horizontally. He drew pass interference penalties against Colorado and Northern Iowa when he beat a defender clean off the snap and they resorted to grabbing him to prevent a huge gain, and there have been a few other instances where those flags could have been thrown:

The flags are useful, but better luck/variance dictates those will start turning into long catches.

Fidone’s always had the size and lankiness to be a matchup problem, but the speed really seems to have returned in an encouraging way this year after two leg injuries early in his career. He’s winning routes against second-level players consistently.

The staff is also trusting him as one of the team’s primary receivers. Fidone is running a passing route on 86.3% of his total snaps in the game, while other tight ends Nate Boerkircher and Luke Lindenmeyer are at 69.2% and 54.5%, respectively, per Pro Football Focus’ charting.

His blocking has also been improved. He hasn’t been a very impactful striker in the past or able to really able to hold the line unless he was operating in combo blocks, and I don’t know if he’ll ever have that type of strength, but this year he’s shown a much better use of shielding and body position to at least knock defenders off balance. He’s had a couple really impressive combo block reps in the Y-Y wing formation Nebraska uses where he and Boerkircher have double teamed a defensive lineman and moved them down the field. I find the PFF “grades” to be sort of opaque/meaningless,2 but if you value those, PFF has Fidone graded as NU’s second-best run-blocker among the starters, behind only Bryce Benhart.

I’d also say Fidone’s current receiving numbers would be better if not for some factors outside of his control. Raiola’s missed a few big gainers to him, and there’s also been pretty horrendous perimeter blocking when NU has tried to get him the ball on those Arrow run-pass options. And against two walk-over opponents, the offense has been kept pretty vanilla/basic and there’s been a push to both spread the ball around — 15 different players have a reception so far for NU this season — and get backups in during the second halves of games. There will be more siloed reception opportunities coming for the starter in Big Ten play. I think all of those items will normalize soon, and we could still be in for a big season from Fidone.

Defensive Tendencies

With UNI having rushing success, NU and coordinator Tony White did play slightly against type.

After I wrote last week about how much success NU was having while keeping its safeties in deep shells, the Panthers were able to pull more bodies down into the box. In the first two games, NU played with two or three safeties deep on a combined 76.8% of its snaps. Against UNI, that was just 62.2%, with White playing about a third of the snaps in single-high and NU playing its first two snaps of zero-high of the season.

With that came more use of single-high coverages, with Nebraska’s Cover 1 rate going from 6.1% in the first two games to 22.2% against UNI, and its Cover 3 rate going from 15.9% to 24.4%. The Cover 2 Tampa look I discussed last week was still the most utilized coverage, at 37.8%, but NU had used it in the first two games on nearly half its snaps, so White was coming out of it a bit to play the run.

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Rover Isaac Gifford also played more in the box Saturday; he had aligned pre-snap as a true deep safety on 96.3% of his snaps entering the UNI game, but he came down into the box for about a third of his snaps against the Panthers. The plays with Gifford in the box had a 75.0% success rate.

In the front seven, the blitz rate wasn’t meaningfully elevated, but we did see some heavier surfaces. NU had played five-player boxes on 46.3% of its snaps entering the Northern Iowa game and six-player boxes on 39.0% of the snaps, but we saw the five-player box rate dip to 28.9% and the six-player box rate rise to 48.9%. NU also played with seven-player boxes on 17.8% of its snaps; it hadn’t previously used a seven-player box with the starters against UTEP or Colorado.

Saturday also saw the first two reps of the season of Nebraska in a “Bear” front, with five defenders aligned on the line of scrimmage; NU had used a Bear front on 20.2% of its plays in 2023 but hadn’t needed to use a single rep of it against UTEP or CU.

Schematic Infrastructure Around A Young Quarterback

The Nebraska staff said before the season that they were going to put the full offense on Raiola, but they have taken some steps to help out a true freshman quarterback: More designed pocket movement, more play action, more heavy protection, and more screens.

All of those elements have seen a significant bump in the first three games from last season compared to 2023:

NU has intentionally moved the pocket — on a play-action bootleg or designed rollout or half-roll — on 17.1% of its total passing dropbacks, a 9 percentage point increase from last season. Rolling the quarterback out intentionally gives them “half-field” reads, eliminating the half of the field they’re rolling away from the passing progression and taking some of the processing load off their plate (compared to making them survey the whole field and work through five eligible receivers).
There’s been a play-action element on 24.3% of NU’s dropbacks, up about 3 percentage points from last season from what was already a pretty play-action heavy attack. Play-action can influence box defenders to step up against the run or slow down their reactions, opening passing lanes.
Nebraska so far this season has used true five-player protections — with only the offensive linemen blocking and the backs and tight ends immediately releasing into passing routes — on about 41.2% of its dropbacks this season, which is a big decrease from last season. The use of six-player protections — with a back or tight end staying in to block full-time or chip-blocking and releasing — is up to about 45% of Nebraska’s dropbacks in 2024, from about 19% last season. More blocking and chip help keeps the quarterback clean from the rush.
NU’s rate of running a screen pass is at about 17.1% of its dropbacks in 2024; it ran screens on only 8.3% of its dropbacks in 2023. The screens have also been much, much more effective, with a 66.7% success rate this season after not having a single successful play on any screen last season.

One curious thing they haven’t really done more of with Raiola is pre-snap motion. The rates of both total motion use — 32.3% — and motion before running a passing play — 28.6% — are about dead even from last year. Motion can help give quarterbacks tells on what the coverage might be or create defensive confusion that leads to busts or clearer windows. The motion rates have started very high early in games so far, and then dwindled in the later drives. I expected the general motion rate to rise with a freshman QB, so it will be interesting to watch if that’s a three-game blip or a continued trend.

Blitz Success

For all the talk of UNI being “more physical” than the NU defense, when Nebraska sent extra rushers, it really wasn’t a contest. On Nebraska’s 15 plays where they brought five rushers, they were successful 12 times, compared to just a 52.2% success rate when they brought four.

That would also illustrate the mental struggles of some of the linebackers a bit — on the four-player rush plays, when linebackers were asked to read out plays or make decisions from a second level, they were less effective than when told just to rush through a certain gap.

Tempo

Nebraska’s offense has quietly been moving at a little faster pace so far this season. In 2023, NU full huddled or subbed personnel on 87% of its snaps, with nearly all of their tempo movement coming in end-of-half or end-of-game situations.

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Through three games in 2024, they’re down to 73% huddling/subbing, with a handful of isolated drives or moments where they moved at tempo outside of two-minute situations. The rate of slower no-huddle operation (where the offense is moving at pace to get back on the ball but not necessarily trying to snap the ball right away) has gone from about 6% usage in 2023 to 17% this year.

The game against Northern Iowa was their fastest so far, huddling/subbing on only 57.7% of their snaps. You got the sense they were trying to work on getting some game reps in at operating at a faster tempo against a walk-over opponent.

Not huge increases overall on the season, and no one will confuse them with the super hurry-up offenses like Tennessee, but for a staff that was pretty dogmatic about huddling when it was hired, it does appear they’ve come off that a bit to embrace a little more modern way of functioning.

Unsung Play Of The Week

This is less one specific play and more an overall improvement I’ve seen: The offensive line is so, so much better at running screens.

This is a tunnel screen rep from the first drive to Carter Nelson:

Look at how the interior linemen pick up a stunt by the UNI front, make a strong initial punch/contact with their assignment, throw their defenders past them, run downfield 10 yards, and find a second-level player to block, making contact while operating in space. Textbook stuff.

I mentioned this in an earlier section, but Nebraska ran 20 reps of screen passes all of last season and had a 0% success rate — not a single “successful” play in 20 attempts. In 2022, they had just a 20% success rate on screens. Before that, I don’t know when the last time they were good was, probably dating back to Bo Pelini’s tenure.

But through three games this year, they’ve already run 12 screens and been successful eight times, and that’s with three screen reps in the Colorado game not counting due to downfield holding penalties.

Screens are about coordination, and you have to rep them in practice a ton to be good at them. NU’s clearly doing that now, and it’s paying off.

It’s a pretty remarkable turnaround and probably one of the more underdiscussed elements of the offense’s turnaround right now. To have a play type go from not providing your offense literally anything to having it not just be competent/good, but elite, with a 66% success rate? That’s incredible development.

Turnover Margin Tracker

After Week 1: +1 (T-20th nationally)
After Week 2: +3 (T-17th nationally)
After Week 3: +3 (T-17th nationally)

With each team trading an interception, Nebraska’s total — and national ranking — stays the same from last week. Though it still represents a much better standing than where NU was exiting non-conference play last season.

Illinois is second nationally in turnover margin at +8, with nine total takeaways and just one lost turnover. Let’s see Friday how NU’s newfound ball-control ability/luck fares against a ball-hawking group getting three turnovers per game.