Here's my scouting report on them, remember I am no expert.
The strength of their defense is in their defensive line. Their front four is very good and they had some transfers to help out. They are much different than they were last year in this area. the head coach is also the defensive coordinator. He is defensively minded and I think he has some really good players on defense. I believe this is his second year coaching the defense and they are really picking up on his system. Pair that with some of the transfers and you have a team that's only given up about 16 points a game.
Illinois State is one of the league leaders in offense. They have a very good running back, I believe that he's on the Peyton Award list (need to check that). they have a transfer quarterback from Indiana. He is extremely fast he's very athletic and from some of the games I've seen he appears to be pretty accurate. I think he had a little trouble with Northern Iowa's pressure last week. It's going to be really tough for us to contain them on a read option. I think it's going to be difficult for us to get pressure on him too. they have a big physical offensive line. This appears to be the best team we faced yet this year. They've got a couple of receivers that are pretty good but they have some standouts on the O line.
Defensively they are really strong. On the DL there's one guy they move around from the end over to defensive tackle and they appear to have depth because they rotate and what I've noticed is that they've had several comeback wins late in games (this depth is probably why).
They had a really bad day on special teams with Northern Iowa. They are very tough at home. we are going to have our hands full. I wanted to watch Brock Spack's press conference but the Illinois State Redbirds website charges you $6.00 to view it so I didn't bother that's ridiculous. Youngstown State press conferences are free to the public and are posted on YouTube under the Youngstown State athletics channel.
something else that came out is that one of our offensive coaches, actually the receivers coach, left our program and is now the offensive coordinator for Illinois State. What's concerning here is that this guy knows a lot of people on our defense especially our secondary. He's going to know our weaknesses by personnel and I'm sure he's going to try to exploit it. This is a major disadvantage in my mind.
I think stopping the quarterback is going to be key in this game. the defensive line is going to have to disrupt them and we are going to have to possess the ball and keep them off the field. It would be nice if we could get some turnovers on defense. We are not a conference leader in forcing turnovers on defense. I think we need to work on this area. we've got a pretty damn good team we are going to have our hands full. I also think they feel a bit disrespected by the poll voters in the Sports Network. The Redbirds have only one loss but were dropped below a 2 loss Youngstown State team while in 8-1 Fordham team is ranked in the top 5 or 8 with a weak schedule and a 50 - 6 loss to the only decent team they played which is Villanova . I think they're out to prove that they're better then they played against Northern Iowa. They had multiple special teams breakdowns and turnovers killed them.
I think if we have a big day in special teams it will help us. we are not a conference leader in any of the special teams areas and I think sometimes we make it hard on ourselves because of our poor field position and other stupid things that happen on special teams
