Thoughts on Mizzou-Illinois | pikesteve22's Blog

Watched the football game this weekend, glad Mizzou came out with the win, although they had to sweat it out at the end. Some thoughts.

- I think people are over-exaggerating the problems with Mizzou's secondary. Yes, they got burned quite a bit. But this is the first time they've played a game with a more complicated scheme, and it'll take time to work the kinks out. Remember what happened last year when our defense played to mediocre results in the opening. By the fourth week, we were shutting down some pretty potent offenses. It just takes time and experience.

- Chase Daniel looked pretty good, but not great. For the middle two quarters, he was terrific, but he started slowly, and in the fourth, he had trouble putting the game away. Some of it might have been nerves, but then again, I noticed several dropped balls that his receivers could have made. One to Perry at the Illinois four yard line late in the game comes to mind immediately. There's no reason he couldn't have had over 400 yards passing. But it's something to consider. I look forward to him having a big year.

- Believe the hype about Juice Williams being much improved. He's going to be scary this season.

- Given they were down by 17, I'm a little surprised Zook kept going at the end. Maybe it was so the final score wouldn't look so bad, but with less than a minute to play, I didn't see any point in risking injury to any of the players. Then again, it's Ron Zook.

- That sound you heard late in the game was every Mizzou fan saying, "Oh, S#!t" when Maclin went down. I hate the thought of playing football on turf, simply because too many players suffer leg injuries because of it, and it looks like he simply caught his foot on the turf. Fortunately, they said it wasn't a serious injury. They need to give him a week off and make sure; it's not worth it to rush him back for SEMO.

- How are people not talking more about Coffman's hurdle? I know other players have done it before, but the guy's 255lb. I thought it was pretty b.a.

I think that's just about it. I thought it was a pretty exciting game. It's going to be interesting to see how the paths of these two teams turn out.

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September 1, 2008 10:37 AM ET

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Good blog, Steve. I only saw parts of the game, but it was a good game.

One thing I will say about the Mizzou secondary concerns......yes, they got beat, but Juice threw a couple of perfect passes to beat them deep and he got a couple of great catches on the long balls. Mizzou's guys were in position, they just got beat on some excellent throws.