Western Michigan At Illinois Preview: Avoiding The Let Down.

Heading into this Saturday's game against Western Michigan, I am reminded of three previous seasons where the Illini were coming off of huge program lifting wins, but then quickly followed them with depressing losses. Back in 2007, the Rose Bowl year, Illinois had dramatically defeated a ranked Penn State and a ranked Wisconsin at home, only to fall against an unranked Iowa in the rain.

After pulling a huge upset and beating Iowa at home in 2008, the Illini headed to Detroit to play this same WMU team, with five wins, confident in securing a second straight bowl berth. The Illini left Detroit with an L after Juice Williams threw 2 INTs and failed in a fourth quarter drive that could have won the game.

And just last year, after romping on Northwestern in Wrigley Field and making a star out of Mikel Leshoure, the Illini slipped slid and penalized themselves into a two point loss against a very bad Fresno State team.

Western Michigan may be a MAC team, but they are better than Fresno was, and no worse than they were in 2008. The upside of this is that all of these games were lost because of self inflicted wounds. Penalties, turnovers and boneheaded coaching decisions. Correctable mistakes, and preventable provided the players are able to adequately focus on their opponent and not get caught up with their new found national relevance.

WMU is no joke. while they only put up 10 points in the three quarters played against Michigan, they did manage to put some yards together, and just last week they hung 44 on MAC rival Central Michigan.

This is a team that likes to throw the ball and averages 240 passing yards and 30 points a game. It is an offense that will try and challenge our secondary.

But even with that, I know without a doubt that if the Illini front seven play like they did last week, the Western Michigan offensive line does not stand a chance. Brown and Merciless are going to force the Mustangs into max protect often, and I wouldn't be surprised if WMU tries to take play action way more often and earlier than they would otherwise.

For the offense, this is an opportunity to calm some nerves. To come out and play with the rhythm that they had in the early season, but lost in the second half last week. Getting balls to A.J. Jenkins and Darius Milines to advance the chains and pounding away up the gut with Jason Ford and Donovonn Young.

If the Illini can control the ball and control the clock, they will only help their defense. There is no need to reach out early for the deep ball unnecessarily, because the size advantage the offensive line provides should provide more than enough opportunities to run it down their throat.

I want a convincing win, a win that isn't in doubt in the fourth quarter, and a win that shows that the Illini are here to stay this season.

It is also worth mentioning that all of those big let down losses of years past came on the road, so at the very least on Saturday, at  2:30, the crowd and field conditions shouldn't be working against the Illini's fortunes.