A compilation of comments of from Illinois coach Tim Beckman speaking about facing Western Kentucky this week.

Tim Beckman

“We’ve got a lot of new faces on our offense, with a new starting quarterback and new wide receivers that were out there. So that was some of the situation that occurred early. But what made me proud as a football coach was how the football team responded in general. From sidelines to believing that we need to make a play, so let’s make a play. We need to protect our quarterback, so let’s protect our quarterback. All those types of things that I think are so important in your first football game.

“Youngstown State, give them credit. They’re a good football team. There’s no question about that. Now, we’ve got to focus on what we can do better, and that’s against a Western Kentucky football team that went out and scored 59 points last weekend and beat the Mid-American Conference champ in Bowling Green and had over 100 plays that Coach Brohm had called, so they’re a fast-paced team and we need to be ready and prepared for this weekend’s contest.”

On the secondary: Well, I was happy with the way the secondary played. We had three of the four (starters) who graded out. I thought our safeties played well. Made some great tackles, did some good things. Things that we had to improve on from last year. I thought we made some plays on some deep balls. You didn’t see receivers behind us. I thought we also created some pressure with the front four, so I thought Coach Banks did a great job of preparing our guys to get ready to play, and they ended up performing the way we wanted them to.”

On the team’s difficulty forcing turnovers: “Again, that’s the Achilles’ heel that we have got to change, and that is we’ve got to take the football away. We had a dropped interception that possibly could’ve went for a touchdown. We have got to continue to strive on ball awareness, pulling the ball out when we’re gang tackling, and continue to create that pressure on the quarterback because balls will be thrown that we can intercept, then.”

What did Wes Lunt do well? “With what we do offensively, it’s not just in the quarterback’s hands. It’s about running proper depth routes, it’s about on this step, we’re at this area so we’re going to catch the football. Because we’re reading a lot of what the defense is doing. What I thought Wes did extremely well is he took his game – we weren’t playing very good early in that football game and he took his game to another level in that fourth quarter, which showed exactly what our capabilities are in making big plays with him. As a football coach, that’s what I like to see: I like to see competitive guys who are getting better during football games, not getting worse. And I definitely thought he got better as we progressed.”

What does Western Kentucky’s quarterback do well? “Well, I think he runs their offense extremely well. He has great precision with his passes, especially the deep ball. I saw some plays that he made scrambling in the first football game that he didn’t make last year. You can see that he has worked extremely hard to take his game to another level this summer. He’s got some very capable receivers. This is Western Kentucky and if you don’t know, that’s where Coach Harbaugh used to coach. Jack was a Bowling Green guy, so I’ll never forget when he won that FCS national championship and came up and spoke – I guess that would’ve been 14 years ago when they won that national championship. So not much different than the type of football program that Youngstown State is. They’ve won a lot of football games and you can see that that program is in good hands.”

What do you have to focus on doing well against a team like Western Kentucky? “The number of reps that they got – 101 snaps is quite a few reps in a football game. So they’re going fast-paced. We’re going to have to take care of the things we can take care of first, and that is playing fresh, playing through rotations that have to be already figured out – not during the middle of the game. We’ve got to put pressure on him and you’ve got to be able to communicate. When you’re playing the no-huddle football teams, communication to the players – not just call but situation – is so crucial. And those are things that we’ve been working on. We’ve got a drill called sparring drill where we’re trying to get in as many reps as we can in this number of minutes. So if we have a five-minute period, we’re trying to get 15 plays in – that’s three plays a minute. So we put our players in some stress modes physically, plus also being able to communicate with one another – ‘on a third-and-5, do I play off, do I play tighter’ – those types of things. So that’s what we have to be able to do to be successful against them.”

From Tuesday’s Big Ten teleconference.

“Big game last week. It’s a ‘W’, and one that we were happy to have. I thought our team fought through some of that football game that really wasn’t going our way at first. I think our seniors did a great job of gabbing this football team up.

“We were playing a good football team in Youngstown State and we felt that they were capable. They’d shown it before two years ago by beating a good Pitt team. We came back out, we kind of hit our point where we needed to and I think we ended up playing good enough for the ‘W’. Of course, we gotta get better and we’re looking forward to it this week.”

Subbing the secondary: “We did. We did it at the corner position, Darius Mosley ended up playing about 40 snaps. We were rotating, making that rotation with the corners. The safeties did not, and they played too many reps. I kinda mentioned that (Monday).

“We had a couple positions that we got to play more guys, period, regardless of who were playing against. That’s definitely what you’ll see this week with a healthier Caleb Day, Travarus Little and Clayton Flagellum be two guy at safety. Hopefully we’ll have Jalen Dunlap back, that’s a day-by-day thing, but he will add some great depth for us at corner.”

Western Kentucky under the radar? “Not at all. Not after you watch their offense last week and what they did against a good Bowling Green football team that won the MAC last year. Western Kentucky’s got a lot of starters back on offense. You see a of familiar faces that played a lot for ‘em last year. Defensively the secondary is extremely good. I’ve watched the secondary play and I think they do a great job.

“Yeah, this will be a challenge. This’ll be a four-quarter football game. Western Carolina, or Western Kentucky is a eight-win football team last year. We know that we gotta get things rolling.”

Scheduling WKU: “I did have an involvement. I’m involved in all the scheduling as we communicate back and forth with Mike and Jason. Again, I think this football team needs to play quality opponents and Western Kentucky is definitely a quality opponent.”

Illinois defense: “It was, again, a couple big plays and that’s been something that we’ve got to continue to strive to get better at as a football team, especially on defense. We gave up a couple draw plays and a couple big screen plays.

“But as you look at everything else – and that’s the game of football. I think we performed well. We tackled well, we rushed the passer, we had three sacks – we haven’t had that type of pressure on quarterbacks. I think we’re doing things better, but we just have to do it at a more consistent basis.”

Quarterback Wes Lunt: “As we started out, as you look at there, there’s a lot of wide receivers that are in their first start also. Wes, having been out a year and then coming back and our wide receivers responding, especially in the pass game to the things that we were asking them to do – I think it was five out of the eight wide receivers that played really played in their first college football game. Those are things that we gotta get better.

“I was happy to see how Wes led the football team and really got them to gel together in that fourth quarter.”