MOUTHPIECE Blog Hit from Will Brinson

Be sure to check in on the boys over at the MOUTHPIECE Blog, run by one of Chicago's finest, Ryan Corazza. Sure, the blog is Chicago-centric, but what's wrong with being in the Chi-town know? Hearing the inside scoop on Chicago's sports is certainly more refreshing than watching Barack bowl, or hearing stories about Sarah Palin tagging beautiful Alaskan caribou with an anti-aircraft weapon.

Juice Williams: Pulp or Fiction?

By Will Brinson

The loss of Rashard Mendenhall to the NFL kind of made me think “step-back” for Ron Zook and the Illini. Juice Williams is a nice quarterback, but, uh, that’s really stretching it, no? I mean, his name’s Juice. Kidding. But seriously, he made huge strides last year and still finished with just 13 touchdowns and 12 picks. For a Rose Bowl team.

Flash forward to this past Saturday, and if you find defense offensive, then you were in silly scoring heaven as Missouri outshot Illinois 52-42. (Although if you’re an Illinois fan, you might not have been in heaven, I suppose.)

Chase Daniels, predictably, lit the scoreboard up to the tune of a 26-for-45 day with 323 yards passing, three touchdowns and one pick. Yet, there was Juice … outperforming Daniels and throwing up career numbers all over the place. He was 26-for-42 with 451 yards and FIVE touchdowns (with two picks). Yes, “WTF” would be appropriate.

So is it real? Has Juice evolved into this Zook-fueled passing machine of death that will throttle the Big Ten as soon as he gets back in conference and take the Illini to the championship game? Not so fast, my friend. There’s hope for Juice’s future, but …

If you watched the game, you know that Juice looked out of synch in the first half, sending errant passes over his receivers left and right (in fact, this was our top running joke elsewhere I believe) before finally getting his mess together and leading the Illini back on the comeback trail.

And he did just that, but the bigger issue is that Mizzou’s defense stinks. I mean, they’re really, really not good. Which means that once Big Ten play starts, we might get a dose of the real Juice and people might start realizing that he’s not quite as good as they thought. Now, I could be dead wrong and he will have evolved into some sort of mutant clone of Dan Marino and destroy the conference. But I’m pretty sure he won’t. Enjoy the week haters, but as soon as that conference play gets cranked up, you’ll be agreeing with me.