Welcome into the online inquire podcast, Jeremy Warner, Joey Wagner, and what a difference a year makes as Illinois crushes Virginia 24 to 3.

Same team, Illinois basically, played the same team basically as Virginia.

I know there's a lot of differences, offensive line-wise, coaching staff-wise.

But this is a good measuring stick performance for Illinois after that disappointing loss, Joey,

to Indiana last week to bounce back and just dominate this opponent.

We'll talk about some issues on the offense, but to dominate like they did, especially defensively,

shows how much growth this program is made, right? I know Virginia's got some issues, but for Illinois to do that,

I think it's a great measuring stick for Illinois to say, man, we are making huge progress year one to year two under Brett Beelman. And to be honest with you, Joey, I think we came on here last week and talked about some positives from Indiana because they dominated most of that game. Illinois did that again today. They got some things to learn on, especially on offense. But two power five opponents, they've really dominated and

control the action. The only thing holding them back is themselves, but to do it in a 21-point

win certainly feels different than a three-point loss. There were a couple points, Jeremy,

during that game that we looked at each other and we were like, uh, you kind of got to close

the door here because you're running a risk of making this a problem,

and it was probably much closer this game than it, like the score was much closer than it ever

felt. I mean, at some point you were like, one play. Virginia was really one play away from

really putting the heat on, but you got out of it with that. And the measuring stick, I'm glad

Brett Bielman mentioned that, because I wondered how he was going to handle it.

Because he's really strategic and what he says and how he wants things outside of his building framed.

And I just thought it was like telling to me that he came up and said,

this shows us the year over year growth because I could have foreseen a situation where he tried to like

pump the brakes on it a little bit and he didn't I thought that was really a meaningful

way to frame this yeah and I mean defensively we knew that this was a different defense than

we saw last year when we were in Charlottesville for that massacre, right? I mean, they just put it on

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