CHAMPAIGN — Bret Bielema is right.
The Illinois football coach, who still hasn’t won or lost a game in charge of the Illini, said this week the quarterbacks gets too much credit for when teams win.
And too much blame for when teams lose.
“The quarterback position gets a lot of attention,” Bielema said. “As the head coach, I’m always going to try and shoulder that blame for them. But I would really say the quarterback room is no different from any other room. Anytime you can add players of value, as well as high character, that’s going to be nothing but welcomed in the room.”
Illinois will add a quarterback to that room (Rutgers transfer Artur Sitkowski) and lose a quarterback in that room (Isaiah Williams moving to receiver) this summer.
Making it clear Brandon Peters is the guy for Illinois heading into the 2021 season. Not much different than it was prior to the 2019 or 2020 seasons, with the Michigan transfer acting as QB1 for the Illini when he’s healthy.
Sitkowski will likely enter training camp as the backup to Peters, but the 6-foot-5, 224-pound native of Old Bridge, N.J., should bring the same drop-back ability the 6-5, 220-pound Peters does, along with a solid arm.
Both quarterbacks who started their careers elsewhere in the Big Ten before arriving in Champaign, however, will need to improve their accuracy. Sitkowski struggled mightily as a true freshman in 2018, throwing 18 interceptions (including three against the Illini in a 38-17 win by Illinois in 2018 out in New Jersey) compared to only four touchdowns for the worst team in the Big Ten that season.
Peters hasn’t had quite the interception problems Sitkowski has had in his career — a respectable 25 touchdowns and 11 interceptions during his stints at Michigan and Illinois. But he only completed 49 percent of his passes last fall, a dip after he completed 55 percent of his passes in 2019.
If Sitkowski plays in 2021, it means he’s either surpassed Peters with his play in practice or Peters will once again struggle to stay on the field. He missed two games in 2019 because of two separate concussions and three games last season after testing positive for COVID-19.
Therein lies a big-picture issue surrounding Illinois for, well, the last 40-plus years. Inconsistent quarterback play has surely played a hand in inconsistent results.
Illinois has posted 15 winning seasons since 1980. Illinois started a combined 10 quarterbacks in those seasons. Nathan Scheelhaase, Juice Williams, Kurt Kittner, Johnny Johnson, Scott Weaver, Jason Verduzco, Jeff Kinney, Jeff George, Jack Trudeau and Tony Eason all were under center — consistently with the exception of a few spot starts for Kinney and Weaver — for some of the best Illini teams in the last 40 years.
For comparison’s sake, the recently completed five-year Lovie Smith era saw 10 quarterbacks start a game for the Illini.
Peters, Isaiah Williams, Coran Taylor, Matt Robinson, AJ Bush Jr., M.J. Rivers III, Chayce Crouch, Jeff George Jr., Cam Thomas and Wes Lunt were all unable to maintain a firm grip on the job for a variety of reasons.
Hence, a key reason Smith went 17-39 at Illinois and was fired a week before the 2020 season ended.
Which brings us to the current state of the program. Sitkowski might get a chance to become the guy at some point, but if Illinois wants to reverse a decade-long streak of losing seasons, a consistent Peters all season is the best option to make that happen.
Otherwise, Bielema might have to shoulder even more of the blame.
But if Peters can stay healthy, improve his accuracy and efficiently run coordinator Tony Petersen’s new offense, then the quarterback might be the talk of the town this fall.
Matt Daniels is the sports editor at The News-Gazette. He can be reached at 217-373-7422 or at mdaniels@news-gazette.com.
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