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Barry Lunney Jr: Offensive line performed well despite ‘short notice’ against Indiana
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Barry Lunney Jr. is leaning into his role as offensive coordinator in his 1st season on the job. Even though Illinois lost to Indiana 23-20, he still thought the offensive line played well per Joey Wagner of 247Sports.
Illinois had Julian Pearl out with an undisclosed injury, which meant that the entire offensive line had to reshuffle. Lunney was proud of how his group adjusted, and finished the game. Chase Brown still ran for 199 yards rushing regardless.
I thought they handled it really well in the big scheme of things. For it to happen the way that it did during the course of the week and for limited amount of practice to adjust, I thought it was really impressive that our guys were able to get up there and we ran the ball as effectively as we did at times. We had a couple little protection challenges, but we really protected the quarterback pretty well overall from top to bottom. Just a couple schematic things that maybe got us a little bit. I thought those guys did a pretty admirable job of stepping in kind of on short notice.
Illinois’ next challenge will against Virginia. We’ll see if the offensive line can keep opening up running lanes for Brown to go through as the season moves on.
Grant Bricker covers the B1G for Saturday Tradition. His previous stops include the Williamson Homepage and Nashville Post.