Illinois Fighting Illini College Football Pregame Quote, 11/16/2020

Isaiah [Williams] gave us a spark on offense, as did Chase Brown and the offensive line. We also did a good job on third down offensively, keeping drives going and special teams wise we had some core players step up. Kendall Smith got a couple of big special teams tackles and of course James McCourt finishing it up.

They [Nebraska] have put up a lot of points against us the past years that we’ve played them. We played them tough last year but weren’t able to get the win. Looking forward to going to Lincoln and playing them this year.

On Isaiah Williams and James McCourt Big Ten weekly honors:

Whenever you can get a Big Ten award, it says a lot. We know how good of players there are in our conference but those two guys definitely are deserving.

No one has cycled through quarterbacks more than we have, but it’s good to see someone else playing more than one guy‚Ķ McCaffery is an excellent football player he had the same type of effect that Isaiah had on our football team this week. He can pass the football and he is good in space, it’s just a different dimension when you have a guy like that leading their offense… It will be a big challenge for us this week.

On Khalan Tolson:

He did have a good day; he has been consistent. We’ve been asking him to play a lot of positions this year. Khalan is smart player with athletic ability and he was more aggressive, more physical in the run this week.

As a member of the team, your role changes constantly sometimes, maybe more than we or they would like but when you have flexibility like that the more things you can do to help our football team the better… we want guys that do have position flexibility and when you get a couple of injuries, you have to go to it.

I know he [Chase Brown] is a good football player. He can make you miss in the open field and he has been patient during his time here. You had a chance to see what we have behind the scenes. Not only Chase but the combination of him and Mike Epstein, both are excellent football players.