You always learn so little during fall camp and learn so much during the first game. I realize that for many of you, August is all about sorting through "every new starter is 100% ready to dominate" social media posts until you can get to that first game and see if they were actually "ready."

We don't know everything after only one game, but we did learn a lot. What did we learn?

1. We showed a "shoot ourselves in the foot" quality that wasn't there last year.

I probably don't need to say more than "9 penalties for 90 yards in the first half alone" here, but you might have noticed that Saturday's game was a bit sloppier than most games last season. We kept Toledo drives alive by roughing the passer. We wiped out big plays of our own with holding penalties. Every team does some of that, but we had three games-worth in just the first game.

It's fine. It doesn't mean anything, I don't think. It's the natural outcome of so much turnover at certain positions. Every team replacing a bunch of players has to deal with mistakes until the mistakes go away. We simply did way too much foot-shooting on Saturday night. To wit:

• Our first punt was the result of a holding penalty (took a 15-yard gain off the board and turned 1st and 10 at the 40 into 1st and 20 at the 15). And to further kill the drive we had a false start two plays later.
• Tarique Barnes got an unsportsmanlike penalty (after an incompletion on 3rd and 7) which kept their punt team on the sideline. Their drive ended in a FG, so that's 3 points from one penalty.
• On Toledo's drive at the end of the 2nd quarter (when they took the lead with four seconds left in the half), we helped them get there with Pass Interference on 3rd and 7 (there's that Toledo punt team, still over on the sideline) as well as a combo "free play - might as well throw it" (declined) + PI call (15 yards) on the same play a few plays later.
• And then perhaps the worst penalty: a roughing-the-passer call on a 3rd and 14 incompletion which set them up with 1st and goal from the 10 (they'd eventually score to take a 28-27 lead) instead of 4th and 14 from the 20.

There are other penalties, but those were just the "shot ourselves in the foot" ones. The first one killed a promising drive, the last three added 3, 7, and 7 points to Toledo's score. This game would not have been close without those penalties.

But wait, there's more.

• We went for it on 4th and 1 from the Toledo 26 and got stuffed. At the very least that's 3 points off the board, at the most its an eventual 7 that was taken away.
• We forced them into 3rd and 27 (nearly out of field goal range), put two spies on their QB... and allowed him to gain 24 of those 27 yards on a scramble when everyone in the building knew it was the "just drop back and then take off" play.
• We threw an interception at the 20 on a promising drive that only used two plays to get to the Toledo 43 and then... INT.

This was a 41-13 win that we turned into 30-28 win because of mistake after mistake. I think we can label them "expected mistakes" with so many players playing their first Illini snaps, but they're still mistakes.

2. Miles Scott appears 100% ready to dominate the entire world.

It just came out today that he was named co-Defensive Player of the Week in the Big Ten for opening week. Just for fun I want to remind you of my tweet from April of 2022 (for, like, the 9th time in the last month):

That's one of my favorite things about getting to see practice. Seeing a walkon who clearly shouldn't have been a walkon. And I think I like to link that tweet so much because I comped Miles to Fej there. Is he the new Fej? STAY TUNED.

But seriously, Big Ten Co-DPOTY. Highest rated safety on PFF. And made the two, no three (thanks DB) biggest plays of the game:

• Stuffed the Toledo two-point try with three minutes left.
• Ran down Jacquez Stewart at the 11 on that long run, preventing a touchdown (Toledo got 3 on their opening drive, not 7).
• Oh, this little thing we like to call a PICK SIX.

Is Miles Scott ready to dominate the entire world?

{shakes magic 8-ball}

Signs point to yes.

3. The defense probably won't carry us this year.

How does Illinois finish 21st in the SP+ last year with the 99th-best offense? By having the #2 defense. You might think that this would result in maybe the 50th-best college football team, but no. When you have a defense that exceptional, it dominates your NERDstat profile and you're a top-25 team.

(Another example of that: Last year USC had the #1 offense and the #87 defense That combined to put them 17th in the final SP+.)

Illinois beats Toledo. In the SP+ "Post-Game Win Expectancy", we were 82.4% (meaning, if you played this same game with these same stats 100 times, Illinois wins 82 times and Toledo wins 18 times). So why did this win drop Illinois from #43 to #52 in the SP+? Let's talk about all of it.

First off, Post-Game Win Expectancy. You might see a game where Toledo had more yards (and we got a pick-six) and think "wow, we were lucky to win." And then you see the PGWE and wonder why the NERDstats think that Toledo would have been lucky to win had that Caleb Griffin field goal not sailed through.

I think that's pretty simple. PGWE leans heavily on explosive plays (as it should). Teams that pick up chunk plays on offense (and prevent chunk plays on defense) are highly likely to win a college football game. If you can only pick up 4.5 yards at a time, sure, you might be able to string together a 14 play drive and score, but there's a good chance something bad happens during those 14 plays and you'll have to punt (or kick a field goal, or, worse yet, turn it over). The teams that get down the field quickly and efficiently are the teams that win football games.

We averaged 6.1 yards per play. Toledo averaged 5.3. That might not seem like much, but 374 yards on 61 plays looks better to a laptop than 416 yards on 79 plays. Efficiency usually wins games. (As do pick-sixes, which factors in our favor here.)

OK, so if that's a game that Illinois wins 82 out of 100 times (and Toledo nearly pulled off a 18% chance escape), then why did Illinois fall so far in the SP+? Nine spots is a lot. What gives? I don't have access to Bill Connelly's laptop, but I would guess that the drop is something like this:

In the final preseason SP+, Connelly's laptop had the Illini 43rd. It buzzed and whirred and spit out that, with the roster losses, we should expect Illinois to have the #82 offense and the #7 defense.

Now we have the week one returns. The offense was fairly efficient (you know, when they weren't false-starting or holding), and that moved the offense from 82nd to 78th in his numbers. The defense? The defense gave up 416 yards and 28 points to an offense assumed to be 66th-best nationally going into the season. When you do that, the laptop says you shouldn't assume this will be the 7th-best defense. You should assume that this will be the 19th-best defense. Preseason factors still weigh heavily here, but 8% of the precincts are reporting and the news isn't great.

Does this MEAN anything? No. With as many players as we're replacing (and with Matt Bailey's injury), I didn't see any possible way we'd be the 7th-best defense in the country. If you read the preview I spoke often about the offense hopefully making a big leap to offset the defense's drop. That's probably the best way to frame all of this.

The offense jumped four spots. The defense dropped 12 spots. These are very, very early returns but we need those numbers to be similar. Put simply, if the defense is going to fall 30 spots by the end of the year, the offense needs to match or exceed it with a climb of their own.

4. The offense might have some explosivity?

This will be the shortest section of the five I'm writing because these are very early returns. And most of it is based on #5 below (which is all about Luke Altmyer). But I wanted to make special mention of the possible explosiveness of this offense.

First off, this game wasn't Oklahoma-with-Baker-Mayfield explosive. Other fanbases reading this would laugh at the use of the word "explosive" here. Please know that I could add "for Illinois" at the end of every sentence.

But we saw a few things on Saturday night that made me think that one of the things that was missing last year (explosive plays) might happen more often this year. Last year we had "Chase breaks a long one" and "Isaiah gets free after one of those one-yard passes" and that was about it. This year, I think we saw hints of more in the first game.

Just take Luke Altmyer's runs. He was an inch from breaking about a 65-yard scramble on Saturday. And his 8 rushes for 77 yards were all very impressive. (I say 8-for-77 instead of 9-for-69 because that ninth "rush" was a sack. And it's kind of dumb that those lost yards go into your rushing total. He ran the ball 8 times. He picked up 77 yards on those eight runs.)

So when your QB picks up nearly 10 yards per rush, and your slot receiver looks ready to break one at any moment, and your flanker caught two big touchdown passes, and your split-end caught a 33-yard bomb on fourth down with the game on the line, and your tailback pulled another one of those "he's down - no, wait, he's still on his feet running for an additional 25 yards"... then you might have an offense with a bit more explosivity.

We need an offense with a bit more explosivity.

5. Luke Altmyer appears to be the real deal.

This was the big one. If you like to drink orange and blue kool-aid, the pitcher in the fridge after this game was labeled "Luke Altmyer."

I did a radio appearance with Scott Beatty and Loren Tate this afternoon (you can listen here if you want). Loren asked me the last time an Illini QB had a debut like this. I mentioned several and Loren had the stats ready, making me hilariously wrong (like my memory of Nathan Scheelhaase's debut against Missouri in 2010 which I had as "really good" when he was 9-for-23.) I finally asked Loren what his research showed - when was the last time a QB had a debut with stats like this?

"Never."

That's man who was roommates with Chuck Boerio in 1951 when he screamed "send Ameche at me", people. He's seen nearly 75 years of Illini football. And if he says that this was the best QB debut he's seen, I sit up and pay attention.

Here's a tweet with the QBR numbers for all of the Big Ten quarterbacks this past weekend:

Big 10 QBR in Week 1

95.4: JJ McCarthy, Michigan

86.4: Taulia Tagovailoa, Maryland
86.0: Drew Allar, Penn State

81.9: Gavin Wimsatt, Rutgers
79.2: Luke Altmyer, Illinois
78.1: Kyle MCord, Ohio State

66.4: Hudson Card, Purdue

60.6: Noah Kim, Michigan State

53.1: Athan…

— parker fleming (@statsowar) September 4, 2023

Fans of nearly every other college football program:

"P'shaw, four other quarterbacks in the conference had a better game and you're hailing this as the best debut 'ever'?"

Me, Illini football fanatic:

"The last time an Illini quarterback was even rostered as the 2nd-string QB in the NFL was 2003. We haven't produced one of the best 75-or-so quarterbacks in the NFL in the last twenty years. Do you know how easy it is to just have one quarterback be the 68th-best QB and to hang on as the third QB on some team that carries three QB's? You'd think it would happen just once in TWENTY YEARS. But it has not happened in TWENTY YEARS. You're damn right I'm losing my mind over our quarterback having the 5th-best performance in the Big Ten week one."

I'm making too much of this. He threw into triple coverage and was picked off in this game. If he does that three times at Kansas on Friday night, I'll feel dumb for writing any of this.

But if he continues to play like that? Well, then, uh, one more list:

• We'd be able to overcome "shot ourselves in the foot again" games.
• We wouldn't have to worry about the defense carrying us.
• We'd be able to utilize this gleesome threesome at wide receiver.

BRB gonna go make Gleesome Threesome shirts.