Did Illinois Discover a New Cheat Code for Luke Altmyer Against Ohio State?

Illinois coach Bret Bielema was noticeably frustrated after the Illini's 34-16 home loss to No. 1 Ohio State on Saturday, and he had good reason to be. Three turnovers, a handful of missed tackles and a series of other preventable mistakes made it clear the Illini haven't yet made the strides Bielema had hoped.

But there were silver linings to be had, and maybe the most intriguing among them was Illinois' offensive output when coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. gave the green light for quarterback Luke Altmyer to go into hurry-up mode. The Illini went no-huddle from their opening possession, but they didn't initially push the pace. Altmyer began the game 4-for-12 for 29 yards and an interception.

As soon as they needed to go, however, they did, in fact, go. Down 20-0 and taking over on their own 25 with the clock showing under four minutes in the first half, Lunney, Altmyer and the Illini popped the clutch and dropped the pedal. If you remove an overturned touchdown pass to Justin Bowick and another incompletion to Bowick (on which he was mugged but no call was made), Altmyer fired seven straight completions for 58 yards to drive Illinois into scoring position for a David Olano field goal and the Illini's only points of the half.

Looking back, Bret Bielema wanted more 'tempo'

If Bielema had any regrets about the decision to turn to a quicker pace, it was only that the Illini didn't go to it sooner.

"I knew I actually wanted to go tempo the whole freaking game, because they couldn't do shit with it, right?" a rankled Bielema said in his postgame press conference. "Like, we were doing a lot of really good things back there. I think we could have done that a little bit sooner, a little bit quicker. Our quarterback's really good with it."

It didn't hurt, of course, that Illinois was down 20 at this point and Buckeyes defensive coordinator Matt Patricia had already shifted into a more conservative defensive posture. Still, the Illini strategy kept OSU from substituting to preferred personnel and helped wear down a unit bursting with future NFL Draft picks.

"They've got good players all over the place," Bielema said. "Matt's obviously a very talented coordinator. They got really good personnel. But it seemed like when we were in tempo, that things really began to work our way. We just needed to go to it probably a little sooner, a little more often."

Over the second half of Illinois' season, chances are we'll see Bielema and Lunney turn to tempo more often in tight spots, or when Altmyer appears to need a jolt. At the very least, Altmyer operating a two-minute offense over four quarters sure sounds like a brilliant bit of strategy.