For the third week in a row, Illinois football fans will have to wait to see who will be the starting quarterback for Saturday’s game against Minnesota.

Head coach Ron Turner announced Monday, at his weekly press conference, that he didn’t know who would start Saturday’s game, but did know it would not be Jon Beutjer.

“We are going to go with obviously who we feel gives us the best chance to win,” Turner said. “We are going to go with one of the other guys. We are going to take a look at one of the other guys this week. I’m not sure who it will be. … We just feel that putting Brad (Bower), Tim (Brasic) or Chris (Pazan) in there (will give us the best chance to win). We will look at them this week in practice and see how they do. We just feel they deserve a shot at it.”

Turner has waited to name his quarterback for the past two games, but eventually gave Beutjer the nod as the starting QB.

Both Pazan and Bower have seen playing time this year, but Brasic has yet to lead the Illini offense come game time.

“We wanted to give the other guys an opportunity,” Turner said. “They have been practicing well and preparing well and they deserve that chance. But it also has to do with how Jon’s doing. He did some good things in the game, but to be quite honest with you, we have to play better at the quarterback position to win football games.”

Beutjer, who played the whole game on Saturday, finished with 20-of-39 completions for 156 yards but threw his first three interceptions of the season as the Illini lost 30-19.

Bower, who has seen action in four games, is 24-of-43 with an average of 80.2 yards a game. Pazan is 12-of-21 in two games with an average of 57.5 yards per game.

Although Brasic hasn’t seen any playing time, he did take a lot of reps last week when Turner was deciding who to play in Saturday’s game against Michigan.

Turner isn’t ready to say that Beutjer has lost his starting spot for the season but hopes that this game will make the haziness surrounding quarterbacks much clearer.

“It depends on how that person does,” Turner said. “Hopefully we will make a decision on who gives us the best chance to win and that young man will go out there and play great football and we won’t have to talk about this again.”

Surgery for Williams

Junior free safety Travis Williams will have surgery on Monday for a sports hernia, Turner said.

Doctors said Williams can play up until the time of surgery, but once he has the surgery, he will need three months of recovery.

Williams, who started the first four games, has seen very limited playing time in the past three weeks because of this injury.

Homecoming game time

Game time is set for 11 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 30, when the Illini host Iowa in this year’s homecoming game. The game will be televised on ESPN Plus.

Confidence in coaching

“I don’t see a whole lot of reason (not to believe in the coaches). … We don’t see a problem with the plays we are calling – it’s the way that we are executing the things that we need to do. It would be frustrating if we were blocking it perfectly or filling our gaps the way we should and it wasn’t working. But if you look on film, it’s tough to blame a coach when you see yourself not doing what you are asked to do. In terms of that, I don’t see how we can sit there and not believe in them when a lot of the problems we are facing and a lot of the reasons we are succeeding is on our shoulders.”

– Duke Preston