Everyone’s excited. Football season is starting, and campus is buzzing heading into the first weekend after classes. Illinois football is bound to have a decent crowd for its first game against a team that goes by the Penguins, and I’d expect a fair amount of students will fill Block I.

If the past two years have proven anything, that buzz will be gone by November.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The general consensus by so-called college football “experts” is that Illinois will win four or five games this season. But I ask, “Why not six or seven?”

I’m not saying that’s going to happen. I’m simply saying the “experts” are wrong about as often as they are right.

Here’s something I can say with total confidence: The 2014 Illini will be the best team in Tim Beckman’s tenure at Illinois thus far. That’s not saying a lot, I know.

In 2012, the Illini had a solid defense, but no offense. In 2013 there was offense, but no defense. If you match up the 2012 defense with the 2013 offense, you have a pretty good team on paper.

If anything, this year’s defense is experienced. Almost the entire starting lineup is back. The question is how much better have they gotten in the past eight months. Junior cornerback V’Angelo Bentley said there’s still work to do, and I believe him.

“We have the talent,” Bentley said. “It’s just about us reading what the offense is doing and making strides to not make mental errors.”

Bentley noted Earnest Thomas III, Mason Monheim and Austin Teitsma as the vocal leaders of the Illinois defense. They are three of the Illini’s most experienced defenders, and it’s time for them to step up on the field as well.

How much better have they gotten in the last year? You can’t single out the blame on any one person when you look back at the 2013 Illinois defense. It was a collectively poor effort.

And with so much experience returning, it’s all going to come down to how much each individual has improved.

Last year, defensive coordinator Tim Banks was a broken record. The Illini lacked in fundamentals — namely tackling — and Banks said so just about every week. He contradicted himself earlier this week.

“I don’t know that tackling was always the issue,” Banks said. “We had our issues, don’t get me wrong, tackling wasn’t necessarily that week-in, week-out. The problem was, you fix this, something else came about. You fix that, something else came about.”

Memories can be selective, but I sure remember Banks harping on tackling, tackling, tackling last year.

So let’s not run away from this one Coach: The defense couldn’t bring down many ball carriers in the open field in 2013. No one’s saying tackling was the only issue, but it sure was a prominent one.

Illinois’ matchup with Youngstown State won’t tell us much. At 8-4 last year, the Penguins were a respectable FCS team. But they will be the first of three gimmies (along with Western Kentucky and Texas State) that should get the Illini halfway to a bowl game.

Beckman sure likes the excitement that comes with a new season.

“We do this profession for the kids, for the student athletes,” Beckman said. “I want them to see that there is some belief that they can get this thing done. There’s no question in my mind that I think we can get this done, but we have to prove it.”

You heard the man. It’s time to prove it.

Sean is a senior in Media. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @sean_hammond.