Offensive Coordinator Garrick McGee spent Saturday’s game up in the coach’s box for the Illini. During the first half of the Illini’s game against Michigan State, McGee’s offense was all but stagnant.

It took 28 minutes of game time for the Illini to get a first down. But when McGee called down to the field in the middle of the first half to talk to his quarterback, Jeff George Jr., he was oozing confidence. He told his coach that everything was going great.

McGee — and likely manys fan in the stadium — disagreed with George at that moment.

But that is how George is every time he steps out on the field.

“I like to think I am pretty confident,” George said. “I like to have as much fun as possible. At the end of the day, we are extremely blessed to be here — blessed to be playing a game. I definitely say just having that attitude of having fun with everything makes me very confident out there.”

George has been steadily improving after each start. In his first game against Michigan, he only completed four passes for 94 yards and a touchdown. Then he set a new career high in completions (16) and yards (156) against Minnesota.

But at no point in those two games was he as composed as he was in the Illini’s game winning drive late in the fourth quarter against Michigan State.

The sophomore took his team 75 yards over 1:17 of game time, completing one final pass to wide receiver Sam Mays to take the lead.

While McGee did not agree with his quarterback when he said everything was going well, there was no chance he was going to try to make him change his perspective.

“I like all of the players to be as enthusiastic and passionate as they can be,” McGee said. “Particularly on game, because when you are feeling good about yourself is when you make plays that you don’t normally make.”

McGee does not want to rob his quarterback of his confidence. He was thrown in a tough situation, going from third string to starter in a few weeks.

He has been showing that confidence since the spring. When it was George’s turn to step up into the starting role, McGee had as much confidence in him as George had during that phone call.

“I always feel confident in Jeff,” McGee said. “He played great in spring ball for us. I have always had confidence in Jeff. I just thought he needed, like all freshman, he needed to get his feet under him and start to figure out how fast the game is played.”

Penalties are no longer a problem
The Illinois football coaching staff was tired of seeing their players rack up so many penalties – 46 to be exact – through the first five games of the season.

The Illini tried to make changes throughout the season, but after they committed 12 penalties for 125 yards against Purdue, they knew the problem had to be fixed.

Since then, the Illini have only committed 16 penalties over the past four games, and the Illini no longer have the most penalties in the Big Ten.

“There was an emphasis, believe it or not, on not having that many penalties early on,” Smith said. “But they kept getting to the point where you could see how penalties can really hurt you. We just keep working on it, like everything else we have been doing.”

Defensive end Dawuane Smoot said the penalties were mainly caused by being overly aggressive, and they all had to work on controlling themselves better.

That new sense of control came from a little extra running at practice.

For instance, whenever a defensive lineman went offside during a practice, they’d have to run laps.

About two times per week, Smoot would go offside. When the play was over, he looked to the sideline to find Defensive Line Coach Mike Phair pointing off the field, signaling for Smoot to go take a lap.

“Most of our penalties were just aggressive penalties,” Smoot said. “We started changing things in practice. We just started doing little things through practice, and those little things just put it in our minds that we can’t jump offside or something like that in games.”

Through the first five games, the Illini went 1-4. Now the Illini are 2-2 since they stopped tallying so many penalties.

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