All Outa' Juice

Hold on to your hats, the Illini are due for a dramatic turnaround. Ron Zook announced on that he was going with Eddie McGee instead of Juice Williams for the Illini against Michigan State on Saturday.
We have seen McGee play, it isn't great, and neither is this Illini team. This is like when a baseball team fires it's manager in the middle of the season because the team is playing terribly. It really isn't about how the manager, or in this scenario Juice, has preformed. It is about the team doing poorly and the need to shake things up in the hopes of re-energizing the team. As far as the Illini program goes, it really is not a good sign when your all-time career leader in yardage gets benched his senior year.

The main issue with Juice is that he never really improved. When Juice came to the U of I, he was an enormously touted recruit and he was seen as the symbol for change and promise for the future. Juice was the Obama of Illinois football. Just like Barack's first year in office, it has not been as smooth as anyone had hoped His best season was his sophomore year where we ran the ball on everybody. Juice flourished with Mendenhall, and took the team to the Rose Bowl. Through it all, he never became a consistently good passer, there were glimpses, but he never really became an elite passing quarterback. Last season, he some had great games, but he threw 16 interception, and only completed 57% of his passes. This season he is taking the fall for an atrocious Illinois offense, that in games against teams not Illinois State, have scored only 26 points in 3 games, 14 of those points coming in garbage time against Penn State.
I assume that Juice will play again at some point this year for the Illini, but for now Juice represents what the Illinois football team has become; unfulfilled potential.