CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) -Juice Williams sat in the stands at the Illinois spring football game in 2006, a high school senior just recruited but already the face of Ron Zook’s rebuilding job.
Some compared the Chicago quarterback to his hero, Michael Vick – big arm, quick feet, plus a body built to punish anyone who tried to stop him.
Since then, Williams has had his moments – a record-setting performance at Ann Arbor, a big win at Ohio State and a Rose Bowl trip. But three games into his senior year, the 21-year-old is looking for a way to right the Illini (1-2).
“It’s like a nightmare, something that was far from our anticipation coming into the season,” Williams told reporters after Saturday’s rain-soaked 30-0 drubbing at Ohio State, a game in which Zook pulled him for backup Eddie McGee. “We’ve got to jump-start this program immediately. Time’s ticking.”
Saturday.
But Juice could just as easily have been talking about the struggle to write a happy ending to his own college career.
Juice – not Anthony Carter, Desmond Howard or Rick Leach – owns the record for most combined yards in a game at 82-year-old Michigan Stadium after last year’s can-you-believe-it 431-yard performance.
The Chicago Vocational Career Academy graduate led the Illini on the drive that anchored one of the great moments in school history – willing the Illinois up the field in Columbus two years ago to grind down the final eight-plus minutes of a win that ended Ohio State’s bid for a perfect season and landed Zook’s young team in the Rose Bowl. It was Illinois’ first trip there since 1984.
And Juice will almost certainly leave Champaign as the school’s career leader in total offense, needing 76 yards to pass former quarterback Kurt Kittner.
But since that win at Ohio State in late 2007, Juice’s Illini are 7-10, including 5-7 last season.
The offense – supposedly a strength with Williams and star receiver Arrelious Benn – has been a big part of the problem.
In its two defeats this season, Illinois has scored nine points. Look no further than Juice’s stats for much, maybe most, of the explanation: 53 passes, 31 completions, three interceptions, no touchdowns – and just 94 yards rushing on 29 carries.
ing.
Williams was, as he usually is, quiet and patient in interviews this week, saying over and over again that Illinois needs to correct small mistakes, emphasizing that the team just needs to take care of a list of little things that he said stood between them and competing at Ohio State. Insisting that, yes, the Illini offense can again be explosive.
Questions and criticism, he says go with the territory.
“Any time you get a lot of blame for things going on, it’s tough. It’d be tough for any human, I think,” Williams said. “But, you know, that’s the nature of the beast – you sign up to play quarterback, you sign up to be a coach, that’s what you’ve got to deal with.
“I understand that,” he added. “I don’t think I could have quite said that four years ago as a freshman.”
Juice came to Illinois accustomed to attention. High schools from across Chicago, his mother has said, recruited him as an eighth-grader. He eventually landed at Vocational, the Southside school that produced Illini legend Dick Butkus.
A few years later, coaches from Ohio State, Tennessee, Penn State and North Carolina came calling before Juice decided to follow Zook south to Champaign.
n September of his freshmen year.
Williams’ receivers said right away that Juice could throw harder than the other QBs on the roster, but his touch and accuracy weren’t what it needed to be. And he said himself that, when he didn’t throw his hardest, his passes tended to wobble and miss the mark.
He’s become a more accurate passer every year he’s been at Illinois, but ill-timed inaccuracy has dogged him. He threw 16 interceptions last season, nine of them during an 0-5 finish.
After working for three seasons with Mike Locksley, the former Illini offensive coordinator who left this year to become head coach at New Mexico, Illinois’ offense this year is being led by former TCU offensive coordinator Mike Schultz.
Williams and Locksley were close, with Locksley text messaging or calling his QB often and mentoring him about what Locksley called “the quarterback lifestyle.”
Williams has said his new coach isn’t the problem. And he insists he isn’t bothered by last week’s benching in favor of McGee.
But Zook admits Williams is in a tough spot because the quarterback takes the losses to heart.
“I’m not going to sit here and say that his mental state is where you want it,” Zook said. “No one cares more. He understands that it’s his job as a quarterback. He understands also when things are good he gets too much credit, and when things go wrong he possibly gets too much blame.”
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