CHAMPAIGN, Ill.– He meant it as a good-natured jab at a friend, but Illinois wide receiver Arrelious Benn’s joke neatly summed up the situation facing his quarterback, Juice Williams, this fall.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill.– He meant it as a good-natured jab at a friend, but Illinois wide receiver Arrelious Benn’s joke neatly summed up the situation facing his quarterback, Juice Williams, this fall.
“I always get on Juice,” said Benn, the junior wideout who leads what might be Illinois’ best receiving corps since the early 1990s. “Man, he has no excuse. He’s got everybody he needs here.”
And as Juice (born Isiah John) goes, almost certainly so go the Illini.
Illinois has been Williams’ team since he stepped on the field since late in his freshman season, in 2006, and led a no-hope, two-win Illinois team to within a touchdown of top-ranked Ohio State.
He was a raw product of the same Chicago (Vocational) high school that produced Dick Butkus, far more athlete than quarterback. But Juice was also Ron Zook’s first big recruit and the Illini marketed him as the face of the resurgence they hoped Zook would lead.
At times Juice has carried that weight well. He led Illinois to the 2008 Rose Bowl, the reward for a surprise 9-3 season his sophomore year. But last year he seemed powerless to stop the Illini from falling back to a puzzling 5-7.
There was blame to go around. Illinois gave up 26.6 points a game and Williams’ 719 rushing yards led a team suddenly without star running back Rashard Mendenhall, who was a top NFL draft pick. But Williams really only had a handful of strong games, the kind where his arm and his feet were on and the Illini offense clicked.
Zook said this season, his fifth at Illinois, the Illini don’t have to sink or swim with their senior quarterback.
“These guys understand that it doesn’t have to be just one guy,” Zook said. “We don’t have to put the team on Juice’s back.”
For starters, Benn will be joined at receiver this year by Jarred Fayson, a transfer from Florida who should force defenses to think twice about doubling Benn and daring Juice to find another target. Zook also believes his running back platoon – Daniel Dufrene, Jason Ford, Mikel LeShore and Troy Pollard – should be stronger than last year, when the four combined for 1,120 yards.
Williams calls last year a wake-up call, a reminder that a trip to the 2008 Rose Bowl didn’t mean much the next season. He talks about the pressure on he and Benn – who caught 67 balls for 1,055 yards last season and is widely expected to skip his senior year for the NFL – to produce when not much else was working.
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AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
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