Illinois fell 41-14 to Minnesota on Saturday falling to 0-3 on the season, while the Gophers were able to get their first win on the season.

“Extremely disappointed with the way we played today, we knew what type of football game it would be today, a physical one,” head coach Lovie Smith said. “I thought they dominated us on both sides, offensive and defensive.

“Not much happened, terrible performance, when you play like that you can’t wait to get to the next game.”

Prior to kickoff, Illinois announced 15 players would not play, due to a combination positive COVID-19 tests, contact tracing related to COVID-19 and injuries.

That list of players included Illinois starting cornerback Nate Hobbs, who was looking to bounce back from a rough performance against Purdue.

Despite scoring just 14 points, Illinois running back Mike Epstein ran for 108 yards and the Illini offense ran for 174 total yards.

“It does feel good, but not much feels good after this game,” Epstein said. “Individual things are good, but we are all here trying to win and today was a bad performance on our part, so we need to do better.”

However, Illinois wasn’t able to move the ball through the air outside of a 52-yard touchdown catch and run for Josh Imatorbhebhe in the fourth quarter.

Fourth string quarterback Coran Taylor started for Illinois, due to starting quarterback Brandon Peters being out with COVID-19, Isaiah Williams out due to contract tracing and third stringer Matt Robinson out with an ankle injury.

Taylor struggled in his first start, completing just six of his 17 attempts for 106 yards. 52 of those yards came on one pass to Josh Imatorbhebhe, who broke a tackle leading to a big run.

“I have to step up my game every day – at practice, in film in training,” Taylor said. “I need to step it up. I feel like I can do better; there’s always room to get better. “

Minus Hobbs, who missed the game with a shoulder injury, Illinois’ defense was once again thrashed through the air. Minnesota quarterback Tanner Morgan threw for 231 yards and a touchdown.

The 2019 Big Ten wide receiver of the year, Rashod Bateman, had a career day for Minnesota posting a career high in receptions (10) while also totaling 154 receiving yards and a touchdown.

Through the first two games of the season, the Illini front four had done a nice job of slowing the run, allowing just 3.1 yards per carry. However, Gopher running back Mohamed Ibrahim tied a career best 224 rushing yards and had four rushing touchdowns and was the star of the game for Minnesota.

“Defensively, in how we played in our front seven, you can't get much worse,” Lovie Smith said.

A large part of Ibrahim’s success on Saturday came from Illinois struggling to tackle, particularly in the middle of the field.

“We missed tackles this game,” Smith said. “We are going to work on tackling more this week. A lot of that is just, want to.”

In addition to the missed tackles, Illinois reverted back to their old ways of committing 12 penalties for 120 yards, which didn’t really have a large impact on the outcome of the game, but in year five of a head coach sloppy play is a difficult thing to understand.

“Yeah, we haven’t been a team that hasn’t been penalized an awful lot like this, so this isn’t something that is happening an awful lot to us,” Smith said. “We normally have a lot more disciple than we had today.”

Smith spoke after the game about the effort that his team gave on Saturday, but linebacker Jake Hansen thinks the aspect of effort starts early in the week, not just on game day.

“Of course, you want to have energy going in, but I think it is more about being a little more sound in the week and locked in,” Hansen said. “I don’t think it is as much about the pregame hype thing as people may think.”

Next week, Illinois will look to get into the win column for the first time on the season when they travel to New Jersey to play the Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

“There is just a lot of football to play,” Smith said. “Long football season. Disappointed in what has happened so far, not the only football team that is disappointed. We can still play better with what have right now.”