The Illinois Meat Wall

There are three schools of people clicking on this article this morning, or afternoon, or 2-3 months later during Big Ten play. They are:

1. People who are aware of what I'm referring to with the "meat wall," which originated as a set piece strategy in English soccer these past couple of seasons and reached full revulsion amongst fans over the summer at the World Cup, or at least full revulsion amongst a significant subset of fans I follow.
2. People who have no idea what this is referring to and are worried this site is taking a turn into pornographic territories.
3. Illinois fans who fall into neither category and clicked on this because it's about Illinois.

Here is my plea: stick around, because there's a real point here. Illinois has played one real game and three fake ones. In these four games, the Illini are 3-1 with two blowouts and two coin-flip-like things. The blowouts are of significantly worse competition; the close ones are against Tournament-ish Big 12 sides. Illinois is still down David Mirkovic and is breaking in an entirely new offense, which perhaps makes the fact they're averaging 137 points per 100 possessions through four fake-to-real affairs somehow more impressive.