On Saturday, Illinois lost 14 players due to Covid-19 tests and contact tracing, and then lost to Purdue 31-24.

Here’s what head coach Lovie Smith had to say:

On Covid-19:

• We don’t have a whole lot of positives but we have enough with contact tracing to hurt our team a little bit.
• The players we missed this week will be out this weekend as well.
• No more positive tests for us.
• We can’t afford another group of players to go out.
• No symptoms really (For Illini who are positive).
• I think there are three total right now that are [COVID] positive.

On the offense:

• We had a lot of yards.

On Coran Taylor:

• I thought Coran [Taylor] came in and did some good football.
• Forth team quarterback doesn’t get any (Reps)
• If you talk to Coran, you know he has confidence in himself. Now it is about correcting the mistakes he made.

On the defense:

• There were some good things, but not good enough.
• Defensively, I thought we did some things better ... we have to play better pass defense than that.
• I thought we defended the run well.
• We liked a lot of things (from the D-line).
• We took the balls away a couple of times, had a fourth down stop...there is hope, we did some good things.
• I saw improvement from game one to game two.
• We haven’t played well. Expect to see those guys play better this week, and they will. (Secondary)

On the election/ having practice cancelled to vote:

• All of our guys who haven’t voted yet, will be voting tomorrow.
• I think it is something that is long overdue. What is more important than the presidential election? Along with other things being voted on tomorrow.

On individual players:

• Jake Hansen forced the offense to turn the ball over.
• Owen Carney had three sacks and should’ve had two others.
• He (Carney) had the best game of his career thus far.
• If Jamal Woods can’t go this week, we feel comfortable going with Newton.
• We loved Johnny Newton when we were recruiting him. When you put an athlete like that at the defensive tackle position like that, you get excited about that.
• Matt [Robinson] is getting better.
• Rod Perry has played good football for us.
• Chase Brown got some more carries.

On this weekend’s game against Minnesota:

• Tough loss but a lot to build on this week.
• We are doing anything we can to win this football game.