Miller knows Illini's tackling needs to improve

Senior middle linebacker Brit Miller was a member of his high school's National Honor Society and plans to graduate from Illinois in 3 years with a double major in history and speech communication.

In short, the gregarious Decatur native has serious smarts.

But Miller didn't exactly need to tax his brain to predict what's coming when the Illini return to the practice field today.

Not after Illinois' defense surrendered 38 points and 549 total yards in No. 6 Missouri's 52-42 victory Saturday night at St. Louis.

"I'm sure we'll do a lot more tackling drills," Miller said. "A lot of tackles were left out there. I mean, we're going to play in the most physical conference in America.

"If we're going to make tackles in that league, then we're going to have to be able to tackle anybody in the nation and we didn't get that done (Saturday)."

Illini coach Ron Zook didn't like the shoddy tackling either - and plans to rectify it before Saturday's home opener against Eastern Illinois.

But after watching the Missouri tape Sunday morning, he wondered if the Illini might have outsmarted themselves.

There were a handful of plays where some defenders weren't even lined up when Mizzou snapped the ball. That's among the signs the Illini went too far trying to match the Tigers' tricks with some audibles of their own.

"We may have put a little too much on them in terms of checks," Zook said. "Trying to get everybody doing the right thing. Most of our mental errors came from not getting our checks. We'd get some of them doing it and others wouldn't.

"(The Tigers) do so much stuff. We might have been better off, rather than trying to check stuff, just letting our guys line up and fly around and play."

That's eventually what Illinois did, though not until after falling behind by as much as 25 points in the third quarter.

Perhaps Missouri started to nurse the clock down the stretch, but the Illini held the Tigers offense to 51 total yards and no points in the fourth quarter.

They forced three punts and made the Tigers turn it over on downs, too.

"I've got to take a little bit of that," Zook said, "because one of the things I was concerned about was just them guys flying upfield and creating big running lanes and letting (Chase Daniel) scramble, because you could see he can run.

"Particularly in the first half, I might have taken their fight away a little bit."

Miller wasn't as willing to lay the defense's problems at the coaches' feet.

"We've got to use our full and complete playbook," he said. "I think that's on us as players because we weren't giving our coaches the feeling that they could be comfortable with the calls during the week."