That's where smart money would be
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
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That's where smart money would be
FT35
- Naperville
Florida recruiting was certainly forgettable this year with us just picking up Coleman and almost losing him. Kind of surprising after how many players we had from Florida in the 2018 recruiting class. I really thought we had something going with Cardinal Gibbons and Deerfield Beach but nothing really materialized with recruits from those schools last year. I'm guessing the lack of scholarships in this class allowed us to prioritize instate, St. Louis and Texas.
We may see recruiting play out the same way this year as we really won't have that many scholarships for 2020 either.
It also looked like we tried to make some inroads in Georgia last year and that didn't work out well with Clark flipping to Miami. We also didn't appear to make a push for OL William Rogers even though he made an OV to campus.
I know we're not allowed to bash coaches until their fired but I would love to know what Byrd does? He "recruits" the San Diego area but I can't even think of anyone who had interest in us from that area. At least Clark has shown he can recruit.
I know Clark and R. Smith still have ties to California but I wouldn't be surprised if we abandon recruiting that part of the country. It's just really hard to get guys from there to come here if they have other P5 opportunities.
FT35
- Naperville
They visited for the WIU game but strangely did not get offers from Illinois until November?
I'm not familiar with the OT from O'Fallon. I lived pretty close to the High School 5+ years ago and that program is nowhere near as good as it was back then. I remember there being quite a few P5 guys there who did not give Illinois much of a chance.
Deleted member 654622
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I'm going to go with the dark horse candidate - Denver Warren
Very great point. Bailey could have been valuable to us the last couple years
St. Thomas Aquinnas is another school i hoped we would keep momentum going with as well. They produce some big time recruits. C'mon Epstien, get the boys on board!
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
And Eli Peters put up 18 TDs 7 INTs with a 55% completion percentage as a sophomore.
Deleted member 649710
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OK, so you admit that the talent Lovie inherited was bottom 10% of Power 5 programs. Add to that:
- A Rookie AD in his first week on the job . . .
- because the last AD was fired for covering up player abuse scandals in *multiple* sports . . .
- a terrible stench hanging over the program due to said player abuse scandals and ongoing lawsuits . . .
- hired late in the annual cycle after many quality assistants were already locked up . . .
- missed the recruiting cycle . . .
- third head coach in nine months(!)
- outdated facilities
- mediocre recruiting base
- 20 years of mostly futility
Do I think Lovie could have done better? Yes. But he, or another coach could have done even worse given the hole Illinois Football was in. Stop minimizing that. By the way, Kansas still sucks. I wouldn't trade their roster for ours.
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
And they fired their coach because of it. An act of impatience and failure to appreciate the difficulty of rebuilding that netted them a future Hall of Famer.
Anyway, the core of your argument seems to be the "stench" around the program. And there's no denying that the period of Not Ideal was one in which we seemed to be the absolute biggest joke in America behind the scenes, a reality not reflected in the dogged okayness of the 2015 football team on the field.
My argument is that Lovie himself completely turned the tables on that, just by his mere presence. Lovie's hire made Whitman the golden child who could bring down the big bucks in fundraising. Lovie's hire brought with it a hugely increased assistant salary pool and commitment to support staffing. Lovie's hire brought enormous amounts of good press onto the program, both in Chicago and nationally where we had been ignored for years.
We were all there, it was an amazing moment, it was quite a honeymoon. Even if we're bad next year and we move on, we're still better off for having that breath of fresh air and that fundraising spike which will result in a nice new facility that gets us back in that game. It changed the commitment to football at Illinois.
I don't mean to be unfair in not giving Lovie credit for things his arrival did for the program, but I don't think it's accurate to say he had to overcome the fallout and the toxic nature of things that his mere presence eliminated overnight.
If Paul Kowalczyk hires, say, then 17-21 career WMU head coach PJ Fleck after 2015 for Beckman-ish money with no institutional backing above him, PJ Fleck is going to have to do yeoman's work to repair the shattered credibility of the program. Lovie did all of that merely by putting his name to a contract. He put out a lot of the dumpster fire just by showing up, so to speak. He didn't magically change the talent level just by showing up, but as I've shown the talent level was just poor, not radioactive, and comparable to lots of other situations.
Deleted member 654622
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I do not disagree with this post EXCEPT for what I have changed. And that is a big difference
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
No qualms from me. No one's saying this was a plum job.
Give me David Cutcliffe's first three years at Duke and this would be a different conversation. We've been more like Darrell Hazell's first three years at Purdue.
NBB1979
UIUCFAN1
- Springfield, IL
I think he had a choice - i don't remember how many senior starters were on that team - but I think it was something like 16 to begin the season and ended around like 4 ... no doubt in my mind that we win an extra game or 2 if he doesn't start the youth movement after the purdue loss (which i think was due to a missed FG at the end of the game?)
Would those extra 1/2 wins mattered if we couldn't beat Purdue with our Sr starters? probably not
I'll be honest, Chief Gritty. I'm confounded by you. You say your an advocate of Lovie's, but every other word out of your mouth seems to contradict that and more or less imply the right decision would be to move on from him... like, to have done so yesterday wouldn't be too soon. Is my read wrong? Anybody else interpreting the same, or am I just way off base here. I've had a couple Blanton's, so definitely could be me.
While we are on the topic lol. There has been a lot of discussion about what Lovie inherited and Lovie deciding to play Freshman over more experienced players etc. Here is a list I could come up with of transfers under Lovie and their new school. I have no doubt I missed some:
TE Henry McGrew-?
DB Harvey Clayton Jr. -Duquesne
DB Frank Sumpter -Eastern Kentucky
QB Jeff George Jr. Michigan/Pitt
DE Sean Adesanya – Central Michigan
WR Dominic Thieman- Duquesne
DB Chris James-?
DE/LB Christion Abercrombie-Tennessee St.
LB Julian Jones-Georgia St.
DT Tito Odenigbo -Miami Fl
S Patrick Nelson-SMU
OL Gabe Megginson- Illinois St.
LB Tre Watson- Maryland
WR Desmond Cain-North Dakota St.
OL Adam Solomon- Illinois St.
RB Keyshawn Vaughn- Vanderbilt
LB Julian Hylton-SIU
RB Tre Nation- Austin Peay
WR M.J. McGriff- Akron
WR Zarrian Holcombe- Prarie View A&M
I myself have been guilty at times thinking Lovie shouldn't have taken such a radical position and should have played more upperclassmen rather than Freshman. After looking at this list, I stand by earlier assertion that Lovie didn't inherit a ton of Big 10 talent and he may have been justified taking the bruises in the first few years.
TE Henry McGrew-?
DB Harvey Clayton Jr. -Duquesne
DB Frank Sumpter -Eastern Kentucky
QB Jeff George Jr. Michigan/Pitt
DE Sean Adesanya – Central Michigan
WR Dominic Thieman- Duquesne
DB Chris James-?
DE/LB Christion Abercrombie-Tennessee St.
LB Julian Jones-Georgia St.
DT Tito Odenigbo -Miami Fl
S Patrick Nelson-SMU
OL Gabe Megginson- Illinois St.
LB Tre Watson- Maryland
WR Desmond Cain-North Dakota St.
OL Adam Solomon- Illinois St.
RB Keyshawn Vaughn- Vanderbilt
LB Julian Hylton-SIU
RB Tre Nation- Austin Peay
WR M.J. McGriff- Akron
WR Zarrian Holcombe- Prarie View A&M
I myself have been guilty at times thinking Lovie shouldn't have taken such a radical position and should have played more upperclassmen rather than Freshman. After looking at this list, I stand by earlier assertion that Lovie didn't inherit a ton of Big 10 talent and he may have been justified taking the bruises in the first few years.
BananaShampoo
Captain 'Paign
- Phoenix, AZ
Yeah. Nice job taking the time to do that analysis. I see only four players on that whole list who either made a lateral move or a step up in level of play (George Jr, Tre Nation, Keyshawn, and Tito). That should tell you something right there.
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
A couple transfers not mentioned
OL Eddy Fish - Boston College
QB Eli Peters - Toledo (Probably best returning QB in MAC)
QB Jimmy Fitzgerald - Dartmouth
WR Carmoni Green - Unknown
OL Zeke Martin - Unknown
OL Hojo Watkins - Juco (Dismissed)
QB Cam Thomas - Unknown
DB Bennett Williams - Juco (Dismissed)
TE Lou Dorsey - Unknown
Again, not a fan of these types of lists because it (1) categorizes all of these transfers as players that weren't talented enough and (2) dismisses the fact that some of them left because a lack of fit. This is simply a judgement on their landing spot. A couple of other points.
-- This list has an incredible amount of 2016 recruits. That class, and the events that unfolded that led to its fruition, will go down in infamy.
-- For some positive: Combining both lists, there are at least 11 guys that either would have gotten/received significant snaps (Vaughn, Dorsey, Williams, Green, Adesanya (great year at CMU), Tito, Nelson, and Watson) or would have provided solid depth (Watkins, Peters, Fish). I'd also make an argument that a couple more players would have been intriguing adds based on the current offensive philosophy (Tre Nation) or willingness to play another position (Cam Thomas).
-- I'm not sure it's fair to point out the flameouts as justification for Lovie playing freshmen, as many of the players you mentioned as transferring out where in fact freshman (or at least underclassmen). The general complaints was that Lovie had some high-performing upperclassmen that saw their snap count decrease as the season went on in order to give freshmen, especially the ones with a strong future, more playing time.
-- Again, some of these players transferred out due to a lack of fit (coaching turnover) and less to do with lack of talent. You're a big RB that Cubit really wanted? Vaughn and Nation come in. Cubit is fired, McGee is hired, and now Illinois doesn't want big RBs? Vaughn and Nation leave.
Lost in the discussion is how incredibly important experience is, not just individual skills, but experience within a system. Remember Tim Banks took a lot of heat for two years of crappy defenses, and then the third year everyone got older and more experienced in his system and suddenly we were pretty good on that side of the ball.
KrushCow31
Former Krush Cow
- Chicago, IL
I mean we can look at how they did after they left Illinois. Bailey had a great career at Northern Iowa and signed as a WR with the Ravens but don't think much happened there. Cam Thomas appears to have quit football. Fitzgerald transfered to Dartmouth and then tore his knee again and quit football. Peters is a backup for Toledo in the MAC but did get some starts this year after the QB got hurt and threw well, winning offensive player of the week once. Maybe Bailey could have panned out, but looking at the others you can see they wouldn't have.
Well it is not that difficult to understand. We beat Middle Tennessee, Western Illinois, and Kent State. Then in the Big 10, we beat First Year head coach Mike Riley at Nebraska, in his first Big Ten Game of his very short career at Nebraska. And we beat an atrocious Purdue team that won 2 games all season. Add to that, we had a decent roster with more than 50 upperclassmen. This lends itself to a better, more physically and mentally developed players. We had competence at QB with Scheelhaase. The following years saw a dip in upperclassmen on the roster. The team was in significant turmoil (3rd head coach in less than a year). We did not have sufficient talent on the roster and we didn't even have upperclassmen, who were developed and ready to lead the charge. Several players transferred because they wanted to start over (three coaches within 12 months). I could go on, but it doesn't really matter. Not many people would argue that Illinois was in serious tumult when Lovie took over and that the talent was consistent with a bottom of conference team in any of the P5 conferences. At the end of the day, whether people think Lovie has done well or poorly, to this point, it all comes down to 2019 and then 2020 after that.
It is always hard to make comparisons across coaches and systems. But the team did not have considerable talent and certainly not depth.
Most of the higher end talent that accrued during this era were seniors or upperclassmen in 2015. Josh Ferguson, Ted Karras, Fej, Geronimo Allison, Justin Hardy, Jihad Ward all spent some time on NFL rosters and were all seniors. Dawuane Smoot, Carroll Phillips Juniors. There were 50+ Juniors and Seniors on that team
Of course no list is ever going to be dispositive of an issue which is why we all have fun debating. Just like a players recruiting ranking is another piece of the story but becomes less important as we see their college career unfold.
Some guys probably opted to non D1 schools to play right away as well. As far as fit goes, I'm sure they could have found a landing spot somewhere in the P5 or even smaller conference teams that fit their individual talents if the demand was there. I didn't include Lovie recruits because I was addressing the roster Lovie inherited and whether a full rebuild was in order.
After the 2015 season the roster lost a lot of its talent and we finished 5-7 with and 65 in the F/+ ratings. I can't fault Lovie looking at that 2016 roster and thinking that a significant upgrade was needed. Even if you keep the guys who landed at P5 schools and the other couple who have had success in the MAC etc. there wasn't enough to build from imo
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
If Whitman had fired Lovie in November I would have understood the logic and supported it. But I think pushing forward was a difficult but correct move and I'm excited to see what happens next season, and I think there's a real chance we're able to break through thanks to the age and experience of our roster. And I hope we do because I've always really liked Lovie and I want to see him succeed here. And obviously I'm just sick of losing in general.
But if there's still no pulse next year, the patient has died and it's time to accept that and move on. That's where I'm at.
SampsonRelpenk
- Edwardsville, IL
Who might these final pieces be?
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