Don't bank on walk-ons...
Depth is nice, but like someone else posted, nearly every one of those transfers has already peaked... and not at a high level... I'll take my chances with walk-on depth.
The Illini aren't even at SCHOLARSHIP depth, which is 85 student/athletes for NCAA D1 football programs, let alone "walk-on depth."
D1 teams are allowed 85 scholarship players - and they're limited to sign 25 scholarship players in a class year. There's a *little* bit of wiggle room, but not much, so this coming season it's as if this program, as has been intimated by another blogger, is on a self-imposed probation.
Teams can take 105 players to camp. When school begins they can have as many players as a coach wants to put up with. Typically, though, there are usually about 105 on the roster (85 on scholarships and 20-ish walk-ons). The current Illini roster - with the new enrollees - appears to be 81. Five of them are kicking game specialists. Nine of them are seniors. Five dozen or so are sophomores, redshirt freshmen and freshmen. That is roster depth and experience portending a very, very difficult season. (Expect one win - the opener, and hope for four.)
So far for home games Lovie only allows the NCAA traveling team limit - the guys who go to the hotel the night before the games in Chambana - to dress, which is, I believe, 65 players. So not even all of the scholarship players (assuming they HAD 85) get to dress for Illini home games. And for the walk-ons, dressing for homes games is about only "payment" they enjoy for the beatings they take in practice, the same brutal workout schedules the scholarship guys have, and squeezing academics in around football...
With that policy, and a few other things, Lovie ran off all of the walk-ons during his first season and has never replenished them. The Illini did promote walk-on tryouts Lovie's first year after the walk-ons left, with little result. So it was twos vs ones all week during practices - and a miracle more and more significant injuries didn't occur in Lovie's first year.
There has been a lot of blather about quarterback depth with the Illini. It's not just that position. There are currently 12 offensive linemen on the roster. A team should at least have three-deep, or fifteen players, because of injuries and academic eligibility concerns... Eighteen is even better. So make your own predictions for O-line injury reports during the coming spring practices...
Back to walk-ons... For every miracle known as Clayton Fejedelem (who had actually proven his football acumen at a lower collegiate level and then walked on with the Illini) there are hundreds of guys who walk on D1 programs every year (like 15-20 for each of the 124 programs) and never get on the field. In short, banking on walk-ons to help turn around the Fighting Illini football program is like thinking duct tape could have saved the Titanic.
