Patience, grasshopper...
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
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When you start striking out on your targets, you start to wonder what’s going on behind the scenes…Sounds like we don’t have enough NIL.
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There are a lot of fish in the sea....and we have a lot of targets....also only like 3 or 4 kids we've offered are off the board.
How many of these fish in the sea haven’t been offered publicly?
Didn’t know where we stood with Harkey but Knapik visiting isn’t a bad thing. Guessing mcvay will be going elsewhere.
Not all of the players announce them publicly. It’s up to them
That may be the case, but there's also a lot that isn't public and hasn't been announced yet. Case in point, Mateer, QB from WSU, hits the portal yesterday. Bunch of online message board chatter that he's headed for OU. Maybe. even likely, that it happens. A lot of this activity happens behind the scenes before it gets out to the public. I can't tell you how good our backchannels are vs others, but it happens
Nothing against McVay, but I don't think he's worth that amount.
To be fair, talk of Mateer heading to OK is based almost entirely on his OC heading there rather than some behind the scenes action.
FYI there is also roster retention talks going on right now too.
This is a great point. It's easy to forget about losing the kid from Yale and believing our DL was going to be awful. Last winter portal season did not go well and we ended up with a great roster!
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
There isn’t a limit of NIL you can offer across your roster. That said, it’s hard to justify giving $1.5 million to a guy who’s only played 50 snaps the past two years and it hasn’t been good. Again, I’m saying that as I haven’t been a fan of him since he was a prep.
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
Was a different portal schedule last year. Greater emphasis on the current window this year.
Or they are making smart decisions. 1.5 million for an unproven player is not a risk worth taking.
uofi7477
- Silver & Gold Vandals
Go Silver & Gold Vandals!
Make sense but at some point they will need to take a risk.
I wouldn't say our DL was completely awful this year but those offseason concerns were somewhat justified by how that position group performed this season.
GrayGhost77
- Centennial, CO
It was always going to be a step down after losing the Law Firm, but I'd say they performed at least adequately.
The defense gave up 31 touchdowns the whole season. Last year they gave 43. Seems like improvement and the line was part of that. More sacks this season too.
illinidarrin
- from parts unknown
This has to be driving Bielema crazy knowing that we just finished a 9-3 season, and yet, You still can't get enough money to pull in the top transfers. I wonder how long it's going to be before he speaks out about this? It's got to be a slow burn for him. He's doing his part, he's getting the program back on track, but he needs help. The fanbase can only do so much, we need a big donor for football. If we don't get quality starting transfers this year, we will go back to being a 5-6 win team again next year. One step forward and two steps back it seems.
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giving a new guy 1.5 million has ramifications all across the roster .
what signal does that send to everyone else on the team ?
Totally agree. Like in MLB, it seems much of the market is waiting on the top free agents to sign and set the market price. The dominos will fall more quickly thereafter. I trust our staff.
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
If UNC is adding $13 million more (based on the various articles and podcast discussions) to their NIL, that's a big, big number to give to a fairly unknown college product. I'll consider it a sizable stretch on the truth.
he makes the roster of my all name team
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