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Bret Bielema Takes Reins of Illinois Football
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<blockquote data-quote="Gohogs14" data-source="post: 1567972" data-attributes="member: 747832"><p>Arkansas fan here. Bielema’s time here was really enigmatic. We were extremely competitive and looked like we were headed in a very good direction from 2014-2016. Then the last three games or so of 2016 it seemed like the wheels all fell off. He had a strong first staff but I think two of the things he struggled with were making good assistant replacement hires when his staff left for promotions and I think he got a little lazy in recruiting and drank too much toward the end of his time here.</p><p></p><p>I do think people have a misconception when it comes to his preferred style of offense. He’s a defensive-minded coach so I don’t think he’s married to one style of offense. It frustrated me to see people say that he didn’t work out here because he tried to “out Alabama-Alabama” because offense wasn’t really the problem, we finished 2nd in the SEC in scoring in 2015 and led the conference in passing in 2016. On top of that he blew out LSU twice and nearly beat Alabama (lost 14-13 on a missed extra point). Pretty sure under him there was a stat where we lost more close games (7 or fewer points) than any other P5 team in the country. So we were so close to winning 9-10 games a couple of times under him just kept finding ways to not quite get it done. Looking back on it we had quite a few players on his teams that are still playing in the NFL, he did a good job at getting guys drafted early on. I want to say we were actually top 5-6 in the SEC in quantity of players drafted, though most of them were in the mid to late rounds.</p><p></p><p>Anyway I’m curious to see how he does back in the Big 10. It might be a better fit for him than it was at Arkansas.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gohogs14, post: 1567972, member: 747832"] Arkansas fan here. Bielema’s time here was really enigmatic. We were extremely competitive and looked like we were headed in a very good direction from 2014-2016. Then the last three games or so of 2016 it seemed like the wheels all fell off. He had a strong first staff but I think two of the things he struggled with were making good assistant replacement hires when his staff left for promotions and I think he got a little lazy in recruiting and drank too much toward the end of his time here. I do think people have a misconception when it comes to his preferred style of offense. He’s a defensive-minded coach so I don’t think he’s married to one style of offense. It frustrated me to see people say that he didn’t work out here because he tried to “out Alabama-Alabama” because offense wasn’t really the problem, we finished 2nd in the SEC in scoring in 2015 and led the conference in passing in 2016. On top of that he blew out LSU twice and nearly beat Alabama (lost 14-13 on a missed extra point). Pretty sure under him there was a stat where we lost more close games (7 or fewer points) than any other P5 team in the country. So we were so close to winning 9-10 games a couple of times under him just kept finding ways to not quite get it done. Looking back on it we had quite a few players on his teams that are still playing in the NFL, he did a good job at getting guys drafted early on. I want to say we were actually top 5-6 in the SEC in quantity of players drafted, though most of them were in the mid to late rounds. Anyway I’m curious to see how he does back in the Big 10. It might be a better fit for him than it was at Arkansas. [/QUOTE]
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Bret Bielema Takes Reins of Illinois Football
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