Obviously defense was a problem last year, and Henry doesn’t yet have a track record that leads one to jump to the conclusion that improvement is imminent. But what the hell do his post-game pressers have to do with anything? You expect him to come out and say what changes he expects to make to give a heads up to the next opponents’ offenses so you are “told something”? Definitely need to see improvements on D, and we’ll have a better idea if Henry is the guy who can bring that about after this year. Could care less about “improvements” in his post game pressers though.Not to rain on your parade, but hoping the defense just gets fixed is putting a lot of weight on the word “hope.” Aaron Henry may have just been inexperienced last year but I didn’t really see any signs of improvement from start to finish. His post-game pressers were always just “we’ll make changes because we have to” which tells you nothing, and then nothing would result. Bret could have taken over the defense but he didn’t, and we’ve got Aaron Henry served up for a year two now. Jim Leonhard left for the Broncos so there’s not even really the hope that he could do something (not that he showed me any benefit being on staff last year).
If the defense loses the people it did this year and somehow becomes *better*, that would be pretty amazing. There were a bunch of stupid mistakes that should have been coached out but never were. Same coaches are still here. Thinking that just changes because…idk just because?…is a fools errand.
I’m excited for some Illinois football and hopeful we can find our way to a bowl game but I’m not expecting our defense to be anything to write home about. I’d be very glad to be wrong though!