Illini Football 2026
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
You’re really upset this staff can’t predict injuries in the future, huh?
FWIW, I, too, would’ve liked more money to go towards the defense, but not because of the injuries that happened in the future and would’ve been impossible to predict at the time, but because I feel like our offense would’ve been good enough with the receivers we have now.
It doesn’t matter if they are injured or not they haven’t played. Also TJ Taylor hasn’t played 1 snap this year. I can list several examples of players getting paid a lot and having 0 impact.
we paid Christian Martin over a million and he was horrible at Colorado state. They had a horrible offense
Not surprised at all with Bowick's success this season. He looked highly effective prior to the injury before the Indiana game. And looked very effective again at end of season. Made sense that if he stayed healthy he'd have a good season. That said, I thought the same thing for Valentine but even better, and he has struggled more than I expected
We spent a nice chunk of change on Bailey, X and Juice. Had to spend a some to get Morris too. Farrell and Barna as well.
Because you wanted us to spend more money on receivers?
Not saying it was good decision or not but retaining those players, Illinois would have paid less. I suspect a lot less. I can't imagine Georgia Southern or Southern Miss are breaking the bank for those WR's.
No I’m saying we could’ve tried to keep some of those guys as depth. Then you wouldn’t need to add both platt and perry
Hankins and Eberhart also cost a lot.
Not speaking for him, but I do think there's logic that if you keep Bowick at a discount instead of say going after Platt then that's more money that could have gone towards the defense. That said, there is a good amount of 20/20 hindsight here as it wasn't a guarantee that Bowick would have the season he's having and we were expecting Platt to come in here and rock and instead he's injured.
I think Mike is doing more a postmortem on where things went wrong budgetwise this offseason, and while this is a single item, there were a high number of misses this offseason that has put us in this position. For example, going after the Colorado State guys seemed like a misstep at the time and it has certainly played out this way. And in my opinion it's fair- you field one of the worst defenses in the fan's lifetime with increased support and there's bound to be some questions. That said, misses happen, I'm most interested in how we respond next season, as I see the rebuild/refresh as going to be challenging