Illini Football 2026

ChiefGritty said:

We won 10 games two years ago!

Can I sit here with a straight face and tell you that our passivity and predictability on 3rd downs in 2025 didn't drive me insane? Of course not.

But the fantasy land that has grown up around Henry among certain elements here is so flamboyantly fictional it's hard to even engage with.


The culture walked out of the building at the end of last year, it's really that simple.

Losing a bunch of seniors who were really good players has a lot to do with that of course, but it can't be overemphasized how much all three phases complemented each other philosophically, controlling and slowing down games and making them a contest of situational execution.

The problem with Aaron Henry's departure, with the benefit of hindsight, was not timing or emotional resolution for his detractors, it's that it happened at all.

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If by culture you mean "Luke Altmyer," I agree completely. Even with our deficiencies on defense, if we have 2024/2025 Luke as QB we are sitting at 4-1 right now. This is not really a knock on Houser; it's just that Luke was that effective in close games and the staff had that much trust in him.

If by culture you mean "we should have kept Henry as DC," then I disagree. Our issues on defense have a lot more to do with losing guys like Jacas, Thompson, Coenen, Hood, etc, etc, etc without adequate replacement than they do with who the DC is

ChiefGritty said:

We won 10 games two years ago!

Can I sit here with a straight face and tell you that our passivity and predictability on 3rd downs in 2025 didn't drive me insane? Of course not.

But the fantasy land that has grown up around Henry among certain elements here is so flamboyantly fictional it's hard to even engage with.


The culture walked out of the building at the end of last year, it's really that simple.

Losing a bunch of seniors who were really good players has a lot to do with that of course, but it can't be overemphasized how much all three phases complemented each other philosophically, controlling and slowing down games and making them a contest of situational execution.

The problem with Aaron Henry's departure, with the benefit of hindsight, was not timing or emotional resolution for his detractors, it's that it happened at all.

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I think you’re conflating 2 different things here to make a bit of a strawman argument. While our defense is categorically worse this year than when Henry was DC that doesn’t necessarily mean keeping Henry is the solution nor does it mean that Henry was effective as a DC when he was here or that he was completely irreplaceable.

We have significantly significantly less defensive talent this year on DL and LB. It also seems that X has not played anything like the player he was pre-injury and that Juice has regressed as well. That makes it difficult to draw any conclusion unless you believe Henry could do a lot more with what we have. I don’t think anything Henry did the past few years suggests that conclusion. Maybe better development of the DBs than we are currently seeing? And better tackling? Though sounds like Bret would have shut down tackling regardless.

Outside of that though I mean we went very bargain basement on DL and LB and it shows. I just don’t think keeping Henry changes that. And I still don’t see him leaving as the major reason for our falloff this year.

bluemountain said:

If by culture you mean "Luke Altmyer," I agree completely. Even with our deficiencies on defense, if we have 2024/2025 Luke as QB we are sitting at 4-1 right now. This is not really a knock on Houser; it's just that Luke was that effective in close games and the staff had that much trust in him.

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We definitely don’t win the Duke game with Luke.

Houser was sacked 0 times in that game.

Last year, Altmyer took 4 sacks against Duke.

If you add 4 sacks to the game this year, we might’ve lost by 20.

FloridaMan said:

Like most I think, I am searching for the answers to how we all of a sudden have no talent after winning 10 and 9 games.

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bluemountain said:

Our issues on defense have a lot more to do with losing guys like Jacas, Thompson, Coenen, Hood, etc, etc, etc without adequate replacement than they do with who the DC is

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aaeismacgychel said:

It also seems that X has not played anything like the player he was pre-injury and that Juice has regressed as well. That makes it difficult to draw any conclusion unless you believe Henry could do a lot more with what we have. I don’t think anything Henry did the past few years suggests that conclusion. Maybe better development of the DBs than we are currently seeing? And better tackling?

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What I'm getting at here is that our success was built and predicated on an all-of-program philosophy in which each phase complimented the others, all of the oars pulling in the same direction, and that allowed us to be a better and harder to beat football team than the sum of our individual players talent level.

Bret & Co. wanted to do more in prep recruiting, wanted to swing big with our credibility in the transfer QB market, and thought the pricing for size in the NIL market had gone beyond its value. So they embraced change over continuity, trying to get ahead of the curve in the changing sport.

They got it wrong. That's clear now (HOW wrong will be the tale of the rest of our season), and the reason it was wrong is because it broke the everything-is-connected complimentary nature of how they built the thing. We've stopped doing what made us outplay our talent.

That's not to say that Aaron Henry is the best possible DC we could have ever had, nor even to say that we couldn't have kept continuity with the complementary philosophy without him. But part and parcel of keeping him would have meant trimming our sails elsewhere to retain size and depth along the front seven, and just a more overall spirit of sameness and consolidation.

In retrospect, that is a better path than the one we took both in terms of our record and performance today and also maintaining that consistency into the future. And to loop back to my original point, the feeling of needing sharp philosophical change in the first few days of 2026 is hard to square with a proper appreciation for the two seasons that came before it.

Tl;dr, we shouldn't have felt the need to change so much. Nothing was broken.

Bret moved AHen out not because a bunch of vocal knuckleheads on the internet demanded it - he did it because he didnt like the way the D was being managed .

it was time for a change .

whether the change was in the right direction is a separate issue .

the change was needed . who we got in his place (Houck) was not

STLini25 said:

It is absolutely the main reason. If we had average BT talent we would have won. And I’ll prove it’s the number reason. If our NIL doesn’t improve, we will be a bottom 5 BT team.

To change your argument, CAN we beat Purdue with our talent/NIL? Absolutely. But you are splitting hairs between going 2-7 and 3-6 in the BT. The ONLY way for us to become an average BT team is by an increase in NIL.

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We are going to have to agree to disagree. There are coaching and discipline elements missing, that amount to far more than "splitting hairs between going 2-7 and 3-6 in the BT".

I agree that competing for a National Championship requires more $, but what's gone wrong this season so far is an entirely different thing to analyze.

Beat MSU, move to 3-3, and lets see what we can improve on heading into the bye week.

Collin Dixon is firmly in the running for 1st team All BIG:

PleaseMakeABowlGame said:

We definitely don’t win the Duke game with Luke.

Houser was sacked 0 times in that game.

Last year, Altmyer took 4 sacks against Duke.

If you add 4 sacks to the game this year, we might’ve lost by 20.

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Now this is an odd take (especially the definitive stance), IMO. The Illini's last three drives in the Duke game this year:

- Turnover on Downs
- Interception
- Turnover on Downs

Altmyer consistently came up clutch down the stretch of games, even if he took some questionable sacks. In my mind, there is no doubt that we were more likely to win the Duke game if we still had Altmyer than with Houser. I actually think we score way more than 3 points in the second half.

I think it is fair to think that we might have won both the Duke and Purdue games with Altmyer. He really was that important to our success the last three seasons. I am not saying that Houser is a terrible QB, but he is definitely a downgrade to the proven nature that we have had in Altmyer.

How exactly would four additional sacks lead to 16 more Duke points? The math does not add up to me. You are assuming one sack leads to four expected Duke points, which seems absurd to me.

ChiefGritty said:

What I'm getting at here is that our success was built and predicated on an all-of-program philosophy in which each phase complimented the others, all of the oars pulling in the same direction, and that allowed us to be a better and harder to beat football team than the sum of our individual players talent level.

Bret & Co. wanted to do more in prep recruiting, wanted to swing big with our credibility in the transfer QB market, and thought the pricing for size in the NIL market had gone beyond its value. So they embraced change over continuity, trying to get ahead of the curve in the changing sport.

They got it wrong. That's clear now (HOW wrong will be the tale of the rest of our season), and the reason it was wrong is because it broke the everything-is-connected complimentary nature of how they built the thing. We've stopped doing what made us outplay our talent.

That's not to say that Aaron Henry is the best possible DC we could have ever had, nor even to say that we couldn't have kept continuity with the complementary philosophy without him. But part and parcel of keeping him would have meant trimming our sails elsewhere to retain size and depth along the front seven, and just a more overall spirit of sameness and consolidation.

In retrospect, that is a better path than the one we took both in terms of our record and performance today and also maintaining that consistency into the future. And to loop back to my original point, the feeling of needing sharp philosophical change in the first few days of 2026 is hard to square with a proper appreciation for the two seasons that came before it.

Tl;dr, we shouldn't have felt the need to change so much. Nothing was broken.

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I get what you are saying and I agree we would be far better off if we had been able to hang on to all the talent we lost in the front 7. Having said that, we actively tried to hang on to most of these guys. Maybe if we hadn't spent the $ on Taylor we could have kept one of them. Or maybe we should have settled for a lower tier QB? Or maybe we spent too much on the freshmen? I'm not sure if that would have helped us, to be honest.

The quality of our play on defense deteriorated under Henry. Part of that is talent - guys like Newton and Witherspoon don't grow on trees. But it was also evident that there was a decline in fundamentals and execution. Bret wanted to get back to the style and quality of play that we had with Walters and saw a path to get there - it involved hiring a better DC, keeping the talent we had in the front 7 and adding a few complementary pieces. I think that was a reasonable strategy. His mistake was in vastly underestimating the market for these positions before it was too late, and it was a very costly mistake.

bluemountain said:

I get what you are saying and I agree we would be far better off if we had been able to hang on to all the talent we lost in the front 7. Having said that, we actively tried to hang on to most of these guys. Maybe if we hadn't spent the $ on Taylor we could have kept one of them. Or maybe we should have settled for a lower tier QB? Or maybe we spent too much on the freshmen? I'm not sure if that would have helped us, to be honest.

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These are difficult challenges with hard trade-offs and you only have the budget you have, I totally acknowledge that. Honestly, my frustration lies most centrally in the way I see ever bigger fish stories about Henry's horribleness as a sort of One Weird Trick to avoid and ignore those trade-offs.

bluemountain said:

The quality of our play on defense deteriorated under Henry. Part of that is talent - guys like Newton and Witherspoon don't grow on trees. But it was also evident that there was a decline in fundamentals and execution.

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I don't agree with this whatsoever actually.

Per SP+ rankings our D was 45th nationally in 2023, 26th in 2024, and 41st in 2025.

And I think the fundamentals and execution were really good actually, as they have mostly been on both sides of the ball under Bielema. I think strategically in 2025 specifically the defense just took "bend but don't break" to the point of absurdity.

But that's the thing, both Henry and Lunney were calling games to a very particular game strategy, the two working in concert. There was a bigger picture reason we were trying to make teams complete 12 play drives and constantly throw underneath to score against us.

AND IT WORKED. It worked, it worked, it worked, this conversation keeps tipping into acting like this wasn't a massively successful period.

bluemountain said:

Bret wanted to get back to the style and quality of play that we had with Walters and saw a path to get there - it involved hiring a better DC, keeping the talent we had in the front 7 and adding a few complementary pieces. I think that was a reasonable strategy. His mistake was in vastly underestimating the market for these positions before it was too late, and it was a very costly mistake.

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No, frankly, that's nonsense. Henry was running the same defense Walters was, just less well without 4 NFL DB's to lock down every 3rd and 8. And Chris Partridge or Bobby Hauck both represented radical philosophical change from that, which was the path decided AFTER getting smacked in the face by the new market prices.

The lowlight at 3:10 (12:45 left in 2Q) of this clip says it all.
Tons of plays like this.
Nose Guard: no effort, no aggression, no speed, no power. Their center knows he's so bad he doesn't have to block him. And our backup NG is too small.
You can't run a 3 man front and get this from the NG play after play.
Blitz linebacker looks lost, doesn't even reach the OL when the pass is being made.
No wonder the opponents WR's can run double moves all day, their QB is never under duress.
Bielema must be going crazy watching this kind of film. It doesn't take a genius to see the problems.