illinidarrin
- from parts unknown
He has a lot of good offers and i have a hard time believing that we could throw the most money at him. He would be a good get though.
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
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Illinivek23
- Gurnee
Gotta like that Jerry Kill was his last HC, too.
Oregon State, Arizona State, Utah, UConn and Nevada were only offers I seen since being in the portal. But out of hs he was offered by a ton of good schools.
Myles Rowser, Belleville , Safety
Two-way experience at running back and multiple spots on defense.
247sports.com
He had a ton of big time offers out of HS. I didn't research further to understand why he ultimately enrolled at FCS Campbell - grades, other? Anyway, if he has whatever it was straightened out, he would appear to clearly have a lot of talent.
His timeline on 24/7 has some Skyy Clark vibes. Multiple commitments/decommittments while in high school. Wherever he ends up will be his 3rd school since his initial enrollment at Campbell in 2022. That sort of timeline usually doesn’t bode well but, hey, trust the staff etc etc.Myles Rowser, Belleville , Safety
Two-way experience at running back and multiple spots on defense.
He had a ton of big time offers out of HS. I didn't research further to understand why he ultimately enrolled at FCS Campbell - grades, other? Anyway, if he has whatever it was straightened out, he would appear to clearly have a lot of talent.
Need both
It was some legal issueMyles Rowser, Belleville , Safety
Two-way experience at running back and multiple spots on defense.
He had a ton of big time offers out of HS. I didn't research further to understand why he ultimately enrolled at FCS Campbell - grades, other? Anyway, if he has whatever it was straightened out, he would appear to clearly have a lot of talent.
Am I wrong for thinking the addition of Webb would be better than Hastings?
Add both of them.
Harmon committed to smu. We need to add a corner and safety
Will canada start/replace taz? And will hill start alongside bailey or do they both play the same safety position?
mhuml32
- Cincinnati, OH
This is what mattered to me. The recruiting rankings are important and provide a measuring stick to how Illinois compares to their competition. It’s easy to see how Illinois stacks up against Ohio State (not good) when going on Rivals or On3, but we also do not need rankings to discern that difference. But what about Illinois compared to Minnesota? Fleck has been a thorn in Illinois’ side since he was hired because of his recruiting map crossing over with Illinois’. Rankings do not provide that nuance – seeing players coveted by other programs choosing Illinois seem like important offseason wins (to me) – certainly more than if Illinois’ average team ranking is 944 instead of 968. Let’s dive into the data – but first, a warning – there are lots of graphs here. I’m aware that I’ve been looking at these for a few months so it’s easy for me to identify granular but important differences. It might take a little more time to digest these than the previous ones.
*All of these comparisons are made to Big Ten West opponents. I know, I know – B1G West is going away! Why are we sticking with our comparison to these competitors? A few reasons – Illinois isn’t going to be competing with the Oregons, Washingtons, Ohio States, Michigans, and Penn States of the world for the forseeable future. If that changes, I’ll change my graph. The great majority of these teams are in the geographic footprint of each other and frequently compete for the best talent in the greater (western) Midwest area. Illinois will be successful if they can do better than most of this group.
How do the average rankings stack up against our main Big Ten competition? Not good.
- This should hit home for how bad the prevailing talent was on Illinois’ roster when Bielema took over.
- Bielema comes in a makes the biggest improvement of talent acquisition of anyone on the graph (also helps that his program started in the dregs).
- LOL, Northwestern. Their coaching staff did amazing things this year, can’t take that away, but that ’24 class is going to be a serious problem for the next four years.
- The ’23 class seems to be the great normalizer across this group. Effectively everyone is within shouting distance with each other.
- These rankings are no longer making me impressed with Purdue’s class.
This isn’t the big takeaway because this post is about offers.
How does Illinois compare in recruit FBS offers compared to their competition? EXCELLENT
- Illinois is on the far left. Just look at that constantly growing bar. Look at the leap from ’22 to ’23.
- Illinois’ 2024 commits have the highest median FBS offers of all B1G West teams. Effectively tied with Wisconsin this year but decimal points ahead.
- You are free to bounce back up to the previous graph and scoff at the rankings.
- Bigger trends
- Iowa seems to do a better job of identify certain guys early and shutting down their recruitment. That said – lots of teams make offers 24 months ahead of signing day – so you are fair to scrutinize Iowa’s talent acquisition process and be in awe of Phil Parker.
- Offers are being reported at higher numbers across the board. Maybe that means the transfer portal has shrunk of the high school pool and more schools are competing for the same players.
- Further concern if you are Northwestern looking at their recruiting class.
For those wanting the line graph to see the direct competition, here you go!
Just really good news for where Illinois recruiting is headed.
Again, I don’t care about FBS offers – How does Illinois compare when looking at only P5 Offers? Really Good.
- Minnesota did not have a couple good years in ’22 and ’23. That might start coming back to bite them in ’24.
- Brohm was a wizard with limited talent. Walters helped raise the ceiling this year but there is a lot of talent going out the door in the portal.
- Nebraska has two top-50 talents and Illinois still has more P5 offers (by median) in their class than them.
Overall, what’s your takeaway?
I am happier about Illinois’ recruiting the past two years than I realized just looking at the general rankings. You could make an argument that Illinois’ recruiting is really around fringe top-25 or ~30th than their composite rankings suggest. Winning many more of these B1G recruiting battles is not only boosting Illinois’ scoring, but leading to dips for Minnesota, Northwestern, and Iowa.
Overall, these differences are not substantial - The transfer portal is still extremely valuable. Illinois is still going to be dependent on seniors from that ’21 class - Regardless, Bielema and the staff was doing an awful lot with inferior talent the past couple years. Now they will have similar or better talent base compared to the majority of their schedule.
The key is going to be maintaining the gains. Illinois needs to chip into the top-five in-state list (I'll likely have more on that later) to get some of the higher talent.
Joel Goodson
- respect my decision™
Kudos, awesome analysis!
Just incredible, thank you @mhuml32 !
DeonThomas
- South Carolina
Really appreciate the excellent work. Thanks, and Happy New Year!!!
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Great work, thanks for putting this together.
You could say Purdue & Northwestern are the two teams whose recruiting rankings matter the most in comparison to ours. Because we’re guaranteed to play both teams each year.
Tremendous work. Thank you.
The trend is great, but the problem is we aren’t going to feel that 2024 recruiting class bump until 2026. Years 2024 and 2025 will be the judgement years for Bielema, so he’s going to need the portal to hit and his bad initial recruiting class to drastically over perform. Excellent work though.
agreed... this is why smart people said bielema is far from the hot seat when the year had some bumps... things were way worse than people knew before he took over, and thanks to this analysis, demonstrably better than imagined ?
Bielema has overachieved on player development, and underachieved on the field. That’s uncharted territory for us, because normally we suck at both. You’d think they would be very closely correlated. Hopefully things come together next year.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
Next year could be a step back, but BB could still have the program headed in the right direction. He’s the best coach we’ve had in 30 years. Let him cook.
Recent history says other otherwise. If we take a step back from last year, then we are just a bad team with 90% of Bielema’s hand picked players. Trust me, I don’t want to start over.
I thought Illinois was a 10 year rebuild when BB took over. 2 sets of 5 year recruits to have something built. Needs time to get/ develop players. Coaching/ org structure appears to be run well.
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