Illinois Football Recruiting Thread

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#251      
bigcityillini
What’s nice at least for me is the lines seem to have a solid group of returners. Always hardest to build competent line play. Younger Knapnik stepping up at the end of the year was a great sign. Still think they could stand to add a OL (center) and a DE but there is a lot of solid returning snaps on the DL.

LT: Knapnik
LG: Henderson
C: Mcmillen
RG: Hansen
RT: Taylor

Rotation: Stewart, Matelau, Knapnik

Henderson only starter back but Taylor started at juco. Knapnik started bowl game and Hansen got some snaps early in the year. McMillen has played a bit, mostly on special teams. But has been the backup center for a year at least.

DL: tomi, Neal, mcullom, coenen, Farrell

Returns 68 tackles, 5.5 sacks, 9.5 tackles for loss. It’s not a ton but lots of snaps at nose. And tomi and coenen have the chance to take nice steps next year.
 
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#252      
RowdyFromRow22
Before Portal Combat starts and I’m refreshing my phone every minute, I’m just thankful for our insiders and pure chaos we are about to embark on…
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#253      
STLini25
I think it’s not seeing the writing on paper. In today’s football you know where you are by the NIL offer you get. I’m guessing their NIL offers made it clear to them how much the U of I wanted them.
 
#261      
aaeismacgychel
RowdyFromRow22 said:
Before Portal Combat starts and I’m refreshing my phone every minute, I’m just thankful for our insiders and pure chaos we are about to embark on…
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Yeah, portal is going to be absolutely bonkers for us this year. We've got to be closing in on and needing to replace almost all 22 starters on offense and defense along with our starting kicker, punter, and long snapper... It is fair to say we have never even had a successful rebuild of this scope in my lifetime. And yet, Bret and Josh have gotten us in a situation where I feel optimistic that we can refresh and continue the forward momentum.

Just truly an amazing era for Illinois football. And to your point, absolutely deepest gratitude to our insiders giving us the knowledge they can share. Let the fun begin...
 
#262      
Oldskoolkoach
Someone give a rundown of dates portal opens, closes, reopens, and shuts again and then special teams "blue bloods" are allowed to contact and take again?
 
#274      
ptgrd23
Major change- programs that had low $NIL can pay direct up to $20M under NCAA agreement. Of course they have to have the money which I suspect most schools do not.

If you are not in B10 or SEC (or have major donors like Texas Tech and BYU) going to be very difficult going forward.

Other than David Olano (kicker) I don't know what other impact starters we are losing to portal.

Bret is huge rotation guy - so we typically have 2-3 players getting reps at every position except QB.
 
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