Illinois Football Recruiting Thread

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#76      
Mr. Tibbs
mhuml32 said:
You shouldn't get killed, and I get the sentiment! The problem is the court system asks, "if this is such a good idea, why are other university students allowed to transfer as many times as they want without restrictions? or why are university employees allowed to change their employers as often as they like?"

Universities are never going to restrict other non-athlete students in this way or force all of their employees sign non-competes (which would create many other lawsuits), so here we are.
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it only gets done with
a. a CBA that the players enter into as employees
or
b. a congressional anti-trust exemption
 
#80      
mhuml32
Pikeillinifan said:
Net neutral would be disappointing, unless we're totally changing the defense and everyone has to re-learn things. That said, I think we're going to see a net positive, and many of these things have been known or planned.

Bret's been open about the resources being much better this year, so I believe this is a major overhaul to get us closer to a playoff-level team.
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The scheme is (likely?) not changing but the story this offseason is going to be how there is a sea-change on Illinois' defense from a personnel perspective. The offense is losing stars, but the defense is losing almost everyone. Here are all of the pieces that are graduating or already in the portal.

Patterson
Cox
Thompson
Durajoiye
Coenen
Rooks
Hood
Hayden
Warren
M. Scott
Jacas
Neal
Lowery
Hunt
Bryant
Karriem
Odeluga
Rosiek
Strain
Zardzin
X (likely?)
Bailey (maybe?)

If X and Bailey go to the draft, you are looking at 80%+ of the guys who played defensive snaps in 2025 are gone. By all defensive and special teams tackles, you have lost 75% of your production. Without Bailey, the returning tackler is Tanner Heckel. Matt Bailey likely has enormous value for Illinois' staff in coming back. On the flip side, Bailey is going to have to decide if he wants the challenge of leading a defense that could have almost all new starters besides him (and the risk that could be associated with him taking on that challenge for his NFL prospects).
 
#81      
SixthandWhite
kmunt09 said:
As others have mentioned, letting defenders go must be Bielema's official response to last year's defensive naysayers, as opposed to firing Aaron Henry.
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Let's not forget that once or twice a year guys declare for the portal and quietly return to the roster. I'm hoping for a change of heart from one of Karriem, Durojaiye, Coenen, or Hood to help continuity.
 
#82      
HensonHall71
mhuml32 said:
The scheme is (likely?) not changing but the story this offseason is going to be how there is a sea-change on Illinois' defense from a personnel perspective. The offense is losing stars, but the defense is losing almost everyone. Here are all of the pieces that are graduating or already in the portal.

Patterson
Cox
Thompson
Durajoiye
Coenen
Rooks
Hood
Hayden
Warren
M. Scott
Jacas
Neal
Lowery
Hunt
Bryant
Karriem
Odeluga
Rosiek
Strain
Zardzin
X (likely?)
Bailey (maybe?)

If X and Bailey go to the draft, you are looking at 80%+ of the guys who played defensive snaps in 2025 are gone. By all defensive and special teams tackles, you have lost 75% of your production. Without Bailey, the returning tackler is Tanner Heckel. Matt Bailey likely has enormous value for Illinois' staff in coming back. On the flip side, Bailey is going to have to decide if he wants the challenge of leading a defense that could have almost all new starters besides him (and the risk that could be associated with him taking on that challenge for his NFL prospects).
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X is an interesting case - he's only projected in the 5th round right now. He can definitely make more money coming back and hopefully having a healthy season and improving his draft stock. He would be a huge addition if he did return. The defensive struggles seem to coincide with him going down. We have two good CB's in Morris and Clark, he would be the perfect slot corner to perhaps make our secondary a strength next year
 
#83      
BlueFlag
I believe you meant defections, but we get it.

It's that spell check thing again . . .
 
#84      
bigcityillini
I don’t think the sky is falling. But everyone pointed to our returning production as an indicator for a possible successful season this year… and that’s exactly what happened. A veteran team didn’t fold after Wisconsin. They salvaged a good season. Returning production remains the greatest single data point to judge a teams projected performance for a season.

Starting totally from the ground up. With no defensive captains returning (assuming Bailey does not). The most expirenced defense player would be Juice Clark. Thats worrisome.
 
#85      
Mistakenj
Yeah starting to get that vibe too. Who is doing these evaluations though? There’s still blame to go around
 
#89      
STLini25
I think the likelihood of a youth movement on defense with some of these starting spots being filled with freshmen and sophomores is drastically increasing.

Beerman, Hankins, Eberhart are going to have significant opportunity to be day 1 starters.
 
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#92      
Boomauer
illinibbcz said:
I am all for players having one "free" transfer. After that they should sit out one year like the old time, unless the head coach that they committed to leaves the program. i think this could he stop having free agency every year of 3000 people in the portal.

I bet I get killed for this take.
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3000? I think the # right now is 5000+ and rising.
 
#93      
aaeismacgychel
Dan said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/2008245150586417309
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Woof... Him I was hoping to keep around, see how he responded to another offseason of conditioning. Interesting he's leaving despite him being in decent position to compete for significant playing time next year. Makes me wonder if Bret told him they plan on bringing in multiple starters ahead of him and that convinced him to go.
 
#98      
BoiseBaller
I'm all good with the high churn, but, if the defensive product we see on the field next year hasn't improved then we need to also churn the DC. I still think it should have happened this year, but I'm willing to humor the idea that it was due to personnel deficiencies. But, if that is the case, then the leash on scheme/results needs to be short, held to a higher standard with the replacements.
 
#99      
aaeismacgychel
bigcityillini said:
Dude I’ve followed this (transfer recruiting) more closely than anyone. Check out my charts on previous pages. Deflections at this level is not the normal here. Are you claiming it is?

Well land players I’m sure. Replacing an entire defense in the portal tho… that’s difficult.
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I agree it's going to be difficult, but honestly, we sort of knew that going into this offseason. We have a ton of holes we need to fill. Almost all starters needed to be replaced as well as our kicking and snapping specialists, and that was before these latest group of portal jumpers.

The good news is that unlike previous seasons where we've lost this many snaps, we actually are in a decent place to get quality players and do a complete overhaul of the team on the fly.

We knew next season would heavily depend on how we navigate the portal. I think we need to wait to see how everything shakes out as big picture is, we have a ton of holes and we're maybe 15% of the way to filling them. We've got a long way to go so it's not going to look great right now, but I think there's still hope and decent opportunity right now, we'll know better in a couple weeks.
 
#100      
bigcityillini
Oh for sure. And Bret has earned trust. The issue is we have not seen them really have to plug major holes using the portal. It’s usually a starter here or there. Or maybe a depth or rotational piece.

I’d rather just fire Henry now if we are admitting as a program that the players he’s been recruiting and developing for 5 years aren’t good enough.
 
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