Illinois Football Recruiting Thread

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#1      

Dan

Dan
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Dan
Welcome to the Illinois Football Recruiting Thread :illinois:

Transfer Portal Window: January 2nd-16th


2026 Transfer Portal Commits

1) DB Lavon Williams (January 4th, 2026)
2) DL Carter Janki (January 4th, 2026)
3) QB Katin Houser (January 4th, 2026)
4) ATH Maurice Smith (January 5th, 2026)
5) C Jake Renfro (January 5th, 2026)
6) OL Christian Martin (January 5th, 2026)
7) WR Jayshon Platt (January 5th, 2026)
8) LS Zach Haber (January 6th, 2026)
9) WR Ty Robinson (January 7th, 2026)
10) Edge William Holmes (January 8th, 2026)
11) WR Alex Perry (January 8th, 2026)
12) DB Deuce Fillmore (January 9th, 2026)
13) LB Robert Edmonson (January 9th, 2026)
14) DL Connor Sullivan (January 11th, 2026)


2026 Illini Football Recruiting

Illinois Signs 30 on National Signing Day, Completes Top-Rated Class in Program History (fightingillini.com)


2027 Illini Football Commits

1) QB Kamden Lopati (July 27th, 2025)
 
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#2      
HensonHall71
I think it's fair to be concerned that we've lost 7 players to the portal from the 2 deep last year on defense that you would rather have come back for continuity and the promise they showed, but at the same time acknowledge none of them were all-big ten or guys you can't replace and this is the new normal in the portal era. Frankly if the portal era is going to stress which coaching staffs are the best evaluators of talent, it likely favors us in this type of turnover to be better at it than other schools.

Bret and staff have shown the ability to find the "diamonds in the rough" or smaller school kids that can play in the big ten - Eli Coenen being a good example last year of a kid that didn't start for Bemidji state and came here was was a significant contributor by year end. I like the strategy of filling holes on defense with the smaller school kids now while you can get them, but I agree that we have to add a couple of "big guns" that are more proven players before we're done if we're going to continue the same level of success. We'll have the offense next year to win a lot of games IMO, we need the defense to get better to keep us competitive against the best teams. Getting X back would be by far the biggest difference maker we could add.
 
#3      
hooraybeer
if Shad Khan came to JW/BB and said “I’ll give you $100M to spend on whatever you want for the 2027-2028 football season only, but if you don’t make at least the semifinals of the CFP BB will be fired and I will never make another donation to the UofI”, JW/BB would accept?
 
#4      
Pikeillinifan
People who are worried, this has been the plan: rebuild the current roster and get better fast, including stacking a great recruiting class to set a new baseline. This attrition hasn't caught anyone by surprise and is by design. We want to make a leap to the next level, not stay where we are. Will it work out? That is the unknown, but I'm excited to see things play out.
 
#5      
bigcityillini
If we landed a guy who had 1.5 sacks, a 70+ PFF grade in the big ten and 2 years of eligibility left we’d be getting boom gifs left and right. I think we can acknowledge that.

The bigger issue is that we are being told to trust Aaron Henry and his staff to identity, develop and deploy these less heralded players. Could it work? Sure. But I don’t think it’a shocking that people have major questions given the defensive performance that last two seasons and the lack of proven talent on that side of the ball currently.
 
#6      
Simeon Rice
HensonHall71 said:
I think it's fair to be concerned that we've lost 7 players to the portal from the 2 deep last year on defense that you would rather have come back for continuity and the promise they showed, but at the same time acknowledge none of them were all-big ten or guys you can't replace and this is the new normal in the portal era. Frankly if the portal era is going to stress which coaching staffs are the best evaluators of talent, it likely favors us in this type of turnover to be better at it than other schools.
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We all love Bielema, but this is the logic I can't get my head around. One the one hand, we are saying we have a decided advantage in evaluating talent, but on the other we are acknowledging that all these players leaving were not at the desired talent level. Yet, it was this staff that brought in this talent originally

I hope Bielema stays forever, but I'm not necessarily buying that all these defections are somehow a good thing
 
#7      
hooraybeer
Simeon Rice said:
We all love Bielema, but this is the logic I can't get my head around. One the one hand, we are saying we have a decided advantage in evaluating talent, but on the other we are acknowledging that all these players leaving were not at the desired talent level. Yet, it was this staff that brought in this talent originally

I hope Bielema stays forever, but I'm not necessarily buying that all these defections are somehow a good thing
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if we had an above average (or certainly top of the market) NIL budget i could see the logic. i haven’t seen any suggestions that is the case. tough to upgrade in an open market without above average resources
 
#10      
Weston6pack
Are those guys definitely out the door or are they testing the waters and we would take them back if they don’t find what they are looking for?
 
#13      
1m4tr
illini0440 said:
If you were to guess our budget what would it be?
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And do we have the money to pay/overpay for an impact DL, Edge and/or LB? Like could we go pay $2m for a dude that could get us 10 sacks? I hope so. It feels like we’ve been judicious with whatever budget we may have. Hoping we can now swing for the fences w a guy or two.
 
#14      
bigcityillini
illini0440 said:
Would Bret and staff liked Coenen and Angelo to stay, of course.....but they also aren't losing sleep or fretting over it like some of y'all.
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That’s not the narrative that has been getting pushed tho….

They also lost no sleep about the defensive backs the last few years and we could all see we had major major issues back there. I love Bret and the staff. But a comment Werner made stuck with me. He said they were over confident in some of their DB recruiting post Walters. They didn’t address the clear issues back there and it cost them games. Coaching staffs are not infallible (I love Bret). But I wonder if his former walk on days has made him more likely to take some of these fliers.
 
#15      
Chukwuwumba
Simeon Rice said:
We all love Bielema, but this is the logic I can't get my head around. One the one hand, we are saying we have a decided advantage in evaluating talent, but on the other we are acknowledging that all these players leaving were not at the desired talent level. Yet, it was this staff that brought in this talent originally

I hope Bielema stays forever, but I'm not necessarily buying that all these defections are somehow a good thing
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Looking at the final result - wins- team is clearly above what is expected from the player rankings.

Development was stated many times and to see departures conteracts this. However, Bret has shown his willingness to pivot- and if players are not developing as hoped- don’t put your head in the sand, look elsewhere
 
#16      
Username
illini0440 said:
If you were to guess our budget what would it be?
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Bill Hader Reaction GIF
 
#17      
HensonHall71
Simeon Rice said:
We all love Bielema, but this is the logic I can't get my head around. One the one hand, we are saying we have a decided advantage in evaluating talent, but on the other we are acknowledging that all these players leaving were not at the desired talent level. Yet, it was this staff that brought in this talent originally

I hope Bielema stays forever, but I'm not necessarily buying that all these defections are somehow a good thing
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To clarify, my point was not that these players were not the desired talent level, I'm saying our staff would have preferred that most of the guys in the two-deep stay. Bret said himself in the presser that guys from the two-deep last year are invited back. But in this portal era, it's going to be the new normal that guys you don't want to leave will leave - they have agents in their ear, they may have wanted more snaps last year etc.

But at the same time, Bret's job is to find someone better every year to improve the team. So, even if some of these guys stayed it doesn't mean the staff wasn't going to try to find someone better and in this era of high turnover at every school, there are a ton of replacement players in the portal now. It's up to the staff to find the ones that make us better, and they won't always hit on every player, but they've shown a high success rate of transfers. I think HS recruiting thus far has been more of a dissapointment, if you want to criticize that aspect (which is influenced by the ability to attract kids to a school without have the track record). this years incoming class is obviously vastly different building on the success last year.
 
#18      
HensonHall71
hooraybeer said:
10-20M/y with revenue sharing included? no idea though
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I'm pretty sure we're much closer to $25M this year. We'll be able to put the full revenue sharing of $20.5M allowed given the surplus the athletic department runs at and I would guess $17-18M of that goes to football given it's the largest revenue generator. Then add $8-10M of NIL, given the success last year I would think we're at least at that level, so my guess would be somewhere in the $25M+ range.

Some of the top SEC schools spent around $30M with just NIL last year apparently, so they will likely be in the $45M plus range this year with rev share, so still a gap with the top schools but we have a good war chest to compete with the guys we really want to spend money on - see Houser - the staff prioritized him and he was a top 15 highly sought after QB transfer and we locked him up early.
 
#20      
aaeismacgychel
Simeon Rice said:
We all love Bielema, but this is the logic I can't get my head around. One the one hand, we are saying we have a decided advantage in evaluating talent, but on the other we are acknowledging that all these players leaving were not at the desired talent level. Yet, it was this staff that brought in this talent originally

I hope Bielema stays forever, but I'm not necessarily buying that all these defections are somehow a good thing
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Yeah, it's why I don't like the "it's entirely the players fault, they have no athleticism and no speed and can't football correctly" perspective. The coaches play a big role in that, from the evaluation, to the coaching, to the defensive scheme, and playing to your players strengths to maximize player success. And if we're sitting here and saying, the evals were bad and the scheme was also problematic for the talent we had and we didn't play to their strengths. Well at some point you have to point to the coaching.

It's why I do think it's a fair question that if we were going to turn over the entire defense and not retain most of the 2 deep, why Bret is keeping Henry vs bringing in someone else. Unless he has that much confidence in Henry to turn it around after consecutive poor years, especially if his talent eval hasn't been great either.
 
#21      
illini0440
bigcityillini said:
That’s not the narrative that has been getting pushed tho….

They also lost no sleep about the defensive backs the last few years and we could all see we had major major issues back there. I love Bret and the staff. But a comment Werner made stuck with me. He said they were over confident in some of their DB recruiting post Walters. They didn’t address the clear issues back there and it cost them games. Coaching staffs are not infallible (I love Bret). But I wonder if his former walk on days has made him more likely to take some of these fliers.
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So they went out and got the #1 JUCO corner in Morris, Lavon Williams is a great pick up...watch him against the 2 D1 teams he played....Signed Hankins, got Bailey coming back, a chance X comes back and I think they will get another transfer DB. Forgot Juice is back too.
 
#23      
bigcityillini
I’m just reiterating what Jeremy said because I think there is some merit to it.

The defensive back play since Walters left here is not good. So we can’t really trust that AH is gonna deploy these guys correctly. I don’t dislike Morris or Williams. But we’ve seen them take a lot of juco and smaller school dbs recently and they really haven’t done well. Patterson was the best one and yall said losing him was nothing and we could easily upgrade… so what does that say about the state of that room? Or smaller school DBs in general?
 
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