The difference is the market has just flown by. "Choices" made by the coaching staff, in general, is probably not the issue.
Illinois Football Recruiting Thread
ChiefGritty
- Chicago, IL
I don't think that's obvious at all.
The market is exploding, and the market for size is exploding most of all.
College is different than the NFL where between 32 teams and a wider age cohort there's kind of enough athletic big guys to go around. Athletic big guys are THE resource of college football and always have been. QB is still the most important and valuable position on the field (and probably increasingly so in college) but you can get away with game-manager QB play in college if you're superior in the trenches, it's very different than the pros.
Our staff planned for this offseason calculating a market value for our eligible to return defensive front seven guys that was unrealistically low. They thought they had the money to improve in those areas and they didn't.
That's not a "program over, fire everybody" mistake, let's not be ridiculous. But it's going to be a costly one in 2026.
I thought that would be Knapik?
Going to be an awkward conversation with Antayvious Ellis too...
Realistically how much do you think a guy like that would cost. He was lightly recruited as a prep and played 13 snaps last year
Corn w/salty tears might not be that bad...lol, I love it!
mhuml32
Gesture of Northern Aggression
The staff cleaned up on the recruiting trail last year and NIL was a big part of that. The situation flipping the following offseason simply because of a lack of resources seems unlikely. Also, the staff had committed big money to Lopati. Now those resources are available. The question is why recruiting is still lagging behind. I'm warming to the idea that the new (defensive) coaching staff is facing a steep learning curve on the recruiting trail and it's harming prep recruiting, but I don't have any specific evidence to support that theory.