The Illinois Coaching Staff Search

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Sure sounds like the DC hire is pretty much finalized but nobody knows, or is willing to say, who it is or when it will be announced. I'm basing this off of some comments by Jeremy Werner in his most recent podcast this morning and 0440's posts.
 
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I'll admit, I've fully set myself for disappointment on this one - there are a good number of high caliber DC's available right now and the fact that JW increased the staff budget to $5M and we haven't had any "expensive hires" yet (to the contrary, actually) makes me think they are going big on DC

I take the delay as a good thing potentially if they are waiting for the musical chairs to finish with the higher profile jobs at Texas and Michigan to be determined. Ash or Robinson would be a home run hire in my view for many reasons.
There are other big names like Kevin Steele, Don Brown, Bo Pelini that are out there on the market and certainly have very little chance of coming here, but with that many high profile DC's on the market at the same time, they have to land somewhere.

Paul Rhoads would make sense, but hard to get excited about. Anyone else that has never been a DC before would be very hard to get excited about.
 
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ChiefGritty

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Henson71 said:
Paul Rhoads would make sense, but hard to get excited about.
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Paul Rhoads would be a terrible hire. Once upon a time he was right at the cutting edge of defensive football, and he's by all accounts a nice guy and everyone was rooting for him at Iowa State, but his defensive stuff hasn't worked in a long time.

It's a little like Lovie Smith actually, when I say it out loud. Two guys that had offenses locked down in 2002, but football has moved on.
 
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Keisersose

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Quick give me your opinions on Ron English. GRITTY I’m looking at you. :)

I like the guy a lot.
 
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Dan

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Tank Wright says he's had the name "Tank" since he was a little kid. Embraced the toughness aspect of the name.

“That’s what my life is all about, seeing guys take that next step and doing things they never thought they could do.” -- new #illini strength and conditioning coach Tank

New #Illini strength and conditioning coach Tenarius "Tank" Wright says he got his nickname as a young athlete.

"Screaming the name Tenarius is something that coaches do not want to do. Gave me the name, Tank, it stuck with me ever since I was five, six playing ball."

Tank Wright got married in a weight room. Said his wife and son both love the weight room.

"I guess you'd call it jumping the bar rather than jumping the broom."

New #Illini strength & conditioning coach Tank Wright: "Impacting guys' lives in any capacity is my true passion."

"No place is better than that weight room and being on the floor pushing guys to the limit."

Tank Wright on Illinois weight room: "You really look at a design that gives you no breakdown in time."

Tank Wright's mantra: "About that action."

"It really means talk is cheap."

Also loves the Illini's phrase "Join the fight."

Sorry, he clarifies it is spelled "Bout dat action."

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Keisersose said:
Quick give me your opinions on Ron English. GRITTY I’m looking at you. :)

I like the guy a lot.
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I'm not Gritty and not gonna research much beyond Wikipedia lol, but to me his resume basically just shuts down after his Eastern Michigan stint. Disappeared to the NFL for a few years? Then has been a low level DC for a year and then back as S coach the lasts few years (at least back into the SEC). Seems like he fell way further than he really should have.
 
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ChiefGritty said:
Paul Rhoads would be a terrible hire. Once upon a time he was right at the cutting edge of defensive football, and he's by all accounts a nice guy and everyone was rooting for him at Iowa State, but his defensive stuff hasn't worked in a long time.

It's a little like Lovie Smith actually, when I say it out loud. Two guys that had offenses locked down in 2002, but football has moved on.
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My point is, he would make sense given his connection to BB and being one of the first names that came up as DC after BB was hired, and he's been a DC for P5 schools a bunch before. In terms of his results lately, I agree with you - it's been bad
 
#1,063      

ChiefGritty

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Chicago, IL
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Keisersose said:
Quick give me your opinions on Ron English. GRITTY I’m looking at you. :)

I like the guy a lot.
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Sorry to be lazy, but here:

ChiefGritty said:
The interesting thing about English is that he had the misfortune of taking the dead-end Eastern Michigan job at the time when the going advice and conventional wisdom in African American coaching circles was to take any head coaching job that comes available, because of the lack of opportunities for black coaches to get that chance. That harmed his career. And yet, the really awful tirade that was taped and became public which got him fired there would have ended his career if it had happened today. It's interesting how timing works.

(That tirade is a skeleton in English's closet, there was also a story that got him in hot water where he said he only wanted to recruit players whose fathers were in their lives growing up. Gotta be careful about this stuff.)

Anyway, English is a good football coach, fairly lightly credentialed as a DC, but he's a guy who is at home in major conference football. And I don't worry too much about his getting fired yesterday, Florida fans hate Todd Grantham for no rational reason and so they're throwing a couple assistants to the wolves, that's the SEC Game of Thrones. Those Grantham defenses at Mississippi State and Florida have generally been great.

The problem is twofold, for me. One is that it's still a pretty underwhelming hire. With the salary pool we have to play with we ought to have our pick of big school position coaches if that's the route we want to go for DC and English is nowhere near the top of that list.

But the second is the really scary thing, which is that if we're looking at English and Petersen as the two coordinators, that's two guys without other equivalent opportunities who have never worked with Bielema before we've needed to wildly overpay to take what should be very appealing jobs. Doing worse than Beckman in 2012, worse than Zook and Guenther with a self-evidently dead project in 2009, and not drawing any of the deep bench of people who have worked with Bielema before raises the scary specter that Whitman got completely played and this guy does not have the credibility in the coaching profession to maintain a top quality staff, which was the obvious question #1 that needed to be investigated in looking at Bielema.

It has also come to my attention that Bielema has the same agent as Bill Belichick, who was clearly an influential reference with Whitman, and Whitman mentioned Barry Alvarez as someone he talked to as well, who also has an obvious conflict of interest in the matter.

I don't know that Charlie Partridge is really any better of a football coach than Ron English is. But man, having someone leave a solid position with a good Power Five program to rejoin Bielema's staff would sure make me feel a ton better about this situation.
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Tank Wright calms me down mildly from where I was in that post.

But if we're grading hires, Petersen is a D-, Miller is a B+, Wright is a B, and I'd put English at about a C.

TRob would be an A and Ash would be an A+. Partridge is honestly probably a B- but I would talk myself into a B and then the second he lands a Florida recruit with any other P5 offers he's a B+.
 
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ChiefGritty said:
Sorry to be lazy, but here:



Tank Wright calms me down mildly from where I was in that post.

But if we're grading hires, Petersen is a D-, Miller is a B+, Wright is a B, and I'd put English at about a C.

TRob would be an A and Ash would be an A+. Partridge is honestly probably a B- but I would talk myself into a B and then the second he lands a Florida recruit with any other P5 offers he's a B+.
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To me this DC hire is either going to be a homerun, high dollar guy like Ash or Robinson, or a somewhat underwhelming guy, but paired with a high-money, big-time position coach, potentially as co-DCs. They gotta spend that money somewhere. If that means no Ash or Robinson, but maybe over paying for Partridge (or other similarly bigtime DL guy) and bringing in English as DC, I'd be fine with it.
 
#1,066      

Keisersose

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I knew there was something somewhere but didn’t want to scroll and find it. I think English is easily as good as partridge and maybe better. You said “good football coach” that’s it right there.

We just got to see the Peterson hire play out. It was so far out of left field there has to be some genius in it we aren’t aware of - yet. Lol
 
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Keisersose said:
I knew there was something somewhere but didn’t want to scroll and find it. I think English is easily as good as partridge and maybe better. You said “good football coach” that’s it right there.

We just got to see the Peterson hire play out. It was so far out of left field there has to be some genius in it we aren’t aware of - yet. Lol
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The fact that BB didn't wait to find/announce the OC makes me feel a little better about that hire. It just seemed like such a weird hire. I'll give the benefit of the doubt. No reason for BB to jump to hire Petersen unless he actually wanted him.
 
#1,073      

ChiefGritty

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Keisersose said:
You said “good football coach” that’s it right there.
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Lovie Smith is a good football coach. There's more to it than that.

There aren't spit-take parts of his resume like there are with Petersen. And he's just been a part of Mullen's very successful first three years with Florida, so it passes the straight face test there, getting fired notwithstanding. (Get a Florida fan in here and they will tell you Todd Grantham and his staff are the worst coaches who ever walked the earth, but they're dumb and wrong from everything I can see.)

But as one of the two big spots in, again, a lavishly funded staff, that's pretty disappointing. He's just a guy that's around, and as with Petersen there is no connection to Bielema so it begs the question, why him?
 
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#1,074      

ChiefGritty

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TriangleIL said:
What if I told you, we can't announce the DC hire ...

because the DC hire is still coaching?
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It is Chuck Pagano!

Seriously though, there is no reason a non-HC can't have it announced that they're taking a new position. See Sark. That isn't the reason.
 
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