Illini football has been searching for an identity for the longest time. In Head Coach Lovie Smith you have a very accomplished NFL pedigree with an emphasis on defense. Smith is one of the finer defensive minds of our time, and his defensive coordinator, Hardy Nickerson, was one of the NFL’s best defenders in the 1990s.
It stands to reason that hard-nosed defense will be the Illini football identity in the Lovie era, but we sure didn’t see it in year one. The run defense was absolutely atrocious. They surrendered almost 220 yards a game rushing, which ranked 105th nationally.
And now they’ll have to replace an overwhelming majority of the starters on this side of the ball. The DL is extremely young and inexperienced, and the team’s best overall player, DE Dawuane Smoot, is now gone. Illini football ranked very high in pass defense last season, finishing 17th in yards allowed per game. That’s very misleading though as teams weren’t in pass only mode a whole lot versus Illinois last year.
The Illini didn’t have a lot of leads, certainly not a lot of big leads, and their being so soft against the run, often meant that teams simply didn’t have to pass. Maybe this year will be different, and if that’s so, here are four Illini football difference makers on defense.
Del’ Shawn Phillips
He missed spring ball with an ankle injury, and it remains to be seen where exactly he fits in. Phillips could slide right into the spot vacated by Hardy Nickerson Jr. or he might be placed on the outside instead.
You can hear Smith discuss Phillips in detail in the file below around the 7 minute mark:
James Crawford
Crawford moved from safety to linebacker to now DE, and he’s indeed very long and lean. He really could be the unit’s MVP. In a year that sees a lot of turnover and inexperience, with a dire need of playmakers to be step up and be noticed, Crawford might just be the guy.
Single digit jersey numbers- yet another reason we all love college football. Illini OL Christian DiLauro joked about how scary it is to see a big guy in a single digit number coming to after you, because you know the players in single digits are fast. You can hear all that in the audio below, starting around the 9:30 mark:
We brought up this conversation with Lovie Smith too, and you can hear what he had to say about it, and Crawford in general, in the file below, around 2 minute mark:
Jaylen Dunlap
The visit of Charles “Peanut” Tillman to Illini football camp had a tremendous impact on Dunlap, and you can read all about that over at this link. We had another exclusive with Tillman again this summer, and when we told him that the secondary will be the strength of this team in 2017, Peanut said the DBs are always the strength of the team.
We get the humor, but we couldn’t agree more. Dunlap will likely be the lone senior starter on a very young defense, but he comes off a very solid season, in which he broke up 11 passes and made 63 tackles.
Dunlap has NFL dreams and ambitions, and he talked about that at B1G Media Day. He also discussed the influence of Tillman some more and you can hear all of the audio below. Skip to : for the best material.
Tre Watson
Lovie described Tre Watson thusly at Illini football media day: “An extremely bright, smart football player, and you need that as a guy who’s playing middle linebacker for you. You need a leader a conductor, who knows his job and also what everyone else needs to do, and that’s Tre.”
Coming off a 102 tackle season, Watson will anchor this unit and be the QB of the defense like Hardy Nickerson Jr. was last season.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV.
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