Early Monday afternoon, Illinois’ super-senior middle linebacker Jake Hansen underwent knee surgery for an injury that he suffered on Oct. 9 in a 24-0 defeat to Wisconsin at Memorial Stadium.
“This week I underwent successful knee surgery and will miss the remainder of the season,” Hansen said in a Tweet on Wednesday. “It pains me to say that I will not play another game as an Illinois football player. I would like to thank everyone that has been part of my journey as an Illini, especially my family, teammates, coaches, strength staff, athletic trainers, academic counselors and fans!”
In 2021, Hansen played in five games and had 32 tackles with 2.5 tackles for loss, two forced fumbles and one fumble recovered. The three-time captain ends his Illinois career second in school history in forced fumbles (12) and with 276 career tackles and 28.5 tackles for loss from 2016-21.
“Very disappointed for him, but also blessed that I had an opportunity to coach him through those games, had a chance to be around him,” head coach Bret Bielema said. “When we first started talking with Jake, everybody in the building, everybody in the community talked about who he is and what he represents.”
Over the course of his six seasons in an Illinois uniform under two different head coaches – Lovie Smith from 2016-20 and Bielema in 2021 – Hansen was known as one the most well-respected players in the Illinois locker room. He, and teammates Doug Kramer and Blake Hayes, are the only players in Illinois football history to be named a three-time captain.
Following the 2020 season, Hansen declared for the NFL Draft. But he opted to return to Illinois after getting a waiver from the NCAA that allowed him to use the free year of eligibility granted to all student-athletes for the 2020-21 season despite participating in workouts for NFL teams last winter.
“We had quite a few conversations about coming back to join us and then when he decided to declare for the NFL, we stayed in contact,” Bielema said. “His journey back here was very unique. Because of when he arrived, he only got here a couple of days before spring ball, so he didn’t go through spring ball.”
When Hansen was down on the field being tended to by trainers against the Badgers, Bielema walked over to his All-Big Ten linebacker. When he arrived, he could see the look on Hansen’s face and he knew that the injury was pretty serious.
“In my entire coaching career, whenever a player is down on the field, I go to the field,” Bielema said. “I go for two reasons. I want to find out how they feel, what’s the situation or just be there. Their parents can’t be there, their brother and sister can’t be there, so I can be there. I learned that through the coaches I played for because I got injured and I remember looking up and seeing this face. … When I got out there, and I saw Jake and I saw him look at me, I hadn’t even asked the doctors what was wrong yet, I knew it was something significant.”
Illinois didn’t find out that Hansen’s injury would end his season – and his Fighting Illini career – until after the Wisconsin game. When the first-year Illinois head coach found out about the severity of the injury, he called Hansen.
“When I found out, I said ‘hey, I understand it just confirmed everything we talked about here,’” Bielema said. “He shot me a text and said ‘Coach, I’ll be in tomorrow, I don’t really want to do this over the phone.’ We had our little moment there.”
On Wednesday, with Hansen in his hometown of Tarpon Spring, Fla., Bielema sent Hansen a light-hearted message that poked fun at the graphic Hansen used to share the news about his season-ending injury.
“Then yesterday when they put out the graphic, he’s kind of swelled up, uniform is all jacked up and all of our players had retweeted it and I just kind of took a moment and screenshot it and sent it to him and said ‘how’d you get my arms superimposed on your graphic?’ I just felt that was what we needed. He responded back, really awesome exchanges there,” Bielema said.
Despite only coaching Hansen for about 10 months and only coaching him through seven games – really five because Hansen missed games against Purdue and Charlotte with a minor injury – it was easy to see the emotion in Bielema’s eyes when speaking about Hansen on Thursday afternoon.
“The kid is awesome,” Bielema said. “He’s such an incredible thing. I know I only got seven games with him, but the thing I made to him was ‘thank god I got seven games with you man because you made me better.’ He was very complimentary of what he has learned from me. I said man, ‘I’ve learned from you, what you’ve taught me.’ Unfortunately, that’s part of this game, that what we go through. I think he will be pretty good in the future personally; we’ll do everything we can to get him there.”
Bielema said on Thursday that Hansen will spend time recovering from his injury in his Tarpon Springs, Fla., hometown, but will likely return to Urbana-Champaign later in the season and will spend a final couple of games with the team on the sidelines. Hansen – while currently unable to train for the NFL – made his intention clear for when he is fully healthy.
“I will look back at my time here with no regrets and will continue to cherish every moment I enjoyed here (at Illinois),” Hansen said. “With that said, I look forward to pursuing my life-long dream of playing in the NFL!”
