Last season under then first-year defensive coordinator Ryan Walters, the Illinois defense surprised many in the Big Ten to become a top-half of the conference unit after being one of the worst groups in the Big Ten under former head coach and defensive coordinator Lovie Smith.
The Fighting Illini start their second spring football under head coach Bret Bielema on Tuesday, it’s also the second season with Walters leading the Illinois defense along with the rest of the defensive staff, which includes Terrance Jamison, Andy Buh, Kevin Kane and Aaron Henry.
“This year having gone through it in a full calendar year of work and getting to know the roster, staff and building off what we were building at the end of last season,” Walters said on Monday. “It’s been good to have more review than new install. We are tweaking things, and that will be advantageous for us.”
While the Illini defense will still focus on some of the fundamental things in the first week of spring practices, Walters anticipates that the Illini’s defensive players will learn more about how a certain call, scheme or play affects everyone on the defense instead of just one position. The hope is that it helps increase the overall understanding of what the Illini want to do defensively.
“Now you’re able to get the big picture for everyone,” Walters said. “What the d-line is going, why the secondary is rotating the way it is and why we are calling certain calls. We are calling this call because it’s this down and it’s this kind of run defense. It’s a focus on the totality of the defense, rather than this is your assignment, your call and what you need to look for from an individual circumstance.”
But the Illini defense does have to replace a lot of pieces, especially in the middle. Nose tackle Roderick Perry is gone in hopes of being selected in the NFL and so are inside linebackers Khalan Tolson and Jake Hansen – the latter of which anchored the Illini defense for three seasons.
Illinois’ biggest defensive departure though is free safety Kerby Joseph who is expected to be selected in the first four rounds of the NFL Draft after recording five interceptions in a breakout season.
Spring practice gives the Illini an opportunity to work in new pieces at each position. Northwestern transfer TeRah Edwards has impressed the coaching staff with his motor in offseason workouts and Calvin Avery and Verdis Brown have both lost weight this season.
Tarique Barnes is back for the Illini at inside linebacker and CJ Hart is also fully cleared after suffering a season-ending knee injury in the first game of the season against Nebraska. Walters also said that Shammond Cooper, a former four-star prospect, has moved back to inside linebacker and that he is one of the strongest pound-for-pound defensive players on the team.
The defensive back rotation though is likely the trickiest to figure out with Joseph and cornerback Tony Adams both gone.
“If we have another guy get five picks, I’ll be happy,” Walters said. “But it doesn’t happen every year. But if we can spread those out among the group, I think we can get more turnovers this year than we did last year with a better understanding of what we are doing conceptually. Obviously, we are going to miss a lot of those guys, but it shouldn’t deter us.
Walters wants to use spring football as an opportunity to rotate guys in at free safety and potentially nickel, should Quan Martin take hold of the free safety position. Kendall Smith, Prince Green, Tyler Strain and Daniel “Snook” Edwards should all get an opportunity along with long-time strong safety Sydney Brown.
“We had moved Kendall Smith to safety at the end of last year,” Walters said. “We plan on using him there, another guy is Prince Green who redshirted a year ago. He’s a big, long rangy safety that has been putting a lot of extra time in during this winter session and then I’m looking forward to seeing Quan and Sydney’s progression.
I’m excited for those guys. We have rooms that are savvy vets, do we need to replace one guys production with one player? I don’t know if that’s the case, but I think we can make up that production as a total unit for sure.”
Tuesday morning marks the start of the second full season of the Bielema era in many ways, and the strides the Illini defense could continue to make this offseason could make fall camp much easier for Illinois when it comes to making decisions about where to play certain players. Still, everything is accelerated in year two under Walters.
“It is a different starting point, but you still have to start from day one install, now that looks different than last year because we have a different understanding of who we are from an identity standpoint and the totality of the defense and making sure everyone understands the why,” Walters said. “Hopefully we can then move on to different installs at a faster pace than we did a year ago.”
